Brain Health – Page 21 – Andrea Arthur Owan

Walking, Running and Hiking Socks—It Pays to Know What’s Available

Been to your neighborhood outdoor recreation store lately to buy socks? The array of choices and purposes can be mind-boggling! What happened to just having a nice, cottonish sock with adequate heal and toe padding, and maybe a gradation of thickness, depending on what kind of weather you’d be hiking or exercising in?

Unfortunately (because you need to do your homework, know your sock choices and try them out), and fortunately (technology advancement in materials means they now make socks for every kind of feet, environment and need), you have a variety to choose from and try. Because your feet, comfort, blister prevention and exercise enjoyment depend on it, it pays to know your options. So let’s do some general studying. You’ll be doing yourself a monumental favor!

Going past the basics to specialty socks—

Walking, Running and Hiking:

In this category, you’ll find socks made for

Moisture Wicking— (and keeping the feet as dry as possible). Especially good for you super-sweaters. Offered in road and trail versions, different heights, and a variety of material blends.

Hiking—high calf or crew, hikers will choose wool or wool blend in different thicknesses, depending on the weather. But make sure if you wear wool you frequently check the sock for fabric clumping. That can cause blister problems.

Sock Liners—Runners, walkers and hikers sometimes wear liners between their woolies and the shoe in order to wick moisture away from the foot and reduce friction (or shear), which reduces your chances of being disabled by blisters from too-moist feet.

When I discovered these babies, I thought I’d nearly died and gone to heaven! They made hiking SOOOO much more enjoyable. One of the things that had turned me off to hiking (aside from the leaden boots that used to be standard fare), was the bulky feeling of the socks inside the boots. (Remember, I spent most of my years as a bare-foot or ped-footed gymnast, so anything heavy on my feet made me miserable.) These liners gave a silky feel to my feet and legs and made getting those SmartWool hiking socks on over my feet a breeze. They also reduced hot spots and blisters, and wick moisture from your feet, so I was immediately sold. I wear them under my ski socks, too.

I swear by sock liners when I’m wearing hiking boots! If you’re on a long trek, with an overnight stay, it cuts down on the amount of outer sock washing. Washing the thin liners is quick and easy, and if it’s during the summer, they usually dry overnight, or you just clothespin them to your backpack the following day to hang dry as you’re walking. Always carry at least two pair of liners with you for this. They’re light and compact enough to stuff in your backpack without taking up too much room. (Of course, discount the hang-to-dry part if you’re knee-deep in snow during the winter.)

Double-layered Socks—These are now my go-to socks! I love, Love, LOVE theme! A REI associate recommended them to me while I was shopping at their Seattle flagship store. They’re ankle height and are SOOOO comfy! I’m planning to wear these on our pilgrimage, even in cold weather. I’ll have lightweight, ankle gaters on to keep the pebbles and dirt out, and if it’s really cold, I’ve got lightweight silk long underwear. And maybe I’ll wear an additional pair of sock liners underneath the double-layered models.

Is that overkill? Not for me, personally. Triple layers help some people tremendously. For some, they might not like that additional layer. You need to find out what works for you.

Compression Socks—I’ve heard both pros and cons on these. One runner wrote a long article disparaging these socks and giving his reasons why. Research hasn’t drawn a positive conclusion on them, but as some experts state (and I would agree), if they make you feel better and don’t cause any harm, go for it! (One of my doctors personally swears by wearing them on long plane flights so combat circulatory problems.)

Some of the stated benefits include: improved circulation, reduced swelling, increased comfort, improved maximal oxygen consumption, quicker recovery, and reduced leg fatigue. Some people wear them strictly to enhance recovery, so their feet will be perky enough to put in mileage day-after-day.

But beware of wearing compression socks in the heat! You may set yourself up for heat rash (I’m prone to this, with horrible red splotches popping up at the top of the sock and about two inches beyond that.) You don’t want to stress your circulatory system!

