My dream – a ten year plan

It is the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr’s death, may he rest in peace. My dream is simple – promoting an equal opportunity for all of us to life, liberty, and the ability to pursue happiness. During my fifteen years working with families it became clear over the years that a larger percentage of parents and their children were having to cope with more severe health issues, both acute, short-term, and chronic, long-term, health issues whether due to infection, cancer, autoimmune, or other illnesses, or birth defects or issues related to being born prematurely.

My own health has always been not great or at least not as good as what seemed normal for my peer group, from childhood, so I have always valued health and knew that you can’t just get it back from a prescription or visit to the doctor’s office. So sharing health information with others has always been important to me and I appreciated my job for both the opportunity to share with others but also to learn from others about the strategies that helped them or their families to cope with I’ll health or to maintain good health – and I passed forward the helpful advice when it was confirmed in research fact checking and seemed appropriate to share.

In more recent years my health has improved in some ways but overall the diagnosis that I received is not good. A few year’s ago this was made clear to me when a life insurance agent quoted a policy for me based on their estimate for my expected lifespan at 62 years old. This year I turned 52 , so any hope I have to share health information needs to be based on that ten year estimate, while I am also working on beating those odds. I didn’t buy the policy but in my family living to 80 or 90 or 104 is the norm. Only one of my grandparents passed away in their 50s or 60s. So my work on healthy bean soup or healthy cookies is for my own health and I share the information in case it might be helpful for other’s use in their equal opportunity pursuit of life, library and happiness. We don’t all have equal opportunities to clean air, water, and adequate food, and increased stress levels can also make maintaining health more difficult so any help I received is greatly appreciated and thanks is inadequate. The ten year plan is flexible, I do what I can as I learn and have time and resources to share information, and the age 62 estimate is based on standard medical care. I have already done better than standard with my dietary approach to health as I only needed less than two months supply of the potentially livet damaging medication that is one of the standard ones prescribed for my diagnosis. I’ve been in remission ever since – but with a few additional health issues that I’ve coped with and a significantly restricted diet from typical. So easy would not be a good description but worth it would be.

Hopefully my flexible ten year plan will extend into a twenty year plan, and a thirty, forty, and fifty year plan, and maybe I will dance at my hundred year birthday like my grandmother, but maybe isn’t as solid as today- today I take care of my health and I wish condolences to the surviving family and friends of Martin Luther King Jr.. He did get the opportunity to dance at his hundredth birthday but maybe some of his family dance at their own in his memory.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. – Martin Luther King, Jr..

The sculpture of Martin Luther King Jr. and quote are part of the Henry J Kaiser Memorial Park, see more images and information about the artist and sculpture park in this post: https://transcendingsquare.com/2018/02/13/inspiring-words-about-peace-kaiser-permanente-memorial/

Disclosure: This information is being provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of Fair Use. While I am a Registered Dietitian it is not intended to provide individualized health care guidance. Please seek an individual health care professional for individualized health care guidance. Thanks.