The Gratitude Attitude

I think I found a way to dig myself out of the irritable funk I've been in. My angry, pity party has been going on a little long. I've been complaining more than usual. Judging others. Forgetting the great things we have.


It's been over 9 weeks now since the incident that set me off. Jon had a talk with me that I was being curmudgeonly and I agreed.  It was time to pull myself up by my boot straps, get my game face on, and enjoy all I have, which has been my secret to surviving, happily, even when in the worst health imaginable, this whole time.


I call it the gratitude attitude and theorized that being thankful for friends always and the small wonders, being able to walk, stay awake a whole day, warm showers, and fresh fruit, would help me overcome the depression I'd have if I focused on the dark side: what I've lost, what we don't have, etc. etc.


So here's the plan, in article style of course, I need to find someway to get the best of both worlds:

Beat The Blues with the Gratitude Attitude 

If you’ve come to find happiness, start counting your blessings, you’ve found the right place, and now that you found help, keep counting those blessings. Science says it’s good for you.

Science is proving having a gratitude attitude: counting your blessings, looking on the bright side, and overall optimism can revitalize you.

While it may seem like common sense that positive emotions, like gratitude, beget more positive emotions, it’s only been in the last couple years that the study of happiness has seen a surge in popularity.

What’s been discovered is that gratitude is one of humanity's most powerful emotions. It makes you happier and can change your attitude about life, even if it’s dragging yourself out of a funk or helping recover from a divorce, like an emotional reset button.

Robert Emmons, Professor at the University of California, Davis, who pioneered research on the benefits of positive thinking states there are studies showing even pretending to be thankful raises levels of the neurotransmitters associated with pleasure and contentment: serotonin and dopamine, the same commonly chemically copied in  anti-depressants.                                                                                                                        Better than popping a pill, giving thanks is a potent emotion that feeds on itself, much like being victorious, creating a cycle of self-stimulated happiness. Gratitude is the gift that keeps on giving.                                                                                                             Convinced? You should be feeling better all ready with all the good news I’m bringing, but where do you start?                                                                                               1. Cut the complaints. Limit complaints to a certain amount of whines during a set timeframe. For example, give yourself one complaint each morning from getting out of bed to going to lunch. Then work towards getting the gratitude attitude. Eventually stop complaining, replacing whines with happy comments, even if the complaint is there it will be overpowered by the stronger emotion.                                                                       2. Fake It Until You Make It: Prof. Emmons states, “Live as if you feel gratitude and soon the real thing will come.”                                                                                                

3. Remind yourself of things to be grateful for. Keep a log of everything that brings you joy. One major study showed that people who wrote down what they are grateful for felt 25 percent happier after ten weeks than those who did not. They even felt better about their jobs. Another thing to be happy about: studies show logging once a week makes people happier than doing it three times as much.                                                                           

4/5. Make It Visual & Recruit the Family. Create a collage of what you are happiest for, and display it prominently. According to Emmons, a great technique for children is creating a thank-you “tree,” adding post-it note “leaves” every day to acknowledge everything good imaginable, which will also encourage good future behavior too.                     

6. Practice daily acts of gratitude.
When we think of, remember, talk about wonderful and happy moments, we feel uplifted. Keep the feeling by pausing and listing three things you are thankful for and three people to whom you are grateful. If you’re a beginner, it can be done indirectly by finding three things that could be worse.                                             

  7. Be happy in spite of unhappy events
: There are few absolute truths, and one is life isn’t fair. Good thing we can learn to be happy in spite of problems with two steps. First, after an upsetting situation, don’t react. Try to stay calm. Ignore the person. Walk away. Research. Cope however you can without blowing your top. Then, when the urge  to freak out lessens, start listing the things about the situation for which you can feel grateful, even if it’s a lesson learned.                                                                                   

8. Look at your present through the eyes of your future: Your perfect future that is, and imagine only the best, this is your life, your mind, and good creates more good. 

9.Write/Give a Heartfelt Thank You: Spread the joy in a “power thank you.” First, thank whomever specifically for what they did. Next, acknowledge the effort it. Finally, tell them what their actions mean to you. This will help others feel valued and will help you feel better about yourself and life.

