Today isn’t actually my birthday but we did have the cake today. My birthday was Sunday and I would have posted my thoughts on that grand day had I remembered it was my birthday. My sister called at some point to wish me a happy birthday and I said “Whoa. It’s my birthday.”
My dad arrived later and I asked “Wasn’t there something you came over here to tell me?”
He pondered the question, chuckled, and said “Did I miss it again?”
“No, now is your chance.”
You might have guessed that birthdays are not the biggest of events around here. This birthday was different, however. Between writing paragraphs on an article, my mom and I cried our eyes out over what may be my best birthday news ever.
Best birthday present
My mom’s friend has a twelve-year-old son who has out-lived his diagnosis by over ten years. He has a lung defect and had a transplant about six months ago. He had been on the donor list for two years and was close to dying when they heard a lung was available. The possibility of rejection is 50/50 and he did end up rejecting the lung.
His mother sat with him this weekend in the hospital as the machine began to breathe for him more and more. She said “I think it’s time to make a decision.”
At that moment she made her statement, the phone rang and she was told new lungs were on their way from California. Instead of turning off the lung machine and watching her son die, doctors rolled him into a ten-hour surgery. He made it out of surgery successfully at the hour I turned thirty-nine officially (not that the two were related in any way). His chances of the lung working for him are about 50/50. Those are pretty darned good odds when death seemed inevitable hours before.
Mental conflict
As I sat Saturday thinking more about next year’s birthday than this one, I said “You know, I’d look twenty-five if I lost about fourty (fifty?) pounds.” My mom decided that if she lost ten and got a makeover that she would probably look fifty. My mom, by the way, will qualify for all sorts of senior discounts after her birthday this May. We decided that 2008 would be our year to diet. I made that big announcement here not long ago, though I believe my goal was one dress size.
It’s for health, right? You are more likely to get heart disease, diabetes, and who-knows-what-else if you are that word. (I am no longer allowed to write it.)
Sandy Szwarc at Junkfood Science describes a study in the March issue of the American Journal of Public Health. I have not seen the article but I am intrigued by Szwarc’s description. The bottom line is this: it may not be the weight, it may be our attitude about it.
For my part, this is just more reason to get outside and get some air and exercise and not think about it. (Except that I’d really like to look twenty-five when I’m forty next year.)
Get a goat
Folks who read this blog know that I am a raw milk drinker and part-time activist. I wrote the press release for the AB 1735 campaign here in California back in October. I have admitted that there is not a big food science basis for my love of the stuff, but raw milk seems to be a good fit for my body for whatever reason.
Two weeks ago a lawsuit was filed against our local raw dairy (that’s actually my article at The Ethicurean). I’ve said it elsewhere and I’ll say it here: it sure looks like there was a raw milk outbreak in 2006. Whether a suit will be successful is a whole other matter. I hope that whatever the relevant facts are in the case, they rise to the top like cream in a jug of raw milk.
What I would like to see in future outbreaks is information about the outbreak itself. I actually got an outbreak report from injury attorney Bill Marler. Something sure seems wrong about that. There should be more support of the families involved as well at the time of the outbreak. If they are part of the raw milk community and end up in the hospital over pathogenic bacteria, we should support them regardless of the source of the bacteria. I was part of the problem at the time, I admit. But with better information we might actually be able to bring a little bit of humanity into these situations.
I still find it a greater outrage that the state is more concerned about my family drinking raw milk than Koolaid, but it is equally absurd that many people in the raw milk community think a raw milk outbreak can never happen.
In the meantime, the generations above me and below me in this three-generation household are campaigning for a milk goat.
“Let’s clean the leaf piles from last fall first,” seemed like a reasonable response to me.
Buried
I’m buried in reading, writing, and mail. I apologize for all of the unanswered emails. I hope to get to it before I’m forty. I have been working on an article on organic dairy politics for the May issue of Organic Gardening. I have also been reading a lot about E. coli 0157:H7 in light of the lawsuit I mention above.
In the middle of the madness, a beautiful digital copy of the book has arrived in my email inbox and I need to look at it so that I can get it to all of you. The designer is Peter Holm who does many of the books for Chelsea Green.
