Month: February 2015

My teeth and what they have taught me

by Gabriele Conrad, Goonellabah, Australia

My teeth used to really distress me, and visits to the dentist even more so. Not because I was scared, but because I just didn’t get teeth, this part of our body that does not regenerate. It felt like my teeth were aliens in my body and didn’t behave how they should, but ran their own agenda.

  • You start with one filling and then you have more.
  • You keep getting bigger fillings as new bits of decay appear.
  • Bits of a tooth might break off requiring reconstructive work.
  • A tooth comes out, and of course it doesn’t grow back and you get a bridge.
  • Another tooth comes out and you decide you can’t afford the bridge and leave the gap; and also, it is at the back of your mouth. But chewing becomes a bit more difficult and uneven, food can get stuck and the teeth on either side of the gap start leaning across.
  • More teeth come out and you need dentures or decide to have implants.
  • Your gums are not looking that great, they bleed a lot and your teeth are sensitive.
  • You want to have implants but there might be problems with the bones of your jaw.

And so the list goes on.

I found teeth depressing and visits to the dentist a bit of a downer. They do a great job and I haven’t really had any bad experiences at all, but the relentlessness of the deterioration, no matter how slow and well managed, together with the perpetual catch-up and “what’s the bad news?” flavour of each dental visit, never failed to put a dampener on me. Continue reading “My teeth and what they have taught me” →

Cancer – is it bad luck or a blessing in disguise?

by Anne Malatt, Australia 

When we receive a diagnosis of cancer, or hear of it in someone else, our immediate response has often been to say that it is “bad luck.”

In fact, a recent study attributed two thirds of cancer cases to ‘bad luck’. (1)

What is luck, and what does it have to do with cancer?

When something ‘good’ happens, like getting a great job or buying a new car, people tend to say “aren’t you lucky?” And when they do, we can be quick to point out that we worked hard for it, and we deserve it.

Yet, when something ‘bad’ happens, like a diagnosis of cancer, we are not so quick to take the credit for it! We are very willing to call it ‘bad luck’.

So, is it luck, or is it not? Are we responsible, or are we not? And if we are, how can we be responsible for the ‘good’ things, and not the ‘bad’ things?  Continue reading “Cancer – is it bad luck or a blessing in disguise?” →

Heart Failure: a message about love

by Julie Goodhart, human resources, United States.

I was pregnant several years ago and had a healthy baby, who was delivered seven weeks early. The experience of being pregnant and giving birth was difficult, nearly disastrous, and I learned a great deal – and am still learning – from that experience seven years ago.

I was not healthy during my pregnancy, and didn’t realise this fact until I ended up in the hospital at 32 weeks with a mysterious case of cardiomyopathy. By this time, my kidneys were shutting down, I was retaining water in enormous amounts, I could barely breathe due to fluid building up in my lungs, and my heart was enlarged dramatically and could not keep up with what was going on in my body, beating at a constant 150 beats per minute (talk about being racy!).

After several days in the hospital in this condition, I went into heart failure and gave birth by emergency C-section. There was a point during this whole event where the doctors told my husband that either myself or my baby, or both of us, may not make it. Continue reading “Heart Failure: a message about love” →

Breast Cancer – why me?

by Rosanna Bianchini, Practitioner of Universal Medicine Therapies, Evesham, UK

Just recently a girlfriend came to me to let me know she had breast cancer. She has not been the first, nor will she be the last to do so.

The diagnosis of breast cancer would hit any woman hard, and raise in them all kinds of possible questions to try to find the answer to: ‘Why me?’ The response to the news from my friend was no different; she confided that she didn’t know why this was happening to her, that she was not a bad person and, as breast cancer didn’t actually run in her family, she could not understand the seemingly ‘out of the blue’ development of this disease.

These are all very understandable and natural questions to be asking, and one that world statistics beg us also to ask is: ‘Why? What is going on?’

Records show us that we do indeed have every reason to be asking questions. Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women worldwide, with nearly 1.7 million new cases diagnosed in 2012, and it is the most frequently diagnosed cancer among women in 140 of 184 countries worldwide. It now represents one in four of all cancers in women.1 And 9 out of 10 women who get breast cancer do NOT have a family history of the disease.2

Continue reading “Breast Cancer – why me?” →