I’m back home in Austin after my bday trip. But the trip was about much more than celebrating my annual trip around the sun. It was also a time for me to be by myself and come to grips with my dad’s passing. Everyone goes through grief differently it seems, and for me, I really needed to be completely alone… Read more »
I’ve been grieving the loss of my dad and trying to cope with the sudden gaping hole his passing left in my life. Even though I’m back in Austin right now, I’m going to be leaving on my bday trip in a few days. Honestly, I really wrestled over whether to even go at all. But one of the things… Read more »
There’s been a rather obvious reason why I’ve been so quiet on the blog… and although I think I’m usually really good at being able to bounce back fairly quickly from life’s hard knocks, losing my dad has really thrown me for a loop. I’m not sure what even is normal in this situation. Today is my first day fully… Read more »
I’m sitting here with a gaping hole in my heart, unable to breathe without a crushing pain in my chest. My dad passed away a few days ago. Some fathers are absentee. Some are home every night but are so consumed with work, hobbies, or feel that raising the children is the mother’s job that they might as well be…. Read more »
If you or a loved one has been prescribed hydrochlorothiazide, you may want to be extra vigilant about checking for skin changes. That’s because long-term use of this common diuretic has been previously linked to lip and non-melanoma cancers, but a new study may also extend those increased risks to melanoma. “We have recently shown that hydrochlorothiazide use increases the… Read more »
I generally try to keep an optimistic outlook. I mean, I’m a realist and know that most of the time the world sucks and all that; but I try not to dwell on that too much and look for the bright side. Because I know that if I get too down, it could very quickly spiral into angsty crap that… Read more »
Regular readers of this blog already know that I love to travel and explore new places. And that I made a promise to myself to travel as often as I could once I recovered from the shock of being diagnosed with a rare variant of melanoma, amelanotic nodular melanoma, and the excision to get it cut out. For my birthday… Read more »
In my last post, I mentioned that the FDA has not updated the safety standards for U.S. sunscreens in just about 40 years. In the meantime, Europe, Canada, Japan and Australia have access to innovative sunscreen formulations that do a better job of protecting the skin. Think about it this way, in the U.S. we’re still on mainframe computers using… Read more »
I mentioned a few blog posts ago that the FDA sent out a sternly worded missive about sunscreen pills not being effective. And for once, the moribund agency that seems to allow a number of chemicals into U.S. food and water supplies spoke out against what basically amounts to snake oil. But don’t for a minute think that this agency… Read more »
So my dad was back in the hospital and I ended up booking a last-minute ticket to come back to Ohio to see him. Honestly, I didn’t know what was going to happen: if he would still be in the hospital or if he would be home. Fortunately, he’s home; but I have never seen him so frail. Quite frankly,… Read more »