I chose Nancy Reagan as one of the most inspirational women in my life.  I‘m sure most of you know her as the former First Lady of the 40th president of the United States, but how many of you remember her as the “Just Say No” lady?

Born in New York City as Anne Francis Robbins, “Nancy”, as her mother called her, was adopted at age 14 by her step-father, Dr. Loyal Davis, a neurosurgeon. Nancy Davis followed in her mother’s footsteps eventually becoming an actress. Nancy graduated from Smith College in Massachusetts where she received her bachelor’s degree in dramatic arts. Nancy worked as a nurse’s aide in Chicago and ironically, a few years later, moved to Hollywood to star in eleven feature films called “The Doctor and the Girl”. It was in Hollywood that Nancy met and married her husband, Ronald Reagan, then a struggling actor. In 1956, four years after Nancy and Ronald were married, Nancy left her Hollywood career to become a full time wife and mother of two.

In 1966, Ronald was elected governor of California. It was during his two terms as governor that Nancy began fundraising for several causes. As the First Lady of California, Nancy gave all of her income to the National League of Families of American POW-MIA. She became even more passionate about promoting the “Foster Grandparent Program”, first in California, and eventually, in every state. This program brought handicapped kids together with the elderly as a form of group therapy.

In 1982, one year after her husband was sworn into the office of the President of the United States, Nancy began promoting “drug education and prevention programs for children and young adults”. When visiting an elementary school in California, Nancy asked the kids what they would say if someone offered them drugs, their answer “Just Say No” became the anti-drug catch phrase of the decade. It sparked the organization of many elementary, middle and high school programs in which kids made a promise NOT to try drugs. Nancy took her anti-drug campaign to the White House and eventually to the international level.

President Reagan signed an anti-drug abuse bill called the “National Crusade for a Drug free America” and in 1986, it became law. Two years later, Nancy Davis Reagan addressed the U.N. General Assembly, (the first time for any First Lady), concerning international interception of illegal drugs and trafficking laws. Every year during the eight years her husband was in office as President, Nancy was voted as one of the ten most admired women.

In 1989, the Nancy Reagan Foundation merged with the Best Foundation for a Drug-free Tomorrow to form the Nancy Reagan Afterschool Program promoting youth drug prevention and life-skills programs.

In 1987, the year her mother died, Nancy was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her decision to have a mastectomy resulted in severe criticism.

In 1994, when Nancy’s beloved husband, Ronald was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, the Ronald & Nancy Reagan Research Institute in Chicago to fund research for the disease was started. For the next ten years, Nancy’s full-time devotion to her husband as his primary caregiver until his death in 2004 limited her public activities to the Los Angeles area as a supporter of the National Alzheimer’s Association.

The reason that I’ve chosen Nancy Reagan as the woman that inspires me the most is obvious. Many women can relate to her. She’s the genuine article. Look from where she came. She was an only child of divorced parents, raised by her aunt while her single mother worked. She searched for her biological father as a teen before she was adopted by her step-father. Look at what she’s accomplished. She graduated from college in the 30’s followed by a successful career in the 40’s and 50’s when the norm for a woman was to stay at home and raise a family. First as California’s First Lady and then again as our nation’s First Lady, Nancy Reagan raised awareness and funds, as well as promoting and supporting several non-profit organizations. She was responsible for getting a law passed, then took her drug awareness above and beyond by addressing the U.N. Look at what she has endured. Before the signing of the INF Treaty in 1987 in which she played a big part, Nancy endured both breast surgery and the loss of her mother. Even in the face of adversity, she persevered. She has touched so many lives by giving unselfishly of herself.  At nearly 91 years young, Nancy Reagan is still politically active and living her life to the fullest.

http://www.nndb.com/people/870/000022804/

http://www.firstladies.org/biographies/firstladies.aspx?biography=41

Blog #4-Video Response

I chose to respond to a video I watched on YouTube entitled “Dana, The 8 Year Old Anorexic”. It was a documentary done about one little girl’s struggle with Anorexia Nervosa and her 12-week treatment at Rhodes Farm Clinic in London.  