Other options—

No socks—Then there’s the sockless aficionados. This used to be more of a problem when athletic shoe insoles couldn’t be removed. Then your foot sweat seeped into the insole/liner, which caused the insole to stiffen and lose its support capabilities. But some of my athletes at Indiana University (many whom were national champions, Olympic Trial competitors, or went on to be Olympians) loved the no sock feel. With all of the nerve endings in the feet and toes, it helped them feel the ground more. Their shoes were incredibly stinky, though! And stiff from all of the sweat salts.

Know how to put on a sock?

Yes, there is a right and wrong way to put a sock on your foot.

First, turn them inside out to make sure they’re pebble or dirt or pile-free. Then turn them back.
Then, roll the ankle portion down to the toe area as far as possible.
Slide the sock over your toes and carefully work the sock up your foot, ankle and calf.
Make sure any seams are not directly over your big or little toes, to rub on these appendages when the shoe is on and cause problems.
Smooth and straighten the sock out.
Put your shoe on and make sure the socks are situated on your foot in a comfortable manner.
Lace up your shoes and have at it!
Take the time to remove your shoe and sock during your walk or hike, if you must. It’s common to get little pebbles, dirt and dust in your shoes and socks that create friction problems. Clean them out, and start again. Your feet might enjoy the fresh air! J

Wearing gaters helps alleviate the dirt and pebble problems.

WARNING!If you do elect to wear layer upon layer of socks, go up at least a ½ size in your hiking boots or shoes. You don’t want that puffy, padded sock to get squashed (so long cushy padding!) or make the fit so tight your foot is screaming in pain! And make sure you try the socks on with the pair of shoes/boots you want to buy, while you’re in the store!

Advice you might want to consider, or not—

A friend of mine who walks the Camino de Santiago nearly every year suggests buying a boot or shoe a size to a size-and-a-half larger, to allow for your feet to swell on lengthy mileage days. But I wouldn’t do that. With shoes that much larger, your feet will slop around in them at the beginning of your walk/hike, and you’ll increase the friction and shear forces assaulting your feet. The result? Instability and increased hot spots and blister formation. He also tells people they will definitely get blisters, which might be because of this shoe way-too-large shoe practice.

But your feet will swell, and there is a remedy for that.

Train, train, and train some more!

There’s no substitute for putting in the mileage ahead of time during training, so your feet will widen and toughen up and be prepared for the mileage you’ll be walking. Or you can consider buying larger shoes as you progress on your hike. Evidently some thru-hikers have been known to do this when walking the Appalachian and Pacific Coast Trails—ordering larger sizes to be shipped ahead to a pickup location or actually leaving the trail to shop at suppliers stationed along the route.

Wanna avoid wet feet in rain and are too cheap to buy moisture-wicking socks or expensive rain gear?

As athletic trainers at the University of Wisconsin, (where I was an undergraduate student trainer), it wasn’t unusual for us to be subjected to standing water on the non-draining AstroTurf during spring football training. That was something our cute little white nylon Nike tennies with the red swish couldn’t handle. Porous, they were!

So, rather than tough it out and risk getting sick from standing around for hours (in the cold, wet weather, under the stadium lights) in soaked feet, another female athletic trainer and I started the following uniform craze:

Put sock on.
Put sock-covered foot into a plastic sandwich baggy.
Liberally wrap the top of the baggy (around the ankle) with white athletic tape to create a halfway decent seal and secure the baggy to the sock.
Put baggy and sock-covered foot into your stylish red-swish Nike.
Walk out to the football field and pad up-and-down the sidelines while the team practices.
Squish back to the training room after three hours, remove the shoe, tape, baggy and sock and put on dry shoes.
Clean the dirt and mud from your Nikes, air them out overnight, and do it all again the following day.
Voila! Dry feet (that didn’t freeze or look like prunes)!

Ultramarathon runner John Vonhof says you can do this with recycled bread bags. Haven’t tried that one myself, but it might be worth it to carry a couple of recycled bags along on my pilgrimage. In case I encounter a deluge!

NEXT WEEK: Preventing and treating foot blisters.

Until then, have fun trying new socks, and enjoying your walk and hike more!

Blessings,

Andrea

May you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers (3 John 2).

Photo by Andrea A Owan

Suffering from FOMO? Time to Experience JOMO!

