Ensure and Sickle Cell

The past two years have been the hardest of my life, medically speaking. I’ve dealt with one issue after another. Over the past two years, I’ve dropped from 125lbs to 100lbs. Depression has certainly played a roll in my weight loss. Having a desire to eat, and craving any kind of food, has been a big challenge. The past year, I’ve been eating only because I knew I had to, not because I was hungry or wanted to eat.

Preparing to have two hip surgeries in the near future, weighing only a hundred pounds seriously concerns me. So I began looking online for something I could eat or drink to help put some weight on. One of the products I came upon and have been using is, “Ensure.”

Ensure is a nutritional drink. Hospitals often provide it to help supplement a nutritional diet; if you can call hospital food nutritional; or food for that matter. Ensure is often given to senior citizens; by that I mean, sick old people. That idea might discourage you from wanting to drink it; but it shouldn't, Ensure is a great product.

If you follow the Ensure link provided, you can see they offer six different drinks. Some focus on improving muscle health, nutrition, or weight gain. Wanting to get as many extra calories in me as possible, I began drinking Ensure Plus about seven days ago. Ensure Plus has 350 calories. I’ve been drinking it twice a day.

Two days after I began drinking it, I noticed a significant improvement in how I felt. I had more energy, I felt more alert, and most importantly, I started to have an actual appetite. In addition to the extra calories, Ensure provides twenty-four vitamins and minerals.

I think, because I hadn’t been eating as I should, that I may have been malnourished a bit. Since Ensure is helping me to get nutritionally balanced, and is providing extra calories, I’ve felt like eating and have been willing to do so rather than forcing myself to eat. Though it’s only been seven days since I began drinking Ensure, I have already put on two pounds. Not to mention the fact that I feel SO MUCH better.

Many people with Sickle Cell struggle with their weight. For anybody who has problems putting on the pounds—a problem most people would kill for—I highly recommend drinking Ensure. It comes in different flavors. I prefer chocolate; not that I’m prejudice against vanilla, I just prefer chocolate. I’m talking about food, of course.

Hopefully, by drinking it each day, I can continue putting some weight back on. I am totally, sold on Ensure.

"The Calm Below"

The ocean so deep.
Above a tempest rages.
Mountains of water crash
   with thunderous roar.
Within the water below,
There is stillness and tranquility.

“The Calm Storm” - October 27, 1997

A calm still blue pond;
Alone unsheltered,
Quiet, motionless, and serene.

Black clouds roll in.
A lone raid drop falls
Rippling across the calm blue,
Slowly vanishing.

Tumultuous storm.
Sky of blackness,
Bombarding shower falls.

Still water replaced
By raging waves;
Trembling, crashing
Violent.

Thunder cracks.
Lightening strikes.
Fierce winds.

A new sun rises chasing
Darkness into it’s
Hiding place.
The winds calm.
The fiery watery darts cease.
Clouds withdraw.

Rippled waves vanish
Into a calm lone
Water body.

Sickle Cells Can Kill Tumors?!

I recently came across the following article: Sickle Blood Cells Now Being Used to Kill Tumors. It is VERY interesting. I encourage you to read it.

One of the benefits of having Sickle Cell Disease is that it gives us a greater resistance against Malaria. I once thought that Sickle Cell Anemia made me immune to Malaria. As I did more research, however, I learned that I only have a greater resistance against it.

Now it seems as though sickle cells can kill various kinds of cancer! That is, astounding, amazing, wonderful, awesome, and a laundry list of other powerful adjectives. The idea that the abnormal red blood cells that have caused so much grief in my life may be able to benefit people who are fighting cancer....somehow it makes me feel almost proud to have Sickle Cell Disease. Not that I have ever been ashamed of my illness, because that's never been the case. But this....it's difficult to put into words how reading that article made me feel.

Doctors, Please Don't Ask Me....

It's a doctors job to ask all kinds of medical questions. As far as I can remember, there is only one question that I never want a medical professional to ask me: "So, how long have you had Sickle Cell?"

I vividly recall an ER doctor asking me that. I was stunned, and my response wasn't a positive one, "My whole life!"

"Oh, no, I meant, how old were you when you were diagnosed?"

"I pray that is what you meant," was my response. I felt like asking, "I don't know, how long have you been white? I'm guessing, your whole life!" I used restraint.

When a trained medical professional, a doctor no less, asks, "how long have you had Sickle Cell," it doesn't inspire much confidence in that person's expertise. So, to any and all persons reading this who may work in the field of medicine, please take my advice, and never ask a Sickle Cell patient that question.

Sickle Cell Foot Ulcers: Using Manuka Honey

I had to write about how amazed I am with the benefits of honey. The ulcer on the arch of my foot is entirely healed! I began using Manuka honey on it very early on. In less than two months time, it healed more thoroughly than any of my other wounds have, and in a shorter period of time. Sadly, the wound on my arch expanded to the bottom of my foot. The pain from that wound has not allowed me to use honey on it. However, the ulcer on my heel is also healing at an accelerated pace.

I haven’t been able to use honey for the entire duration of the wound on my heel. For the first several weeks, I was able to use Manuka honey; but after, that I had to shift to Silver Sulfadiazine Cream. In spite of stopping the use of honey, I feel it helped reduce how badly the ulcer became.

For anybody who struggles with foot or leg ulcers, I HIGHLY recommend using Manuka Honey, or MEDIHONEY, on them for as long as you can tolerate using it. My use of this product over the past month has...made me sweet on honey. Though admitted, I’ve always been sweet as honey.

Coping with Sickle Cell: Benefits of Writing

As I’ve stated in other posts, I recently learned that I need to have both my hips replaced. I have to wait, however, until my foot ulcers heal before I can have my first surgery. To be honest, I first felt a great amount of fear about the idea of needing those surgeries. I knew it was going to be several months before I would be healed enough to have my first surgery. I also knew that I couldn’t sit around those many months waiting in fear. I had to redirect my thoughts and put my focus on to something else.

For as long as I can remember, writing has been my best coping strategy. There is a reason why I have over fifty volumes of journals, have written two hundred plus poems, several stories, and this blog. It has been the salvation of my mental health. No matter what was bothering me, no matter how angry, or upset I may be, I’ve always been able to write a poem, or in my journal, and instantly feel better. I have also written two novel length fictional stories. Both were written during a time of great emotional stress. They are something I wrote simply to take my mind off the problem I was dealing with at the time. 

To remove myself from my anxieties about the condition of my hips, and the arrival of two new ulcers, I decided to throw myself into a new writing project. For the past several months I’ve been working on a new story, and I have to say—not to toot my own horn or anything thing—but that was a very wise decision to make.

As I’ve directed my thoughts onto this project, it’s allowed me to come to terms with the fears I previously had about the surgeries. The stress I felt is gone. I’m actually at peace about it, and—this is something I never thought I’d say—I’m looking forward to have the surgeries. I’m looking forward to not having constant pain in my hips; to being able to walk without the use of a walker; and move around normally.

Though writing isn’t the only method I use to help manage my stress and fill the mind-numbing months of monotony my body has forced upon me as of late. But it is the one I rely upon the most. My point is not to tease you about what it is that I’m writing about, but to show how important it is to find healthy coping strategies of your own.