What shocked me initially was that she was only 8 years old. My first thought was why would an 8 year-old want to be skinny? Dana did not even know that she was anorexic until her mom showed her the signs and symptoms of the disorder on the internet. Even though Dana realized that she had every sign and symptom listed, she still continued to starve herself, not knowing why. Her parents had taken her to a local hospital, but Dana refused to eat for the entire two weeks she was there. The hospital tried feeding her intravenously, but Dana wrapped the IV around her hand and squeezed the tube off holding her arm up for six hours just to keep the drip from entering her veins. Her organs started to shut down. They told her that she wasn’t getting enough calories and that she was going to die if she didn’t eat. She said in the interview that she didn’t care; she wanted them to just “let her die”.  The hospital released her unable to help Dana or her parents.

Once home, Dana limited her caloric intake to 175 calories per day. Then she started exercising daily by skipping rope for an hour after every meal. When her mom took the jump rope away, Dana continued to exercise by running up and down the stairs until one day, she told her mom that she was too tired to continue running but she just couldn’t make herself stop. Desperate, Dana’s parents admitted her to an eating disorder clinic. Once they arrived, Dana begged her parents to take her home. She promised them she would eat.

It is true that if you don’t suffer from a mental illness, you most likely know someone who does. Knowing many who do, I can tell you that Dana’s behavior is typical of someone suffering from anorexia. She promised she would eat, but because of her intense fear of gaining weight, she found a way to keep from doing that by restricting her calories, then exercising to excess to burn those calories and many more.

When Dana entered treatment, she had lost 25% of her normal weight for her age, (10% more than the average 15% weight loss of those who are treated for anorexia). When interviewed, she told her therapist that she started by cutting out sweets, then all junk food, finally cutting out food altogether.  

               The statistics alone are shocking: 80% of 11-14 year-olds worry about their body image; from 2000 to 2010, the number of children under the age of 10 hospitalized for anorexia had increased by 50%; the average age of a child who suffers from anorexia is falling; there are more 8, 9, and 10 year-olds being admitted into eating disorder clinics now; 3/4 of 7 year-olds want to be thinner; children as young as 5 are worrying about body fat, and 1/3 of children with anorexia will struggle with it for the rest of their lives. How sad.

It’s important to remember that Anorexia Nervosa is not about the food. People think those who suffer from it are doing it to get attention or to get thin. Anorexics don’t want to hurt themselves or their families. Those who suffer like Dana just can’t stop. It is extremely difficult on the family to watch their loved one slowly kill themselves and feel totally helpless. The family feels like they have to always keep on alert for a possible relapse.

People need to understand that when you starve the body, you starve the brain. Anorexics, in the throw of their disorder, are going to be insistent on their dysfunctional eating to the nth degree because of their distorted body image. Weight control becomes an obsession and a way to gain control of their lives, because there are underlying problems causing them to feel out-of-control.

Retrieved from:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0V0a69Bdzw&feature=relmfu  

To test the role media plays in how we feel about our bodies, I first examined how it played a role in my life.  I thought I would make a list of all of the magazines that I have purchased (designated as p) and to which I have subscribed (designated as s) over the last 6 months. The list is as follows: Reader’s Digest (s), Prevention (s), First-for Women (p), Fitness (p), My Weight Loss (p), Shape (p), People (p), Us (p), Cooking Light (p).  All of the Prevention magazines had in the largest font and in the boldest letters these key words associated with weight:  LOSE, THIN, DROP POUNDS, BELLY MELT, FLATTER BELLY, and SHRINK FAT. On the cover of four of the six Prevention magazines were thin female celebrity actors; the other two had celebrity (reality TV) doctors on their covers.  All of my other magazines had very similar eye-catching key words as well as the perfect celebrity female or model on the front cover. Interestingly enough, there was only one issue of Reader’s Digest that mentioned any of those key words on the cover, and that one was the only issue I read in the last six months.   

