The Aftermath of a Heart Attack...It Could still be a Killer!!

     A heart attack is a life-threatening medical condition in which the blood flowing to the heart suddenly stops. Damage to surrounding tissues occurs immediately. Surviving a heart attack ultimately depends on the severity of the condition, as well as how quickly it is treated.
     You will need to be treated for coronary heart disease after you survive a heart attack. Adherence to the correct form of treatment may help prevent future heart attacks. The thought of another heart attack is a frightening prospect. Knowing what to do after surviving one can significantly reduce the odds of suffering from another attack.

Take It Easy Until Your Doctor Says So

A heart attack is a life-threatening event — you are lucky to have survived such a serious medical event. You might start feeling better within a couple of weeks, but it’s crucial th

at you avoid pushing yourself too soon. It may take up to three months before your doctor gives you consent to go back to work.

Ease back gradually into your everyday routine so you don’t risk a relapse. You may have to modify your daily activities if they are stressful. Your doctor will likely advise you to hold off on sex and other physical activities for at least two weeks.

Clarify Any Questions About Medications

Medications are just one part of a typical post-heart attack treatment plan. The medications your doctor prescribes you will be based on how much your heart tissue was damaged as well as your other risk factors. Your doctor might prescribe drugs for

• high blood pressure (hypertension)
• high cholesterol
• chest pain
• diabetes
• weight loss
• overall discomfort

  Makeover Your Lifestyle

  A heart-healthy lifestyle can complement a medical treatment plan for heart disease. Consider your current lifestyle habits and look for ways you might improve them.

  Exercise  

  As long as your doctor gives you the go-ahead, you may begin an exercise program after you have recovered from a heart attack. Regular exercise is certainly important for weight maintenance, but it also works your muscles — the most important muscle being your heart. Any form of exercise that gets your blood pumping is beneficial. When it comes to heart health, however, aerobic exercise is best. Examples include:

  
  • swimming
  • bicycling
  • jogging or running
  • walking at a moderate to brisk pace

  

  These forms of exercise help increase the amount of oxygen in your body and also strengthen the heart’s ability to pump it through the bloodstream to the rest of your body. As an added bonus, regular aerobic exercise also helps reduce hypertension, stress, and cholesterol.
• If you notice any unusual symptoms during exercise, such as prolonged shortness of breath, weak limbs, or chest pain, stop right away and call 911

  Eat Right

  A low-fat, low-calorie diet has been proven to help prevent the risk for a heart attack. However, if you have already had a heart attack, eating right is simply a must to prevent future occurrences. Avoid trans fats and saturated fats whenever possible. These fats directly contribute to plaque formation in the arteries. When your arteries become clogged, blood can no longer flow to the heart, resulting in a heart attack.
  Eating too many calories and being overweight can also strain your heart. Controlling your weight and eating a balance of plant foods, lean meats, and low-fat dairy products can help. Avoid animal fats. Instead, eat fats that come from plant sources, such as olive oil or nuts.

  Quit Smoking

  You may have considered quitting in the past, but doing so is even more crucial after a heart attack. Smoking is a risk factor for heart disease because it increases your blood pressure and risk for clots by reducing oxygen cells within the bloodstream. This means that your heart works harder to pump blood and has fewer healthy oxygen cells to maintain optimal performance. Quitting now can significantly improve your overall health and also reduce the occurrence of future heart attacks. Be sure to avoid secondhand smoke, as this poses similar dangers in terms of heart health.

  Control Other Risk Factors

  Heart disease can run in families, but the majority of heart attacks may be attributed to lifestyle choices. Aside from diet, exercise, and smoking habits, it’s important to control other risk factors that might contribute to future heart attacks. Talk to your doctor about:
  • hypertension
  • high cholesterol
  • diabetes
  • thyroid disease
  • unusual amounts of stress
  • mental health concerns, such as anxiety and depression

    Know When to Seek Medical Attention

    You’re at a huge risk for having another heart attack after you recover from your first one. It is vital that you stay in tune with your body and report any symptoms to your doctor immediately, even if they only seem slight. Call 911 if you experience:

    • sudden and extreme fatigue
    • chest pain, and pain that travels to one or both arms
    • rapid heartbeat
    • sweatiness (without exercising)
    • dizziness and/or faintness
    • leg swelling
    • shortness of breath

      Long-Term Outlook

      Improving your heart health after a heart attack depends on how well you adhere to your doctor’s treatment plan. It also depends on your ability to identify potential problems. You should also be aware of the difference in treatment outcomes between men and women post-heart attack. Researchers found that 42 percent of women die within one year of having a heart attack, compared to 24 percent of men.

