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.