Are you a social media hound? Do you live vicariously through others? Do you suffer from FOMO—the fear of missing out? Without realizing it, have you succumbed to Silicon Valley’s must-be-in-the-know hype and algorithms designed to keep you attached to their social media platforms?

Then it might be time for you to unplug, turn off, scale down, disengage and tune out! It’s time to experience JOMO—the Joy of Missing Out!

The research—

Study after study seems to conclude that our digital device habits are making us physically, emotionally (and often spiritually) sick. Eye muscles, brain re-wiring, neck pain, headaches, shortened attention span, depression and the emergence of the new “tech neck” neck wrinkles are just a few associated ailments.

You’d tend to think it’s teens and college kids who are the sufferers. And they are. But evidently adults—on average—spend four hours a day on their social feeds. Catching up, tuning in, watching, watching, watching and updating.

I think it’s time for all of us to do some self-examination on why we’ve managed to get ourselves hooked on these sites and be ruthless about taking some digital detox time.

Make some changes—

While it may be easier to initiate a new practice on the weekend, I want you to at least be paying more attention to your social media habits, recording your usage time, being mindful of why you’re updating, watching and reading and then trying some of the following tech-free activities, especially when you get the urge to check your social feed on your phone:

Go for a Sunday drive WITHOUT your phone. Or shut it off and throw it in the car trunk. Stop for lunch some place and enjoy a nice, relaxing, lengthy meal without snagging your phone from the car. (Daydreaming really is a lost art. Or chatting with the waitress.)
Set a timer to alert you to when you’ve spent an hour on your social media and then turn it off immediately when the timer dings.
When you feel the urge to open Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram or any of the other sites, take a meditation moment instead. Then make sure you don’t go to the site after the meditation.
Plan for a tech-free vacation and leave your computer, tablet, etc. at home.
Select a tech-free room in your house, where computers, phones, tablets, etc. are off limits. The bedroom would probably be the best place because it would help you get out of the harmful habit of reading emails or the news online just before you switch off the lights to go to bed. You’re sleep will improve. Trust me!
Embark on a connection-free vacation to a WiFi and cell-phone connection-free location. A co-worker of my husband’s says he travels to a special place in Indonesia because there’s no WiFi there, and the company can’t connect with him! Be thinking about where you could go and really leave it all behind.
Stop giving out your email address and phone number to everyone, or every store or organization that asks you for it, so you can receive notice of new offers and special sales. You’ll save money.

Experience the joy of spending some uninterrupted time with yourself, with nature, with others, with your Creator.

Experience the joy of daydreaming again.

Experience the joy of tech-free freedom.

Improve your emotional, physical and spiritual health.

Stop obsessing over what everyone else is saying about the world situation and their lives.

Thousands of generations before us did just fine living tech-free. Really. In many ways they did much better. Maybe it’s time for us to go backward in some areas and defy the tech revolution!

And while you’re reducing your tech and social media time, shut off the television.

There’s certainly not much joying going around on that device.

Share your journey—

If you’ve been able to slay the FOMO, tell us what you did to accomplish it!

And tell me how much you’ve been able to reduce your social media time in a week.

NEXT WEEK: Was Jesus a philosopher?

Until then,

Experience what joys life has to offer you (the ones you’ve been overlooking) when you’re missing out!

Blessings,

Andrea

May you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers (3 John 2).

“No social media” photo by The Arizona Beehive

Post-surgery Recovery Meditation—Part 2

When you’re lying around, getting waited on, with nothing hanging over your head besides recuperating, you have a lot of time to think. About yourself, your life, and your priorities. What’s holding you back from achieving them. And what “priorities” and life habits you should erase from the list or alter. So you live a more balanced life and enjoy life more.

Right now I’m working out how I can keep that relative stress-free thing going after I’ve made a full recovery, which should be the middle of August. I’m hoping I’m on schedule!

Of course, I can’t always have it my way with the stress-free living. I’m a daughter, wife, mother, friend and self-employed writer, fitness pro, chaplain and speaker. Stress and unexpected responsibilities and schedule changes can overtake you like a tsunami in any area of life, and often it happens in more than one area at the same time. (During this time of recovery, I also had my son’s echocardiogram for a heart concern burdening my heart, too, so I did have plenty to worry about, IF I’d chosen to “worry.” Thankfully, the results came back normal.)

