My great-uncle Willie was one of 11 children born into a French Canadian family in a tiny village in Cape Breton in the early 1920s. He joined the Merchant Marine as soon as he was old enough and served on ship. In 1942, he and a few shipmates were discussing the heavy losses occurring in the St. Lawrence Seaway and on convoys across the Atlantic. They, like many other young men, wanted to do more to "stop the Hun", as he told me. So they went to the nearest Armed Forces office and signed up for the regular army or "where ever they needed us". He said a guy came around and was looking for volunteers for a new unit. Eager to get into action, and not knowing the first rule of the Army (never volunteer for anything), Uncle Willie said the next thing he knew he was jumping out of airplanes over Montana.
Turns out Uncle Willie became a member of the 1st Special Service Forces, a joint US-Canada commando unit who came to be known by the Germans as the Black Devils. they were trained in a variety of areas, including hand to hand fighting, stealth maneuvers, mountaneering and demolitions.
Willie, like his siblings, was small and wiry, with dark coloring. Oh, and very handsome. He was fluent in French as it was his mother tongue and I can only imagine that was a bonus for being parachuted into occupied France.
I don't know how many jumps he made, but I do know that he was taken prisoner at least twice, but managed to make an escape. I asked him once if he captured any Germans and he said only two. "And one of them was drunk", he said. I don't know if I believe any or all of what he told me. I asked him about injuries, too. He told me about a grenade being lobbed into a group of them and they all hit the dirt as it was exploding. He got up afterwards and had a slightly sore nose, but he thought it was from diving face first into the dirt. About a month later he went to the Army doctor because his nose was really sore. The doc looked at it and felt it. Then he worked out a piece of shrapnel that had been embedded since the grenade explosion. I asked him if he saved it and he said no, but he wished he had.
After the Devil's Brigade, Willie stayed in the Canadian Armed Forces. He was sent to Brandon, Manitoba, where he was a physical education instructor and where at the age of 30 he had a stroke. He was married by that time and had a young daughter and all of a sudden he couldn't walk or talk. He amazingly recovered 100%, I imagine because of his fitness level and sheer stubborness.
Sometime in the 60s or 70s Uncle Willie retired from the Armed Forces and started a new life selling insurance in his home province. Every time I saw him I was struck at how regimented his life seemed to be. I guess he was used to routine and liked it that way. But he was a very gentle soul. And always dressed very nicely. I remember he wore a gold chain bracelet that was such a contrast to his dark colouring and as a child I was amazed at how clean his hands always were. I also thought he was extraordinarily handsome. So did my mother, she tells me. In fact when she was a little girl she used to want to marry him when she grew up. An she told him that, too.
His wife passed away about 10 years ago and he moved into a senior's complex where he lived on his own until he had a car accident 3 years later. He wasn't injured too badly; it was determined he had a TIA, a mini-sroke. And he had probably been having them for some time. He didn't want to, but he eventually moved into a nursing home.
About three years ago, I went to visit family in Cape Breton and called Uncle Willie to see if he wanted to take a drive to the old homestead one afternoon. I went to the nursing home at 9 AM to pick him up and he was rarin' to go. Off we went, and he had brought a pair of binoculars so we stopped from time to time to take in the spectacular views. We went by the old homestead and had lunch at a local diner. Willie asked if we could stop at the Legion Hall. Of course! So in we went and he told me stories about some of the young men from the village whose pictures were on the walls. Of course the pictures were of the men who hadn't returned. It was sad, but a good day.
Uncle Willie died a year ago at the age of 85. He was still very handsome.
When I was diagnosed with MS I asked my docs about supplements or a specific diet that might help. I was told that the typical low fat high, fiber route was the way to go, that there was little in the scientific literature to support one diet or another. My family doc recommended that I use sunflower seed oil when cooking, as that oil might aid with the regrowth of myelin that had been destroyed. As far as other supplements and vitamins go, I sometimes take vitamin D, calcium and magnesium, as I know for a fact I don't get enough of those in my regular diet and living in the Northern hemisphere I am robbed of any helpful sunlight for several months of the year. I also take fish oil and Vitamin C, only during the winter.
