Empower Your Inner Architect: Building a Life of Epic Wellness

Happy November! I made a wish. I made a wish, and now everyone wants to slap me. Quick sidebar--Knowing how much I love the fall foliage, my husband whisked me away on a drive up the east coast through states I have never been to, all the way up to Portland, Maine. Although the trees were absolutely beautiful, the colors were not as vibrant as they could have been. The weather over here has been unseasonably warm, and for that reason, the leaf change has occurred very late this year. SO, just because I wanted to see GORGEOUS fall colors on the trees, I made an itty bitty wish that... ...it would cool off a little. And then 39 degrees said, "LUUUUCY, I'm HOOOOME!" Now I have no friends.  Since all of you still HAVE friends, I urge you to keep watch over both your friends and your family. I hope you are close enough to them to discern when there is something "off" in their lives, and I hope this closeness has instilled their trust in you--the trust that it might t...

I'd like to introduce you to Flo.  Nope. Not the same Flo all you ladies think I am referring to! There is a special Flo in the nursing world--she's the one that pretty much established nursing as a respected profession. I'm talking about Florence Nightingale. Now, doesn't her name just SOUND heavenly? I mean, how could anything go wrong if you were being cared for by Nurse Nightingale? Flo was of the mindset that every woman at sometime in her life would need to take on a nursing role. Think about it. How many of you have children? Are taking care of elderly parents? Babysit a younger brother or sister? Flo wanted ALL women to benefit from her discoveries so they could care for others. October 16-22 is International Infection Prevention Week. We are all exhausted in our conversations about COVID 19, so we aren't even going to address that. I thought Flo and I could bring you back to the basics of infection prevention so you can see where it all started.  It was dur...

October is a huge month in the world of mental health. Mental Illness Awareness Week is October 4-10. National Depression Screening Day falls on October 6 th . October 10 th recognizes World Mental Health Day, and October is even heralded as National Bullying Prevention Month—a practice that has tremendous damaging effects on the mental health of anyone, but especially our youth. Now, my intention is NOT to steal the thunder of your Mental Health Monday Blogger. In fact, as of this moment, I give mental health over to its rightful day of the week. I only needed to mention mental health as a lead-in to my topic today. But I AM going to dip back into Mental Health’s September subject to help support today’s health discussion. Now, remember when I said that I can find humor in any life experiences? I lied. Someone very close to me is amazing. This someone has a great family, supportive parents, loving siblings, good friends, and a pain-in-the-butt dog that will only behave for he...

WHO? HIJACKED? SEPTEMBER? I cannot even believe this month is over. Hopefully, you and your family are all back into your routines of insanity (as opposed to your unstructured summers of chaos.) My children are all adults now, but I still have the occasional nightmare where all my kids are in diverse activities in different places, and I cannot get to all of them in time to pick them up before dark. You would THINK I could clone myself in my dreams. But it doesn’t happen. I must choose what child to leave alone and afraid. Yes, I know. That is terrible! But it's not all gloom and doom, folks. Our kids are resilient, and they really DO make it through! It’s the parents that need the help! With the kids back in school, it’s time to take care of YOURSELF! Caring for yourself is not self-indulgence. It is self-preservation. The world today honors self-sacrifice, so taking care of your own needs first seems to be…kind of a… radical decision. But it is not because you are selfish—...

I am going to share a little something about myself—not to brag, but it will KINDA help to lead into my next discussion (this next topic is a tough one!) I have always been a very conscientious student. I won eight spelling bees in my 6 th grade classroom (I was terrified to be in front of crowds and refused to participate in a school-wide spelling bee.) I was a FAST speller—my teacher would always tell me to slow down so she could make sure I was spelling the word correctly. Many years later, while I was assisting my own child with his spelling words, he was attempting to spell “refrigerator.” He was stuck on the letter “g” and began to sound it out. “Juh…juh. Mom, is it G or J?” So, I asked, “What do you see?” Kid: “HUH?” Me: “Like, in your head. What do you SEE?” Kid: “Mom, I have NO clue what you are talking about. Sometimes the G and the J make the same sound and I get confused. Which one is it?” Me: “Wait a minute. You can’t see the word “refrigerator” in your head? ...

I almost quit today. Raise your hand if you almost quit today too. Doesn’t matter what. Your workout. Doing the dishes. Helping your kid with his math homework. Your job. A relationship. Things get hard, people. And then—we have all seen that trick where the magician fluently pulls the tablecloth out from under a table adorned with your best serving dishes—well, life hands you the gawky version of this, where fine china ends up in perfect stained glass window fragments all over the floor. You think you have reached the end of your rope. And then someone gets head lice. You all just scratched your heads, didn’t you? Who would have thought that there would EVER be a National Pediculosis Prevention Month? And what better time to discuss Head Lice Prevention Month then at back to school time! But first, I share with you my misery… The unauthorized cell phone call from my 8 th grader goes like this: Mom: “Hi babe, is everything ok? You aren’t supposed to have your phone on in...

My poor husband. Not only has he had to endure back surgery, a long and painful recovery, and his wife blasting it all over her blog, he developed shingles on top of it. Now, I won’t go into great detail about shingles, but it is a virus—the same virus that gives our young ones the chicken pox. Once you have had chicken pox, that virus can lay dormant in your body and resurface as shingles later in your life. And know this. It involves specific nerve tracks and is INCREDIBLY painful. My hubs is a beautiful beast of a man—large in stature—and this about brought him to his knees. Even as a nurse and a massage therapist, my skills were useless in helping him. “DON’T. TOUCH. ME.” I hear ya, honey. September also happens to be Pain Awareness Month. Just for giggles, I want you all to think back to the worst pain that you have experienced. For many women, childbirth tops the list. Many men compare the famous kidney stone to what they think childbirth might be like (by the way, my hubby...