My responsibility—

While there’s much I can’t control, there is a lot I can control, a lot I can choose to set aside or say “no” to, and a lot I can take a pass on. Like completely ignore. I don’t always have to be everything to everybody. And I don’t have to feel a responsibility to respond to every inquiry or notice I receive.

Making a deeper examination of that was part of my recovery meditation process.

During my initial recovery stages, I read voraciously, watched movies, and colored. I even studied my on-line business-to-business email-writing course, and sat in on several webinars when I felt strong (and interested enough) to pay attention. One I exited fairly early after I decided it wasn’t worth my time or effort. Time I would never get back in my life. At my age, I need to start getting picky. Actually, at any age you should be.

The deadly, depressing emails—

One thing I started thinking seriously about (and realized I’d become somewhat of a slave to) is all of those emails I have lined up in my inbox. You probably have some of them yourself. The ones with the little red flags or yellow stars highlighting them as emails you wanted to go back and read because when they first arrived in your inbox they grabbed your attention, you just knew they were worth reading, when you have time. You were sure you’d have time to get to them later.

Know what I’m talking about? I was sure those emails would give me some little information nugget to improve my life, improve my business, make me a better or more well-rounded person. Make me happier, or more in-the-know.

Then I noticed how many flagged emails I had in just one email account alone. It’s embarrassing to admit. But here it goes. (Drum roll!)

Twelve hundred seventy-eight flagged emails. Yup. 1278. One thousand, two hundred seventy-eight emails I planned to open to read. That I planned to spend my precious time reading.Time I would never again get back.

And you know what? It’s not gonna happen. Ever. Why? Because I really don’t want to read those emails. If I did, I would have found the time to do it when they first came through.

And I don’t want to take precious time to read them, either. Not all of them, anyway. Not most of them, actually. So I made a decision and developed a plan for those emails and future inbox arrivals. Some of these ideas might work for you too.

The plan—

Go through your list and decide which emails are must-saves, like the airlines tickets, hotel reservations, etc. Move what you can to an email folder, set up for each topic. Learn how to file your emails.
If the email is older than a month, then it gets tossed. Chances are the same email subject will arrive in my inbox again, at which time I can decide if it’s really timely and important for me, or not. (In which case it needs to be immediately deleted.)
For those emails that come from a regular blog I subscribe to that I really find helpful and interesting, I can always just automatically delete the email and go to the sender’s web or blog page to scroll through the recent topics or blog posts I should read.
I can set aside a portion or time block of my day (be intentional on just how much time you’ll set aside) to devote to email and blog post reading. For me, sometimes it’s helpful to read a couple of blog posts or articles on writing early in the morning before I sit down to write. That tends to get me encouraged and motivated. And I always try to start my day with some kind of Bible study or inspirational, faith-based reading.
For those sites that offer a “Week in Review” email, wait until that comes through and then be selective on what you read.
It sounds harsh, but don’t assume that everyone who sends you an email needs a response. It’s time to kill the guilties on this one!
Choose a time of the day (maybe after all of your must-do work is done) to respond to emails from friends. (The same holds true for text messages.) Of course, if they’re emailing you about an urgent need that you can and want to help with, or a prayer request, then it’s usually okay to respond immediately. As long as you don’t allow the conversation to go on and on and on. (Unless you have time, of course.) Family and friends need attention and nurturing, but some are needier than others, and you sometimes do need to be selective on when and how you respond. Always be intentional, thoughtful and purposeful about it.
I’m setting a time to turn the phone off (or set it aside) and shut the computer down every night at least an hour before I go to bed. (This goes along with knowing when to read emails and not let them consume your day.) That way I’m not chained to those emails and reading them. I’ll be able to prepare myself better mentally for bed, relax, unwind and set myself up for a better night’s sleep.