I used to go for massage therapy on a fairly regular basis, as we have two schools in my city that offer "neuro clinics" conducted by students, so they're inexpensive. And the students are supervised. I stopped going when I felt the benefit for me was no longer what it used to be. I will go from time to time as the need arises. I am also embarking on a regime of yoga to supplement my biking as exercise.
I am not a proponent of CAM, complimentary and alternative medicine, as there has not been enough scientific study of these methods of treatment. (Please don't send me links to "studies" by people or companies that have investigated their own product. They are not unbiased.) But, if you have a large study conducted by a reputable organization or institution, with a large sample size, large control group, and reproducable results, then let's talk. It's not that I don't believe that some of these treatments have merit. It just hasn't been demonstrated yet. I would be the first one to jump on the bandwagon if something worked. If you use CAMs and they work for you, then good. For you.
Today, I read an article from Wired magazine. In it, the author details plans the U.S. Army has of offering money to researchers who study alternative therapies and treatments for trauma spectrum disorders including Traumatic Brain Injury and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I am excited about this. Why? Well, first of all, the Defense Department "is dedicated to supporting evidence-based approaches to medical treatment and wants to support the use of alternative therapies if they are proven efficacious," notes a recently-issued request for proposals. One way or another the U. S. Army may be able to put to rest claims of CAM success or they may disprove those claims. What is the Army's bias? They want their personnel to be treated with something that works and possibly to be put back in an active role. They are willing to spend the money to find out if something works, whether it's transcendental meditation or art therapy or nutritional supplements to improve cognitive functioning.
Secondly, medical science progresses in spurts, and we are at the beginning of another spurt with the war in Iraq, the conflict in Afghanistan, and the numerous other fights going on these days. Every time there is a major conflict on this planet we find new ways of injuring each other. As a result, military docs are on the forefront of treating the "new" casualties. The treatments they devise get passed along to the general public. After World War 1, the field of plastic surgery progressed very quickly. Men were returning from war, missing huge parts of their faces or bodies. As a result of the wounds that surgeons were facing, they developed new techniques of repair for the soldiers that were then applied to civilians. The docs fixed 'em, or tried to, then we civilians reaped the benefits.
What benefits could there be for people like me, with MS? In the past, the study of the effects of injury has greatly increased our knowledge of how a body part is supposed to work. Traumatic brain injuries of soldiers may give us more insight into how our brain recovers and rewires, which is directly related to MS, stroke, and other neurological conditions. Unknowingly, soldiers will be contributing to our wealth of knowledge about function. And they will also contribute to our knowledge of treatment of dysfunction.
The Army will be allocating $4 million for these studies. In the grand scheme of things, that's not a lot. But let's say 20 studies are approved and out of those 20, 3 are found to be quite promising. Those 3 would then be investigated further and so on. Perhaps the Army will discover a type of effective treatment previously dismissed because of inadequate research. I look forward to their findings, because we civilians will be the lucky recipients of the results. After the soldiers, of course.
S.
The image at the top of this post is the insignia of 1st Special Service Force, aka the Devil's Brigade, a joint US-Canada commando unit during WW2. My Uncle Willie was a member of this unit. He also suffered a stroke after the war while he was an army phys ed instructor. He recovered completely and only passed away last year at the age of 85. I need to post a blog on him alone one of these days.
Cute, isn't he? Lol.....I wish.
Before I started school, I begged my parents to teach me to read. They wouldn't. They taught me all the letters and numbers as required, but they wouldn't teach me to read. I was desperate to learn. The school of thought at that time, was not to teach your kids to read before they went to school as they would end up ahead of their peers and that would lead to grade skipping and that would lead to social problems etc. So I was told, "You'll learn to read when you start school". Of course I was eager to start.
My first day of school I was pretty excited. Today was the day I was going to learn to read. I came home after school very upset. I declared that I wasn't going back the next day. My mom asked why. "Because they didn't teach me how to read", was my reply. I was very annoyed.
