Look for me in next issue of "The Poor Chef'

There's a profile of me in the next issue of "The Poor Chef." Charles Mattocks (at left), who appears on NBC TV as "The Poor Chef," created the magazine and accompanying Web site. Each monthly issue is filled with feature stories and recipes for cooking healthy, tasty and affordable meals.

The article about my life also appears on the Web site under the headline "Quadriplegic Deauville Beat the Odds." The "Poor Chef" should be on newsstands later this month.

Good health and my mother

I wrote this on Mother's Day while thinking about my late mother. She has been gone for almost 30 years. She always knew that she was going to die of cancer. She had her first bout when I was in graduate school. At that time, it was ovarian cancer and Mother was convinced that was the end for her.

Driving the night before her surgery from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where I was attending graduate school, to Daytona Beach, Florida, where mother was hospitalized, I had a front-tire blowout. I arrived at the hospital long after visiting hours. The nurses informed me that I couldn't go see her. Wheeling rapidly past them, I told them that my mother was having cancer surgery the next morning and they would have to call the police to keep me out. They let me visit and encourage her that everything was going to be all right. The truth was, I wasn't at all sure.

I owe a lot to my mother. My father had absconded with the family fortune when I was 4 years old. She had raised my brother, sister and me with no child support. Mother worked two jobs -- one at a department store during the day and one at a private dinner club as a hostess at night. Although my mother was fanatical about making us eat a meat, green vegetable, and starch at every dinner, because we were poor everything or nearly everything was canned. Our nutrition was an abomination!

My sister married when I was 10 and, with my brother in military service, I took over the job of food shopping and cooking. After school, I would go to a small grocery store across the street from the garage apartment in which we lived. I was fascinated with the assortment of fresh vegetables. I asked the nice grocery store owner for suggestions on how to cook them. For probably the first time in my life, I ate fresh vegetables. I loved them! The less cooked and crunchier the better!

Knowing what I now do about nutrition, it is little wonder that my mother, who was diabetic and ate a great deal of sugar to balance taking too much insulin, would develop some kind of cancer. After the operation, she refused to eat. I threatened my mother that if she didn't feed herself that I would. (Can you imagine a quadriplegic trying to force-feed someone in a hospital bed?)

She shut her mouth tightly and refused. Fortunately, her roommate was the wife of the mayor, whom we both knew. I said, "Oh, Mother, wouldn't it be a shame if some of these peas accidentally flew across the room and landed on the mayor's wife?"

She ate her meals from then on and lived another 14 years!

People frequently ask me how I could be a quadriplegic for 51 years and yet look and feel as young and healthy as I do. My answer is always the same: Two things must go hand in hand for a long and healthy life.

The first is nutrition. We, as a society, are learning more and more about nutrition. We have found that it is far more than just a meat, a green vegetable, and a starch as my mother believed.

After starting to take Greens+, I realized that unheated or uncooked food has live enzymes. Live enzymes are quickly and easily digested, unlike the "dead" enzymes that we consume when we eat cooked food. I'm not trying to tell you that all of the food that you eat must be raw, but live enzymes are very important.

The second is exercise. The older we get, the less essential exercise seems to be. But exercise should become more important because our metabolism slows down, our blood circulation slows, and the only way to get them revved up again is to exercise.

I hear older people tell me often that they just don't have enough energy. Or perhaps they have a bad heart or high blood pressure. And yet, these people frequently tell me that their doctor has suggested to them that they walk in the mall for exercise. I work out with a trainer twice a week and feel dramatically better afterward. I don't know if it's the endorphins or the fact that my trainer looks like a Greek god, but I do love my exercise!

By the way, I’ve been a mother now for 23 wonderful years. I love it! And I love my son enormously.

‘Til next time.

Hello, I'm Lani Deauville

Hello. My name is Lani Deauville. Yes, the same Lani that you see in the picture on the GREENS+ Web site. I'd like to tell you a little bit about who I am, why I'm here, and what it feels like to be a 69-year-old quadriplegic who has been in a wheelchair for 51 years, and am arguably healthier than many people half my age.

If you read my story, then you know that I broke my neck in a diving accident as a wild and crazy 17-year-old. On June 2, 1958, I was in Jacksonville visiting friends who lived on the ocean. It was a very hot day and we decided to go for a swim. The water was very high on the sea wall in front of the house.

We were all partying and had had a bit too much to drink. I did a fancy dive off of the seawall and hit the ocean floor! Having worked as a lifeguard, I knew that dead weight was a lot more difficult to carry than someone who was helping, but found that I couldn't move my arm to put around the fellow's neck that was trying to carry me out of the water. Since I was having trouble breathing, I thought that I had just had the breath knocked out of me.

The next thing that I remember was a doctor looking into the hearse. (Yes, in those days they actually used hearses as ambulances!) The doctor thought that I was unconscious and said, “She's broken her neck. She's not going to make it, but you may as well try to get her to the hospital.”

To this day, I am grateful to that unknown doctor because, by saying that, it was like giving me a shot of adrenaline! I was furious that the doctor thought that I was going to die! Later, the ambulance attendant would tell me that the entire way to the hospital I cursed the doctor for being so stupid as to think that I was going to die!

The doctor came close to being right many times during the year and a half that I was hospitalized. I had a lot of trouble breathing because my lungs were paralyzed. I fought being put into an iron lung -- and won. I experienced frequent urinary tract infections and had decubitus ulcers -- bedsores (one down to the bone). I had one near-death experience.

There were no televisions in hospital rooms in those days. My roommate was a woman in her 90s who was in a coma. If I wasn't fighting dying, I was practically dying of boredom! It was a very strange time for me. But it taught me one thing: adversity makes you stronger!

So, right now, you are probably thinking, "Wow, what an impressive woman!"

I don’t think so!

Surprise! I am a bit nuts and a whole lot goofy, too. I love life. I love being nuts. I love people. And you are going to learn a lot more about me and my service dog, Benny.

‘Til next time.