And you know what I figured out after starting to apply this plan? I learned that I can read about three educational emails a day before my brain starts swimming, and I start forgetting the important points of what I read. So I know I need to be choosy. And really learn and remember the important points of what I’m reading. I think that if I can remember, and apply, 2 – 3 good points to my life and work, I’m doing well! (And that may be 2 -3 points a week, not daily!)

Why delete the unread, flagged emails—

While I could just leave the flagged emails sitting in my inbox, and not spend time deleting them, I won’t. Why? Because just seeing those little red flags and gold stars makes me feel guilty. It screams “Obligation!! Important!!” “Must do!” to me. And that triggers stress and irritation. And I want to reduce my stress and irritation as much as possible.

Even though I might have signed up to receive those emails, I don’t need to read all of them. And I don’t want to be reminded of what I didn’t do and what I might (gasp!) have missed. I don’t want to become a slave to my inbox. I’m determined to slay the FOMO that lurks in my brain. That’s something I need to keep meditating on until the FOMO has fizzled away.

It all might be a psychological game right now, but the brain plays games with us. And I need to retrain mine.

How about you?

Question:

How many “I’ll-have-to-go-back-and-read-those-emails” do you have in your inbox? And when are you going to—with a happy and content heart—send them on their way?

How much is your time worth to you? (In the business world, every second or dollar is spent is weighed against a ROI—return on investment. It’s worth weighing in every area of life too.)

As King Solomon wrote in the “Book of Ecclesiastes”:

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:”

NEXT WEEK: Turning FOMO into JOMO!

Until then,

Be ruthless! Like junk mail, learn how to— and be— aggressive about dumping emails!

Blessings,

Andrea

May you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers (3 John 2).

Photo copyright pcworld.com

Post-Surgery Recovery Meditation—Part 1

I’m so glad the doctor wanted me to have light anesthesia for the three-hour surgery. I don’t think I could have knowingly reclined in the chair that long, with him cutting and scraping tissue from the roof of my mouth, using it to make new gum tissue in front of my four bottom teeth. Every once-in-a-while he’d talk to me, and I’d respond. And every once-in-a-while the pain and pressure were severe enough to make me shift around and moan a little. But he said I was a model patient and everything went perfectly. Thank you, Lord!

Post-surgery prescription—

Recovery usually comes with a winding path, and this recovery was no different.

I knew I was going to have lay low—very low—during recovery. I wasn’t allowed to do any strenuous exercise or activity (I finally found out that their definition for “strenuous” was doing anything that raised my blood pressure. (!) I couldn’t bend over—too much pressure on the surgical site and blood flow into the area. I wasn’t to brush my teeth (ach!), or eat hot foods, or chew on anything hard. Since I don’t do well with aspirin or ibuprofen, he sent me home with several packets of the narcotic Vicodin and a prescription for more. I also got a handful of ibuprofen packets, just in case, but I decided to stick to my liquid child ibuprofen, in small amounts.

Dealing with physical post-op pain—

Even though I don’t like taking pain meds, I did take them. People who take their pain meds to stay on top of the pain, rather than waiting for it to ramp up and get out of control, recover better. And I wanted to recover. And sleep enhances healing. And pain meds encourage sleep.

So I tried to follow his instructions to the letter and then some. I alternated acetaminophen and ibuprofen to manage the pain. I used the little ice gel pack (I got my ice!), ten minutes on and ten off, unless I was sleeping, which ended up happening a lot. I stuck to cold liquid foods the first day. (Cold beef broth is surprisingly tasty when it’s one of only several foods you can take in.) Then came the cold cottage cheese, buckets of cold mac and cheese. Then a little goat yogurt. Even though I was allowed to “chew” on soft foods, I didn’t the first week. When I finally did get around to chewing on really soft chicken and quinoa, it was a catastrophe. So away went the chicken and quinoa.

Dealing with the day-to-day recovery—

And so it went. I wasn’t allowed to pull my lip down to inspect his handiwork, but I had to gently swab diluted hydrogen peroxide on the area twice a day, and I could feel the patchwork quilt he’d sewed into the roof of my mouth. Everything I did revolved around what I needed to do to heal. And, for the most part, that ended up being my meditation.