          According to Huff Post Media-the Internet Newspaper, six of the top 25 biggest magazines at the end of 2011, updated 02/07/2012 are Glamour (#5), Maxim (#8), Prevention (#10), Cosmopolitan (#11), People (#16), and Reader’s Digest (#21). Furthermore, according to the power point entitled “Jody’s Conference Address on Media (updated 2006)”, 95% of women have an ideal weight that they cannot achieve and most of those women said that the determining factor was fashion magazines and TV ads. Since three of the magazines I read are in the top 25, and since two fashion magazines are in the top 10, I am even more convinced that the media has had an influence on how I/we all view our bodies.

                I think one way health educators can counter some of these negative images and ideas generated in the media is to present power point presentations just like Jody’s.  I do, however, think that in order to reach children and young adults that they need to use social networks like Facebook and YouTube. According to Nielsenwire, dated March 6, 2012-an online report that analyzed a recent Nielsen survey about the advantages of social ads over non-social ads on Facebook found that users had a greater recall of ads if they were recommended by their friends (social ads) on Facebook rather than the traditional (non-social) ad.

I do believe that some aspects of the media have made some changes to show more diversity in body shape, size and color than was “acceptable” years ago. However, I still think, as long as there are celebrities and models and reality TV shows that it’s not really going to have a huge impact on the way most people think about women. I believe that the thin woman is still considered the ideal woman, and that a thin woman will always be treated differently than a plus-size woman.

I have chosen to discuss my own thoughts on having children for many reasons. The biggest influence on me for having children was my own mom.

I came from a large family. My mother gave birth to eleven children, ten of us still living. The oldest child died of Hodgkin’s lymphoma, (also known as Hodgkin’s disease-now considered to be one of the most curable cancers). My brother was diagnosed at age 4, and died at age 10. That was nine years before I was born.

At the time of his death, my mom was a 26 year-old mother of six, her youngest just ten months old, and she was four months pregnant with her seventh.  As you can imagine, my mom was devastated at the loss of her child. Grieving for her loss, trying to care for an infant and dealing with the symptoms of her newest pregnancy proved to be too much for her, so child number six was sent to live with my maternal grandparents for the next four years. Just six months after number seven was born, my mom became pregnant with number eight. All eight were born at home.  According to New Dimensions in Women’s Health, even with medicalization and hospitalization and the introduction of new technologies, women chose to keep their birthing environment at home, (Alexander, 2010).

It would be nearly seven years later before my mom would welcome another new baby into her life, this time in a hospital setting having taken advantage of the new modern trends of “prepared childbirth”. Baby number nine was me.  Just six months later, my mom became pregnant with my little sister, the only one born breech. Three years later, on Mother’s Day, number eleven was born, a boy. My mom was 39 years old. In the back of my mind, I often wondered if the reason three years went by after the last baby was born was because the last five babies were girls, and my mom and dad wanted to try one more time for a boy to “replace” the boy they lost.

Before I met my husband in my first year of college, I had decided to be a career woman and not have children. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my big family, but most of my brothers and sisters were older. My oldest sister gave birth to her first child, my mom’s first grandchild, two days before I was born which made me an aunt in utero; you may have to read that again to get it. I saw the toll it took on my mom physically, and emotionally. I saw what she went through when one of my older sisters got into a near-fatal car accident when she was 16.  I was seven at the time, but will never forget watching my mom collapse when she heard the news. It took years of rehabilitation and multiple surgeries before my sister was able to walk and talk again. It made an impact on my life, and was definitely a factor in why later on I had decided not to have children. My mom lost one child and nearly lost another. I did not ever want to experience that.  

After three years of college when I knew my dreams of becoming a doctor of veterinary medicine became exactly that, a dream, I got married and my thoughts of and views about having children changed.  I had previously been advised to take birth control pills to help with the severity of my monthly cycles, but because of the side effects, I stopped taking them very shortly after I was married. Not really using any form of birth control, I soon realized that I did not have my mom’s fertile abilities; it took nearly five years for me to get pregnant.