It should not have been a surprise to my parents that I was so angry. After all, when trying to teach me how to tell time (at the age of 3), I could not be convinced that the part of the clock with the numbers on it was called the "face" of the clock. "That's not a face!!" And when they weren't looking, in my frustration, I took the clock apart, took the cardboard face off it, and tore it into little pieces. I can't imagine why my parents didn't have me in therapy fearing their darling little girl (and I was ) wasn't going to be a homicidal maniac.
Back to learning how to read. Somehow my mother convinced me to go back to school the next day. Of course I soaked it up like the little sponge I was. Pretty soon I had read all of the books in the class and was going to the school library by myself to get more. One day I found a shelf containing Babar the Elephant books. Wow! I had heard other kids talk about these books and the character so I was pretty excited. I took one off the shelf and opened it up. But I couldn't read it!! It wasn't printed in type like other books. The type was in script. Long hand!! I took the book to the librarian and asked her why the book was like that. She didn't really have an answer for me except to say that those books were for older students. "You mean they can read this?" I asked, incredulous that anyone could make out words in what appeared to be scribbling." What grade do I have to be in to read this?" I asked. "Grade 3 or 4"' she told me. I was beyond taking my frustration out on inanimate objects, so instead of tearing the book into little pieces, I carefully put it back where I got it and vowed to myself that even when I did learn how to read cursive writing I would NEVER read a Babar the Elephant book. Ever. How DARE they put a book in the library that I couldn't read. It wasn't that I wasn't allowed. But it had been deliberately set in a type that I wasn't going to be taught until 2 or 3 years later. Why would they want to put that type of a book in the library if half the student population couldn't read it? I didn't understand. It was like putting a bowl of candy in front of a child and saying they could have some in 2 or 3 years, but not before.
Fast forward to grade 10. After struggling with absolute idiots for classmates, with a few exceptions, for two years in junior high and daily verbal and mental abuse (and the occasional slap) from bullies at school, I was in high school with a select few classmates in Advanced Math, English, and History. Finally, I could get back to what I enjoyed about school-learning. And with other students who wanted to learn, rather than goof off. But I hit a brick wall in math for the first time in my life. For two months I laboured over that subject, just not getting it. I was frustrated. My parents were frustrated. My teacher, Mr. Lyne, was frustrated (more on him in another post as he was and still is one of the best teachers I ever had). And then one day at school, Mr. Lyne was at the front of the class, explaining something when suddenly the entire room lit up with the light bulb that turned on over my head. He stopped mid sentence when he saw the smoke coming out of my ears and my mouth twitching in anticipation of blurting out the rest of the explanation. I still remember him bending slightly at the waist towards me, encouraging me to speak, and the smile on his face getting wider and wider as I did. When I was done, he and the other students in class cheered. I was thrilled beyond belief. It was like I had just discovered a cure for cancer. I finally got it! I loved that feeling, and it propelled me to learn more to get that feeling over and over again.
Last year, the Wookie and I were talking about Quantum Physics. Really. Actually, the Wookie was trying to explain it to me, or at least one aspect of it. I was following pretty closely, I thought, but didn't reach the same conclusion as he did. We checked something out on the net, a demonstration that came out the way he said it would. "But it shouldn't do that!!" I exclaimed in my naive way of believing in the basic laws of physics as I understood them. "But it does", was his reply. "But it shouldn't!!" was my brilliant response. "That's just so wrong!!" I insisted, much like my friend Lana said when we went to see The Ring and the little you-know-who did you-know-what(I don't want to spoil the ending if you haven't seen the movie). There was a shaking of the earth as my understanding of the laws of physics was completely shattered. I am still frustrated with my apparent inability to understand quantum physics and time travel (I insist you can't time travel).
Over the years I have continued to read and learn and get frustrated. To this day, I have never read a Babar the Elephant book, even though they are now printed with regular type - I checked. But I have come to accept that there are things I will never come to understand. Like leg warmers as fashion. Like Quantum Physics. Or World Wars and genocides. Or multiple sclerosis. Believe me, for the past ten years I have been reading and studying and asking questions. Yes, "We're working on it" is getting pretty tiresome to hear, and yes, I'm getting really frustrated, like you probably. What do I do? Tear something up? Punch a hole in the wall? Refuse to participate in something? This is one situation over which I have little control. So I give over control to the doctors and scientists who are working on the problem. And I offer my body to be poked and prodded and scanned and my PR skills to raise awareness and money for the cause.