It made all of the difference in the world having a caretaker to rely on. My precious husband stayed home to work and to see to my needs the first week. “Don’t worry about doing anything. You just had major surgery. You need to focus on recovering,” he kept saying. And that made all of the difference in the world too. Knowing I didn’t have to worry about meeting any deadlines, returning any emails, or making sure things got done. (I did text a lot, which was nice since I couldn’t chat on the phone.)

The positive emotional, physical and spiritual effects—

And after the first week of pain and the pallid skin color that comes with illness, I noticed something. The healthy color started returning to my face. I actually looked healthier than I have in some time. The worry lines started softening along with some of my “older looking” features. My eyes looked brighter, happier, even though I didn’t wear a smear of makeup for three weeks.

While lying in bed one day, I realized how happy I was to be able to focus on one thing, and feel stress-free while doing it. I realized how miserable and worn down physically, emotionally and spiritually I can become on just a day-to-day basis, with an over-scheduled and over-committed life. I realized just how much life, and the way we choose to live it, can drain you of energy, happiness and joy.

Recovery comparisons—

All of this made me think of a friend who battled breast cancer some years ago, a young mom of four.

Her husband—a worship leader—had gotten a job at another church, and we didn’t see much of one another, although I knew she was battling cancer. When my husband and I were out to dinner one night, we ran into her. She was going through chemo, had lost her beautiful mane of dark brown silky hair and was wearing a dark brown wig cut into a cute bob.

But her face looked strained and her body exhausted. Way beyond the look of suffering a cancer patient normally shows when undergoing chemo. When I learned she was still working at the bookstore during her treatments, I asked why. Her shoulders slumped, and her eyes looked sad when she responded. “I have to. To keep my medical insurance.”

I felt horrible for her. My friend couldn’t lean into her treatment or cancer recovery, meditate on it, and focus on victory because she had to work. She had to drag herself out of bed everyday to put in her hours just so she could keep getting the treatment she needed. Not only did she have the stress of severe sickness weighing on her heart and chewing away at her body, she had the emotional and physical stress of maintaining a daily work grind.

My friend finished her treatment, had breast reconstruction and seemed to be doing well. Until the cancer returned, and she passed away. She worked through all of it, and I often wonder: How would she have done if she’d been able to focus completely on her health and recovery? If other burdens had not weighed down her heart, soul and body.

I’ve had other friends who’ve battled cancer in much the same way. Although they didn’t have to work, they lived as though they did. Determined to make sure life went on as usual during an unusual time, they pushed and exercised, and tried to muscle through the treatment. And none of the people I’m talking about survived. They may have seemed to be doing okay, but then the cancer returned or metastasized beyond treatment. The one friend told me she returned to cycling training as quickly as she could in order to get the chemo out of her body.

Now I haven’t done any research on it, but I’m wondering if that kind of approach typically leads to that kind of ending. I know it’s important to do things you love and maintain social contact, and family connection during a time of illness, I wonder if, in our haste to pursue normal or not let anything change our course, we don’t deliberately lean into and meditate on healing as much as we should. Nobody likes pain or problems, and we tend to fight and run from them with all of our being. But maybe leaning into them, meditating on them, and embracing them is the best prescription.

There really is a lot to be learned in the course of an illness and recovery. Maybe wrapping our arms wide around it and working to extract everything we can from the event is the best thing we can do to enhance healing.

To consider—

What are you going through right now that you’d be better off leaning into?

NEXT WEEK I’ll talk about several things I learned and took action to correct—to enhance my physical, emotional and spiritual health now, and in the future!

If you join me this Wednesday for Workout Wednesdays, I’ll give you a brief overview of what went right and what went wrong in the exercise department during my initial recovery.

Until then,

Don’t miss a single meditation opportunity in your life!

Blessings,

Andrea

May you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers (3 John 2).

Pre-Surgery Preparation: Prayer and Meditation

I’m having surgery tomorrow morning. Early. Check in time is 6:45 AM, with surgery scheduled for 7:00. I’m not looking forward to it, but who ever really looks forward to having surgery. I’m worried. Okay, more than a little anxious about the pain, since the type of surgery I’m having is rumored to be excruciating.