Wow. That was painful. August, I mean. I hope you know, that was all a façade. I don’t parade around with a silly crown on my head for my entire birthday month. I think I have one picture of me in a princess costume…and I was six years old. I traded that PAPER crown in for a sweatband long ago! You do what you gotta do when you when the month doesn’t present any national awareness days you are familiar with. Looks like I have some studying up to do, lest I besiege you with “all about me” next year as well! Note: I’d like to take a year off and have no new crazy conditions pop up, please. At age 51, I realize it’s a tall order, but throw me a bone here… The person that developed the national awareness subjects for the month of September must have had kids that returned to school, because the list to choose from is monstrous. And SHE must have been pretty excited to enjoy a meal by herself, because the food day celebration list is SAWEET. September celebrates guacamole, peanuts, cheese...

Happy Thursday! I had a needle jammed in my neck today. No, there wasn’t a mishap at work. This was actually an anticipated and welcomed event—a treatment for one of Carey’s Crazy Conditions. To wrap up the month of August, I will tell you about two of them, as one leads to the other… From October 2013-October 2014, I had bronchitis FIVE times. Some folks, when they feel a cold coming on, feel it all in the sinuses. ANY type of cold/infection would go right to my chest. This is not something I wanted to harass my PCP about, since I knew the symptoms by heart and could just buzz on into an urgent care and get my Levaquin (antibiotic), steroids, and nebulizer treatment. A very kind nurse practitioner decided to look at my history while I was there for visit number five and said, “Hey, you have been treated for bronchitis five times at this location since October of last year. Has anyone ever mentioned asthma to you?” Yep, it was time to bother my PCP. I was diagnosed with exercise ...

I have been pretty active as long as I remember. Running around outside, organized sports—I have never been afraid to sweat. I preferred sweating to dating in high school, as a matter of fact. The elimination of that particular distraction, and my love for good ol’ practice, allowed me to excel in a couple sports—volleyball being my favorite. I developed some ambidextrous skills along the way, which was SUPER fun. Though I am dominantly right-handed, I dribble a basketball much better with my left hand. I can shoot the ball with either hand, although I am more accurate with my right. In volleyball, I can serve and hit with either hand. Hitting especially causes extreme confusion for the opposing team when they are setting up their defense to cover a right-handed hitter. Just a quick switch to the opposite hand, and everyone is left standing where they aren’t supposed to be, and the ball is hitting the floor “over there.” Makes me chuckle every time! There ARE things that I love to ...

Wow. And just like that, another week of my birth month has gone by. Way. Too. Fast. Wait. Where is my crown. Oh, there it is. Behind the…toilet.   rrrrRRAAAAYYYYY!!! The crown is a figment of my imagination. But as much as I gloat about how every day in August is MY day, I am sure that is where my husband would put it. IF I had one. (Ray’s birthday is in August, too. But he doesn’t get a crown. Just…because. Let’s talk about something else…) I promised a month of Carey’s Crazy Conditions. Let’s get started. I have three sisters—My older two and I are boom, boom, boom in age, one right after the other. In fact, the sister that is just older than me is my “Irish twin”. She was born in September, and I was born in August of the following year, just 11 months later. I also have a sister that is 6 years younger than me. You can imagine the sharing of clothes, the exchanging of makeup, and the fighting over just about everything else—EXCEPT the front seat of the car. Now, I grew...

  August. Summer. Hot. Back to School (For some of you. Disgraceful. Haha.) Month of Leos. Some Virgos. But mostly Leos. Roar. Happy. Birthmonth. Carey. Yep! I wear the crown. All. Month. Long. ROAR! The most exciting “specialty day” in August is National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day, which happened to be yesterday, August 4th. But that day is fired. And I can do that Cuz I like cookie DOUGH. And it’s my birth month. And since this is a health blog, dip your ONE spoonful (moderation) of cookie dough in dry oats (healthy) and enjoy. PS. I have never even tried raw egg-free cookie dough, and I am not dead yet. I was all over the board in July, so I was pondering a theme for August. And I selected one that allowed me to be all over the board again. Cuz it’s my birth month. ROOOAAARRR!! This month I am affectionately referring to as “Carey’s Crazy Conditions.” Now, some of these health conditions aren’t so off the grid. You might even suffer from a couple of them yourselves. But...

Meat. Pasta. Seafood. Cereals. Dairy. Breads. Rice. I think I would be hard pressed to find someone that hasn’t eaten one of these.  TODAY.  And if you haven’t consumed any yet, it’s what’s for dinner. Hold that thought. ADEK. BC. This is the acronym I memorized in nursing school to help me recall the fat or water-soluble vitamins. I put the FAT in the ADEK (see what I did there? Yep. I am a goober.) Once the fat was there, I knew what was up with the others. In simpler terms, fat soluble vitamins can be stored in the body, so it is possible for one of the ADEK vitamins to build up to toxic levels. With vitamins B&C-the body has limited storage, so excess gets excreted in urine, earning its water-soluble title. If, on your favorite dating app, the question appeared: “What is your favorite vitamin?” What would you say? (Ok. Maybe not. Lol. For heaven’s sake, swipe left. Or right. Or whatever way you swipe to reject this individual immediately. HAHA.) Weirdos like me act...