      The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 735,000 people have heart attacks every year in the U.S., and that 210,000 of these are second heart attacks. Knowing your risk factors and making over your lifestyle can help you become a survivor for life.

What is Love? What is not Love? Do you know the difference?

     Love is a force of nature. However much we may want to, we can not command, demand, or take away love, any more than we can command the moon and the stars and the wind and the rain to come and go according to our whims. We may have some limited ability to cha

nge the weather, but we do so at the risk of upsetting an ecological balance we don't fully understand. Similarly, we can stage a seduction or mount a courtship, but the result is more likely to be infatuation, or two illusions dancing together, than love.

Love is bigger than you are. You can invite love, but you cannot dictate how, when, and where love expresses itself. You can choose to surrender to love, or not, but in the end love strikes like lightening, unpredictable and irrefutable. You can even find yourself loving people you don't like at all. Love does not come with conditions, stipulations, addenda, or codes. Like the sun, love radiates independently of our fears and desires.

Love is inherently free. It cannot be bought, sold, or traded. You cannot make someone love you, nor can you prevent it, for any amount of money. Love cannot be imprisoned nor can it be legislated. Love is not a substance, not a commodity, nor even a marketable power source. Love has no territory, no borders, no quantifiable mass or energy output.

One can buy sex partners and even marriage

 partners. Marriage is a matter for the law, for rules and courts and property rights. In the past, the marriage price, or dowry, and in the present, alimony and the pre-nuptial agreement, make it clear that marriage is all about contracts. But as we all know, marriages, whether arranged or not, may have little enough to do with love.

Sexual stimulation and gratification, whether by way of fingers, mouths, objects, fantasy play, whips and chains, or just plain intercourse, can certainly be bought and sold, not to mention used to sell other things. Whether sex should be for sale is another question entirely, but love itself can not be sold.

One can buy loyalty, companionship, attention, perhaps even compassion, but love itself cannot be bought. An orgasm can be bought, but love cannot. It comes, or not, by grace, of its own will and in its own timing, subject to no human's planning.

Love cannot be turned on as a reward. It cannot be turned off as a punishment. Only something else pretending to be love can be used as a lure, as a hook, for bait and switch, imitated, insinuated, but the real deal can never be delivered if it doesn't spring freely from the heart.

This doesn't mean that love allows destructive and abusive behaviors to go unchecked. Love speaks out for justice and protests when harm is being done. Love points out the consequences of hurting oneself or others. Love allows room for anger, grief, or pain to be expressed and released. But love does not threaten to withhold itself if it doesn't get what it wants. Love does not say, directly or indirectly, "If you are a bad boy, Mommy won't love you any more." Love does not say, "Daddy's little girl doesn't do that." Love does not say, "If you want to be loved you must be nice, or do what I want, or never love anyone else, or promise you'll never leave me."

Love cares what becomes of you because love knows that we are all interconnected. Love is inherently compassionate and emphatic. Love knows that the "other" is also oneself. This is the true nature of love and love itself can not be manipulated or restrained. Love honors the sovereignty of each soul. Love is its own law.

Bring on the Flux Capacitor...

