It is hard to believe that this is the 133rd column that I have written for the Wingham Advance Times. It has become an account of my health issues since November 2017 to the present.
Fifty-four of those columns were published by the Alzheimer’s Society of Huron County. These 54 columns have been put together in a book, written by yours truly, called My Voyage with Dementia. This book is almost finished and will be approximately 170 pages, six inches by nine inches in size, with 1,000 copies printed. It should be finished by Dec. 1.
It tells the story of one person, me, as I fight my way through 54 months of dementia. It took a lot of time to tell my story and I hope that the readers will realize that dementia is not terminal if care is taken and good health habits are followed.
Most of the columns can be found on my blog. You can follow the blog by Googling my name, Bob Murray, and following the link or by Googling the title of the book – My Voyage with Dementia. Comments to the author are appreciated.
In the next few columns I am going to repeat some of the details that are helping me to survive. I have written these columns over almost five years and much of my time was spent watching Netflix movies and series – a great way to fill idle time. Eating while watching TV is dangerous, but we all do it. I believe keeping away from snacks and exercising are necessary to staying healthy.
I have written in previous columns that I receive nearly 35 emails each day. Reviewing, I found that number is actually over 50 emails per day. Ninety per cent of these emails are regarding health issues. Probably 70 per cent of these emails are misinformation (in my opinion) from sales pitches. Whatever. I reviewed them all. From this review, I gained a lot of information that these writers thought about health concerns. The same people were continually selling their advice. Some were very good. I will present in my columns some of the information that impressed me.
A recurrent theme was “what we eat.” Most felt that our eating habits were not nutritious, or did not provide us good nutrition. Statistics indicate that 54 per cent of what we Canadians eat has no nutrition.
I concluded that this was not our fault. The fault lies with those who prepare and sell the food we eat. For example, most of the food is sprayed with toxic pesticides, herbicides and fungicides, as well as colourings to make them look natural. Many foods travel a long way to get into our stores, so I can’t blame the farmers for preserving their products. However, they also add antibiotics in order to kill bacteria. I have a serious autoimmune disorder and I wonder whether these added antibiotics are upsetting the natural balance in my immune system. Just wondering?
The word organics is meant to designate (I think) food products that are grown naturally. That is grown without pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and antibiotics. The answer to this problem is to buy food that has not been processed but has been grown locally by local farmers. One of these days we will begin to see fruits and vegetables grown indoors available at our food stores.
I have a three-foot by six-foot raised garden with a summer cover and a fall and spring plastic cover. I am experimenting with growing vegetables from April right through November. My raised garden is called a VeggiePod (from Lee Valley). I had a great crop of carrots this year. Each year I will experiment with other crops to find which produces the best. One of these days I may buy a small freezer to supplement my small freezer space and to store veggies for the winter. We eat a lot of carrots. Finding healthy food is difficult. I trust the veggies that, I produce. It is my own effort to find healthy products that I can eat. I would love to stop buying the processed snacks that I love so much.
***
Bob Murray is retired from the graphic communication (printing) industry and has been living in Seaforth since 2015. Murray was diagnosed with Dementia in 2013 and works hard to stop the progress of the disease. Follow him on his blog entitled Voyage with Dementia – https://myvoyage553264702.wordpress.com.