Next Monday I will be meeting with my neuro, Dr. Murray, and one of the clinic nurses, Judith, to review my MRIs from the study I've been in for 10 years. One of the questions I will be asking the good doctor is "Are you frustrated, too?"
S.
When I was very little, my mother would take me to parks to play. One day, I ate an ant. I just picked it up and popped it in my mouth. My mother was horrified! What if I got sick? So she ate one, too. If I got sick, then she would get sick as well and be able to tell a doctor what had happened.
Of course, neither of us got sick.
I recall a few years later my dad and I out walking around the neighbourhood. We came across an ant hill and dad and I bent down to take a look. Little ants going about their business. Dad said "Watch this" and he let a big gob of spit fall from his lips onto the opening of the ant hill. They went nuts! "They think it's raining" Dad said "so they're trying to get everyone back inside".
My dad's father, my grandfather Frank, was a lover of nature. He'd sit in his swinging couch out in the tiny backyard of his house and watch spiders and bugs of all sorts. I can honestly say I was not fond of spiders, still get a little creeped out by the bigger hairier ones, but I would sit with him and I did learn how they went about their business, gruesome as it is.
The first incident demonstrates an early attempt at replicating results from an experiment. Not that that's how my mom or I saw it, but in retrospect, that's what it was. The next incident showed another experiment that was repeated many times over the years, with identical results. And the last scenario was simple observation, again repeated over the years.
I continue to be fascinated by creepy crawlies, no doubt in part to my early education in the scientific method and the results obtained from those experiments. I have handled all sorts of creatures in the wild, including bees, with no fear, and only a healthy respect for stingers and possible bites. I have never been stung or bitten. I suspect that's only due to luck, not that I'm a sort of entymological Dr. Dolittle.
I pick up worms in the parking lot and put them somewhere safer. I catch spiders and other critters in my apartment (not often) and release them to the outdoors. A month ago, I found a flour beetle larva, in my rice (so maybe it's a rice beetle larva), and put it in my bug container which has a couple of magnifying windows on it. I forgot all about it until yesterday. I took the top off the container and prodded the little thing. It began moving so I put a little flour in there with it and am hoping it becomes an adult beetle. 
I have a bug kit I take with me when I'm on the bike. It has a number of baggies and a couple of glass jars in it for specimens and a little fish net to catch the elusive ones. "Chance favours the prepared mind". Of course, Louis Pasteur wasn't thinking about collecting bugs when he said that, but it applies.
I prefer to find and take home intact dead creatures, though I have been known to put living ones in the deep freeze for a couple of days to put them to sleep. Last summer, the Wookie and I went to a beach about a half hour from where I live. We left our lunch and towels on the beach and went for a long walk. At one point I had no less than 3 species of long horned beetle on my hand and a gorgeous (non-stinging) wasp. I managed to keep all four of these creatures crawling on my hands until we made it back to our towels. While rooting around for baggies, one of the beetles and the wasp flew away, but I still managed to take two of them home.
I have been known to go to a local gas station late in the evening with a bigger net and baggies. There are some pretty big moths and other winged wonders that hang around the lights and if I'm lucky will sometimes find intact dead ones around the pumps.
"Then what?" you might ask. They go in the deep freeze. And after a couple of days I take 'em out, thaw them, and then mount them. No stale cardboard and pins for my bugs though. I put 'em in clocks, watches, or wooden shadow boxes. It's more artistic. Science and art together.
S.
No, that's not a typo in the title. It's just a little self- and cross-promotion. You can listen to me on this here interweeb thingy by clicking on the link to the right that says Where I Work. (Or just click here)Then click on listen live and I'm there Monday -Friday 10 AM-3PM Atlantic time. And on some holidays and Saturday afternoons you can also catch me on-air. Cool, eh?
And on Wednesdays, Charles of msbpodcast.com kindly allows me to read one of my past posts on his show.
S.