My husband’s sister had a son born with spina bifida; therefore, my pregnancy was immediately considered an at-risk pregnancy. We were advised to have amniocentesis and blood tests with subsequent counseling. We decided to do the blood tests to determine any birth defects and went through with the counseling, but opted not to do the amniocentesis. We realized that the reason they wanted us to do the amniocentesis was to make a decision to abort the pregnancy, if the test was positive. We knew that no matter what, we would not end this pregnancy, and we felt the test was too risky, even though the doctors assured us the risk of losing the baby was very small.

Throughout my pregnancy, I suffered from severe anemia, iron deficiency and dehydration. At 32 weeks, I found myself having real contractions, not Braxton Hicks. I was on 24-hour bed rest for 4 weeks. My daughter was born 27 days early weighing in at a healthy 6 pounds, with no signs of any birth defects, just some expected jaundice.

Three years later, I suffered a miscarriage at 8 weeks gestation.  Following a period of 6 months of grieving and depression, I rose above it, even more determined to try to have another baby. After a year of trying on our own, my husband and I sought the advice of an infertility specialist; and so the three years of infertility treatments began.

The treatment started with blood tests and laparoscopic surgery to determine the possible causes. The diagnosis was endometriosis. I was told by this infertility specialist after the surgery that I “was cured; go forth and have babies”. Wrong!! He then tried in-office cryosurgery, after which I was told that he could no longer help me. It was at this time that my husband and I began researching the possibility of adoption. In the meantime, we sought the advice of another infertility specialist.

                He also began with laparoscopic surgery. I emerged from surgery having had a partial hysterectomy. I was told that the first specialist did a lot of damage when he did my first surgery, and if I was ultimately unable to have children, I should sue him.

The next step was nine months of steroid treatments, then another laparoscopy. Finally, we were able to start the Clomid fertility drugs. The doctor told me that we would try this for six months and that if it didn’t work, we would try In vitro fertilization (IVF). I couldn’t believe that I was faced with the possibility that I may be unable to have any more children. It didn’t seem that long ago that I had no intentions of having children, and I now would do almost anything to have a second child. God blessed us with one natural child; maybe He wanted us to adopt our second.

Six months later, we got our answer, I was pregnant. Because of my previous history, I was again considered high-risk. I had three sonograms, a lot of blood tests, and was closely monitored the entire pregnancy. Two weeks before my son was due, I went on maternity leave. He was born only ten days early.  I was then told that if I wanted to have any more children that I would need to try again in six months. Six weeks later, I developed what they thought to be a malignant tumor on my thyroid. I had surgery two weeks later.  My chances of getting pregnant now were slim and none. I felt that now I could say that our little family was complete.

My mom’s situation and my situation differed in many ways. She was 16 when she got pregnant in 1939. It was more acceptable for a woman to grow up, leave home, get married and have a family right away. I know that birth control was neither thought of nor even considered. It was her “duty” to be a wife and mother. It was understood. She did tell me, after I became a mom for the first time, that she had wished she had finished high school and gone on to become a nurse. She definitely fulfilled the duties of nurse taking care of 11 children. I, on the other hand, felt having children and when I should have them was my choice. I finished high school, and even though I did not finish college right away, I have gone back to continue my education many times. My mother felt that she didn’t really have that choice once she started her family. Women just didn’t go to school once they started families back then. Most women didn’t go to college at all.

I know my mother losing a child at age 10 to cancer does not begin to compare to having a miscarriage early in my pregnancy, but I did experience the feelings of loss, nonetheless, (the sister that was critically injured in the car accident was never able to have children, but she went on to raise other peoples’ children for years).

 It seems nothing short of a miracle that as complicated as conception and gestation and childbirth are that there are as many babies born as there are in this world. My mom was a smoker and smoked throughout all her pregnancies, yet all of us were born healthy, most of us without medical intervention. My dad actually delivered a few of my brothers and sisters. We were two different generations of women with two different outlooks on childbearing, yet we had many of the same physical and emotional experiences.