In an effort to keep my teeth decay-free during this horrid two and a half years of wearing braces, I’ve overzealously brushed and flossed and managed to severely damage the gums around my bottom four front teeth. Because of the gum recession, the bone density of the roots on two of the teeth has already decreased to such a dangerously low point that I am at risk of losing the teeth. Ugh!

Surgery preparations—

Of course there is a mile-long list of things I must do and must not do prior to the procedure. Like: stop all anti-inflammatory meds (like Advil, ibuprofen, etc.) four days prior to surgery so my blood clotting capability isn’t affected; and no concentrated caffeine drinks, like Red Bull. (No problem there.) No strenuous exercise 24 hours before surgery (I should have asked him to define “strenuous.”) And stop food and water intake six hours before.

The process—

He’ll be carving out tissue from the roof of my mouth and making new gum out of it to cover up the exposed roots. To enhance healing, he’ll be drawing my blood and mixing the platelets and stem cells with tissue and applying that to the wound. I won’t be able to apply ice packs anywhere near the surgery site (ice is always my pain treatment go-to) because any pressure to the surgical site can undo the delicate tissue. So much for the hoped-for ice.

Recovery time is six weeks, with the first several days off-limits to chewing, sucking liquids through a straw, (the vacuum can undo the sutures and tissue), or tooth brushing in that area. (I don’t think I’m going to attempt to brush any tooth in my mouth those first several days!) Room temperature liquids and swishing with water will be the norm.

Along with a lot of pain.

And that’s what I’m preparing the most for.

Meditating for mental (and physical) success—

The last thing I want to do is go into the morning exhausted and mentally overwhelmed. So I needed to spend today (the day before surgery) in mental and spiritual preparation for this three-hour, anesthesia-blessed procedure. I’m laying low, resting, doing some last-minute tidying up around the house so I can recover in a clean, dust-free environment.

And I’m spending a lot of time praying.

I’m asking God to prepare my body and mind for this, and to respond well, and joyfully. After all, my concern led to questioning the condition of my teeth, and two dentists recommending the best oral surgeon in town, a guy who uses the latest and greatest procedures to maximize success. And I managed to get this done before being surprised—like when my two front teeth might have ended up in a crisp apple I had just ripped into.

I’m thanking God for going ahead of me to prepare the procedure room, every last bit of equipment and the doctor and his assistant for the surgery. I’m requesting that God guides the doctor’s hands, and the assistant’s. I’m praying the procedure will go better than expected, and faster, with accelerated healing.

I’m also doing a lot of deep breathing exercise because that has the potential to decrease my stress and agitation and improve my immune system. (It’s the breathing in yoga exercises that makes that activity so successful health-wise.) Adding some light stretching will help, since I’ll be stuck in that chair for so long.

And I’m playing some of my favorite praise and worship songs, both high energy and low, to remind myself of God’s presence and promises and to increase my sense of awareness and presence—the state of mind and body posture one assumes when facing intimidating or stressful circumstances.

Overall goal—

In a nutshell, I’m focusing. And I’ll be leaning into the recovery. Resting as much as I need, or my body dictates. Setting aside other distractions. Maintaining a sense of peace and quiet amidst lots (or as much as possible) of smiles and laughter, even if they have to be internal. Doing a lot of general reading, which is a favorite activity I never have enough time for. I’m really looking forward to that!

And I’ll be spending a lot of time with my dogs, gazing into their eyes. Studies have shown that people holding gazes with their dogs showed increases in different hormones, like oxytocin, which is a feel-good hormone. Letting them give you pooch smooches also helps, but I won’t be able to allow them to do that. Too much risk to the graft.

It’s not going to be easy, and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to describe it as fun. But if everything goes according to plan, it won’t have to be as scary or painful or disrupting emotionally, physically or spiritually as it could be.

Reader request—

I would appreciate your prayers. At this point, I’m planning to be away from the blog for two weeks, so please check back around July 9 for the next Mediation Mondays installment.

Until then, thanks for keeping me in your thoughts and prayers, and be thinking about how you can lighten your mental and physical load through planned and structured meditation!

Blessings,

Andrea

May you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers (3 John 2).