Connie's Corner

Good once, bad now...

I had my stitches out yesterday and all the margins are clear on my path report. Next checkup, May 15th.

Getting baked at the beach, back in the 1950's, was a popular pasttime. Little did we know forty or fifty years later, melanomas might pop up. Even after reading the perils of a sunburn, I and many others gave it little attention. Remember that cute little girl with the tan and the dog pulling down the back of her pants exposing white skin (Coppertone). What a horror to have white skin, right? But who wants melanomas, wrinkles, and skin cancers? Not a lesson to be learned through experience.

It seems it was the same way with cigarettes. When my mom was young, there were no tv's or ads of people with holes in their throats warning against the consequences of smoking. She was bombarded with Marlboro Man billboards,actors puffing away on the big screen, and print ads of Kools in Look Magazine. How cool was that name? Not. At 48 my mom was diagnosed with lung cancer. She was gone before she celebrated her 50th birthday.

I could write about my Jim's life which followed along the same path (not sunburn or smoking, though), but my fingers do not want to type those words yet

How easily we can be fooled and sucked into doing things that turn out to be very, very bad for us. All this doom and gloom thinking has made me look at some things I am doing that are most likely very bad for me. As a starter, I have given up eating meat. I don't think I need all those growth hormones and antibiotics being fed to livestock purposely for my consumption. And I do not think anything should have to die for me to live.

At first I wondered if I would get enough protein (about 40 grams per day for my age) so I kept track for a few days. Even without tofu, which I cannot bring myself to eat, I found it very difficult to NOT get my quota. I love all kinds of beans, cheeses, and have eaten an egg almost every day forever. So, when eating meat, I was probably eating too much protein (which is bad for my kidneys). Vegetarianism seems an easy do; vegan...not so sure.

If anyone has some tips for me, please share....

until next time....c