from MaryJo G
What a beautiful quilt, Rosey.
Love the blue borders. They bring out the applique. You look quite elegant in
your long skirt. Have two but have not worn them yet. Feel like I will trip
and not be elegant at all. On that line, am thinking of taking a balance
class. For 20 years, I swam and now have a chemical allergy to the pools. No
saline ones nearby. We worked on balance in the pool. Have had vertigo twice
and am aware that my balance is a bit off sometimes. This may help.
Two catalogs from the rec centers came today. As a former teacher, the
catalogs for classes are as tempting as candy. Would love to be a student
again. Hope to be a lifetime learner, a good goal. Will start slow, one class
at a time.
Our snow turned to ice, an inch of it when I went out for the mail. Could
not get a box from my mailbox, jammed in tightly. Will call the PO tomorrow.
The carrier who put it in can get it out. Darn, need the meds in it. Also need those boot chains or spikes and will get
some when next out. But, will stay in until the roads are safe. There's
nothing I need enough to risk other drivers who take chances.
Am finding it very hard to live up to my resolutions. Only made two and
the second is difficult. Am eliminating foods that cause inflammation which
should help my pain levels. Important too for cancer patients. The nightshade
family is hard to let go off: tomatoes, peppers and potatoes are staples in my
diet. Need to find some substitutes. And, to see a rhumatologist to learn how important diet is, or rather what is
important to let go of. Some reading says red meat is the worst. Others say
gluten or sugar. Nightshades are lower on the list. Sugar and nightshades are
the hard ones for me. The dietitian I saw was no help at all; she said to eat
mostly veggies but had no data to back up her theory and admitted she'd not
looked into inflammation. Irritating when I made the appointment specifically
for that information.
MaryJo
posted by RoseyP @ 5:58 AM
1 Comments:
There is much to respond to here in Mary Jo's post. I trained at Teacher's College as a young person although during this time I picked up scarlet fever during practice teaching for the third time in my life. That ended any thought of a teaching career. But it is to the inflammatory condition that Mary Jo speaks of that I would like to address. In 1985 I had a severe reaction to anaesthetics while being operated on for a hysterectomy. Prior to that, I had been teaching quilting for nine years in the city of Toronto. During this period of time, the only cloth available for quilters was polyester cotton cloth. I made many visual aids for my classes, quilts for exhibit, on designing quilts for my students to make in class, so I had a continual exposure through my respiratory system to the chemicals in cloth via the vapours from my hot steam iron. After three to four years of teaching, I found myself shaking or trembling at the end of each class. I was not nervous teaching and did not understand what was happening to me. I then began to have reactions to drugs, which I took seldom, to medical testing, for by then I was having digestive issues. Following a very severe reaction in 1985 during and after an operation, my doctor suggested I look into my textiles that I had worked with for so many years. I contacted Jeffery Gutcheon, whom I had met in 1977, who was now a textile converter, and asked him about my quilt cloth. His response: "Cloth is one big chemical bath from beginning to end". Jeff died several years ago unfortunately. Textile converters are not forthcoming about the chemicals they put into cloth which last the lifetime of that cloth and while some can be washed out, most remain in the cloth. When you walk into a quilt shop or clothing store, you can smell those chemicals gassing off. Many quilters do not realize how they have been affected by the chemicals in quilt cloth. Topical issues (skin reactions) can happen but mostly it's internal. Quilters often end up with digestive issues, balance issues, sensitivities to chemicals in the environment. Car exhaust is one that I have great difficulty with and why I live now in the country. Oil heating, gas heating, I cannot tolerate. Paint smells, perfumes, etc. can cause reactions in me. Mary Jo, you have been a longtime quilter, I might hazard to guess that the textiles you've worked with for years, could be an issue for you with inflammation. Few medical doctors know about the chemicals in cloth and what they can do to people who work with textiles over the years. Thus, you may hear "it's all in your head" after a doctor has tried to diagnose or test you with the tools they have. I have Multiple Chemical Sensitivites (MCS). It is a dysregulation of the immune system. I've had it now for 30 years. If you look it up on Wikipedia you will see that they refer to it as a disorder that is mind-based, in other words, idiopathic, of unknown causes and state that it is 'of the mind'. Industry has a vested interest in people not knowing the harmful effects of chemicals on the body. This is lengthy and I apologize for its length but our quilt cloth can and does affect us in ways many of us have no understanding of and we end up with health issues that are chronic.
Rosey (aka Sandy Small Proudfoot, Ontario, Canada, you can find me on the internet)
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