Friday, October 31, 2014

Managing Stress

All the brain tumor and stroke victims I know are grappling with stressful issues. These are not “I can’t balance my checkbook” issues, they’re issues like, “I’m prone to seizures” or “I just found out that my Mom/wife/college friend has a brain tumor.”

From personal experience, I believe that the amount of stress you or your loved ones have is geometrically proportional to the “Grade level” of the tumor. So, to my way of thinking, that means if you have an Grade II tumor, it is four times as stressful as a Grade I. A Grade III tumor is nine times as stressful, and so on. Call it the Kerastas “Oh Shit” scale, or “KOS” scale for short.

So what can we do besides running around screaming and kicking things and curling up into a little ball while sucking our thumb and waiting for our chemo, radiation, surgery, or some intriguing herbal solution to solve everything?

Unfortunately the “waiting” bit can be almost as mentally traumatic as the treatments, which is why I’m sharing this link from a recent Chicago Tribune article entitled “Nip illness in the bud by de-stressing.” http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/health/la-he-immune-20141004-story.html

Yes, there’s nothing in this article about seizures, strokes or brain tumors I to IV. On the other hand, anything we can do to “de-stress” has, in my opinion, got to be helpful.

If you have other ideas or have done something that works, let me know.

John

PS – Yes, I’ve already heard from the folks in Colorado.

Copyright: <a href='http://www.123rf.com/profile_yanlev'>yanlev / 123RF Stock Photo</a>

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