My feeling about our country’s current state of health care is nothing less than frightening for myself and my family. Falling in the mid-range of the mid-life stage with the cards stacked against me only places additional stress on my already stressful life. My employer does not offer health insurance for his employees, and even though my husband carries me on his health insurance through his employer, there is virtually no job security, which means we both could lose the only health insurance we have, if he loses his job. Luckily, we are both in good health, but the stacked cards I was referring to earlier are our family health history. Both of us have the three leading causes of death: cancer, heart disease and stroke looming over us, compliments of our gene pool. Nearly six years ago, I was in a multi-vehicle car accident that put me in the hospital for several days and in and out of physical therapists’ and chiropractor’s offices since. I was able to get back to my favorite past time within a year, running, and even ran my first marathon just three years ago. Three months following the race, I became very ill which required hospitalization both in- and out-patient for three months. Even with both of our health insurance companies kicking in, our out-of-pocket was in the thousands. I had lost my full-time job after the accident forcing me to rely on credit cards, and to ultimately exhaust all of my 401K funds that I had planned to use for my retirement. One of the reasons I worked for that employer was the benefits. Because I have been unable to find a full-time job, and the private office in which I am currently employed has no medical benefits, I am totally dependent on my husband’s health insurance. Had we been living in Japan, we would not have had to worry about losing our insurance even if we had lost our jobs. Everyone there is covered just like in the U.K. The difference is that Japan's healthcare is not paid through tax revenue like the U.K.'s. The Japanese people pay into a social insurance fund, so had I lost my job while living there, I would have had health insurance through the community insurer. In Germany, where the premiums are based on income, and the employer pays half, if I had lost my job, I would have stayed in the same insurance system. The similarity between Japan and Germany is that Japan has a health ministry and Germany has a "sickness fund". Both negotiate with the doctors and medical providers respectively on standard/universal fees. Even though the U.K. is the world leader in preventive medicine, Japan has the longest life expectancy in the world. Their healthcare systems work and neither make profits. I beleive universal coverage would work in the U.S. if everyone would be willing to not make a profit simply to give everyone "the basic human right to healthcare", as is the philosophy in Switzerland. My husband has 6 more years before he is entitled to his full retirement benefit package which may or may not include health insurance. If we end up with no health insurance, we will be an uninsured couple for 5.5 years before we will be eligible for Medicare benefits. That is what scares me the most. One of the reasons I am continuing my education is to further my career that will hopefully lead to a full-time job with benefits. My husband and I take primary preventive measures by eating healthy, exercising regularly, and not smoking. We both also take secondary preventive measures by getting annual physicals, screening exams/tests, and doing whatever we can to reduce our stress, including weekly visits to a massage therapist. In 18 more years, according to New Dimensions in Women’s Health (Alexander, 2010 ), I will be among the one in four women who will be over the age of 65 living in the U.S., and if I live twenty years after that, I will be one of the 18 million women over the age of 85 projected to be living in the U.S. I just hope and pray our country’s health care system makes some serious changes long before that, because I don’t want to be a burden to my husband if he outlives me, or to my daughter if I become unable to care for myself before medicare does. I feel like all I have to look forward to is my medicare benefits. How sad is that. Question is, will there be funds in the medicare system to take care of me(or anyone)if I make it to 2030.

Hello to all,
       My name is Nel. My major is Dental Hygiene to date. The direction I take from there is still undecided, possibly Health Studies or Education within the realms of Dental Hygiene. I'm sure as I progress in my classes, I will discover for what I am best suited.
       My hobbies include running, reading, and playing with my 21 month-old granddaughter.
       My personal interest in health lies in outsmarting my family bad health genes by doing whatever I can to take good care of myself. Hopefully I will inspire others to do the same. I believe a lot of our health problems begin in the mouth, so as a dental hygienist, I feel it my responsibility to educate my patients on oral health care to help with their overall health.
       My expectations for this class is to further my education by learning new tools that will further the health education of others.
       One thing that I would like my classmates to know about me is that I have been a runner off and on for 11 years, (the "off years" were my injury years), and even though I may have had to bow out from time to time, I will never give up. Six weeks after my 50th birthday, I ran my first marathon. I'm planning on running my next soon. Stay tuned.