Why giving thanks is good for the psyche

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/22/give-thanks-health-psyche-brain-emotion_n_1108590.html

Emmons Lab Media http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/Labs/emmons/PWT/index.cfm?Section=7

How To be Thankful and Improve Your Life. http://www.rd.com/health/how-to-be-thankful-and-improve-your-life/

Gratitude Chases the Blues Away http://www.rd.com/health/gratitude-chases-blues-away/

Dr. Hillary Prescribes "Herbal Gleevac"

Aww Stony, I knew you'd hit on something I've been meaning to talk about.

Yes, I've used and prefer my marinol the old fashion way. I am a full on support of marijauna for medical purposes. I, once, belieed that the "legalize marijauna" movement was just a bunch of hippie stoners looking for a way to protect their favorite pass-time.

Having suffered long and hard, I now know for a fact it relieves pain, anorexia, nausea, and vomiting like no other medication possibly can. It also doesn't have side effects like dyskinesia, which are Parkinson-like twitches that can last for life. I can't take most commercial anti-emetics because they cause dyskineasia.
That side effects is scary as hell.

 I'd like to get high. My severe lung issues: lung fibrosis from radiation and bronchiolitis obliterans (GVHD of the lungs from my allo transplant) won't let me.

I've just started walking up stairs again after years of being unable. I get pneumonia upon pneumothorax. Just a few months ago I was going into respiratoy ditress so badly walking five feet to my care I would wet my pants.

So no smoking for me, which means I need to find a way to eat it and enough of it to do its job.

 Its kind of hard to down brownies to treat not eating, vomiting, etc.

So I've been thinking....
I know, a little scary, that maybe I could turn it into a dipping oil for bread.

 The problem with cooking weed is you need something like oil or butter to extract the active ingredient (THC). If you don't do this your just chewing anyother weed.

Then I could dip bread, which I do eat, into it or pour it onto rice, which is also easy to ingest.

And I'll up the ante by adding herbs to the olive oil.

In the book, "The Anti-Cancer" there is a suggestion for the herbal equivalent of gleevac.

 Gleevac is America's most recent promise drug for cancer patients. Its a chemo therapy pill that allows people to live virtually normal lives with cancers such as leukemia. One writer and editor at Elle magazine was diagnosed with leukemia in her late teens and now in her mid-twenties is looking to having children while taking the drug, but these meds all came from ideas in nature so I'll throw these in:
Parsley, celery, mint, thyme, marjoram, oregano, basil, and rosemary.




I don't know exactly what amounts of which herb will work best. I put most my faith in the parsley, which has shown up time and time again in literature, as well as oregano and thyme.
I'll let you know how it works out.
I can whip this up for next time aka Jan. 10 when I get my medi-port placed and resume treatment.

Thank you everyone for commenting and reading. You remind me why I started writing. I'm excited and hoping I'll have the energy and strength to keep writing. I think that should be my artistic focus and my hobby.

 Last year I didn't feel like myself with the steroids. I felt crazed and confused. I feel like last year was spent in a foggy cold sweat that I'm finally emerging from.

I've been thinking a lot about my past therapis and how they relate to my current state.

I have taken SGN-135, the new"It" drug for hodgers that looks like it may give them a chance to have cancer without disease.

I took it at dana farber in the summer of 2008 during Phase I to establish proper patient dosing. Phase I means never been tested on people. I had a Level 4 reaction. That means a tachy arrhythmias, severe dehydration with electrolyte imbalances, cardiac abnormalities. I had to be spoon fed gaucamole by my sister.

Level Five is Death.

I think it was determined I received the dose for a 300Lb man but that's what happens with trials.  Not all trials offer participants a nice easy ride.

It did send me into remission, which we knewit would, because everything sends me into remission.

 I was a total lab rat and allowed it because I knew it would be great for others in the future.

I used to cry remembering my view of "kill one to save a thousand" when I was a healthy practitioner, a wannabe future researcher, but now I'm thankful for the time it has given me and the ability to help others in the future.

 I think I have access to the very best trials with Alyea at Dana Farber if that's the route I want to take.

And I would want that trial to be for a cancer vaccination.

See, I also know exactly what study I would try to finagle myself into. I have contingency plans upon contingency plans. I was on Plan Y (do everything possible to stay alive) two years ago but it's working out.

My priority is being close to my family and having as normal a life possible here.