     Oh to go back to the Future!!
There have been so many days that I sit on the couch and just wonder.....what if I COULD go back in time? What would I change? We all want to be rich, but what would I do to get there? We all want to be famous in one way or another, how would I get there? The friends we choose as time goes by, would I choose the same people again if they crossed my path. If I was to fall in love again, would it be with the same person, or someone I was with in the past that I let slip away? So many what ifs......Life is really strange as you get older. There always seems to be what ifs. What if I started working out in High School instead of smoking pot every day with friends? Would I be as big as Stallone? Like I said, A lot of what ifs.....
     The one thing that we can do as we get older, is take those what ifs, and turn them into realities today. If you want to be popular, make a name for yourself some way. You want to be rich, use that brain power and figure
out how.We, as adults, need to sit down , and make goals for ourselves. Write them down, Then check off each one as we complete them.
     What it comes down to is the only person to blame for the lives we have today, is ourselves. We have always been in control. But we choose to play the victims. You don't like your job, get another one. You are not happy with the person you are with. End it, move on, and let love find you for once. Stop looking for it all the time. It will avoid you.

     Well, I have to get ready for work...until next time, here's to going back and doing it right the second time around!!

~JC

A Cheating husband

     Well, It has been a while since I have posted anything here on my blog. There is a reason for that and I will now explain....

     About a year ago, my husband out of the blue had asked me for a divorce. Took me and everyone that was around, by surprise, when he yelled it out at the top of his lungs while doped up on Aderal and drunk on liquor while we were at our friends wedding. Surprise!! He had been having an affair with another guy a little younger than him named Bob Clasby. He was a newly, out of the closet, still living at home with mommy and daddy gay, who would do anything for Jason, and wait on him hand a foot. Mind you, I worked 70 hours a week, different hours than my Husband did, and I was also going through a severe depression because my sister, that I spoke about who had cancer in an earlier blog, died. It hit me hard. So I wasn't there for Jason emotionally or physically. The only thing I knew or cared about was waking up, eating, going to work, sleeping , and shitting. Nothing else mattered. That is how big of a dark hole I fell into. It didn't matter to Jason. So he ran away from the problem to find comfort elsewhere, instead of maybe grabbing me by the hand and saying,"Babe, we are going to the doctor. We need to get you out of this funk." Nope just ran off and found the next dick that possibly had a thing for him and had sexual contact with him. How's that for better or worse?

     Now, flash forward a year....
I have been through counseling, got myself together and am feeling better everyday. I had even for the past year, told my husband that I was willing to look past what happened, due to the circumstances and that he didn't know what to do. During this time I had separated myself from him and moved back with my parents for about 5 months.

     What's happening today.....
I have for the last year, worked on myself, got my credit straightened out, secured a new place (for my husband and Me) because Jason was claiming personal bankruptcy because he let the bar get way behind on bills, and behind on the lease. Racked up all the credit cards and ended up being $160,000.000 in debt. Now mind you, he is going to lose his house. So like I said , I secured a place for us to live as a family. Little did I know that the relationship with Bob Clasby, was going to continue. He came over to OUR house when and stayed there, he stayed the night (Jason claims he slept in the spare room on the Futon which I think isn't the truth) and the continued to go out together and hang out. It's funny I asked Jason for 2 hours a week on the days I was off because he said with this bankruptcy and his BIG shows he was always busy so I said,  "Either Monday or Tuesdays." I couldn't even get that. But he had time to do other things with friends and Bob and didn't seem to be busy then. He was able to push everything aside for them, Just not for me.

     What I have noticed in the past year, that my husband has narcissistic personality traits, and that Bob Clasby has obsession and possessive traits. You can tell what I am talking about by looking at Bob's Facebook page (see the inserted pictures of him and Jason.) Well all I can say is Bob has his nose so far up Jason's ass that Jason is just loving it. And Bob loves it too because he gets to throw it in my face. "Ha! Look at me, I got your Husband and you are still married, I WIN" That's the mentality. I swear it takes every ounce of energy not to rip his face off every time I see him!! I know I would just get in trouble.

     The present here and now......
I have filled out the divorce papers and went to the court house to try and File them but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I sat in my car for 1.5 hours and did nothing but cry. I had 2 people come up to my car and ask me if I was ok. Of course, I told them Yes, but truly I wasn't. I was hurting inside. Something inside was tugging at my heart and I just couldn't go through with it. I was hurting, and I was hurting bad. I decided to go home and try another day. I just wasn't ready.

     Ironically, 2 weeks ago, Jason told me that he and Bob were just friends and that is all they were was friends. Now, Bob has posted that he and Jason are in a relationship. After 2 weeks? That proves my point that Jason was nothing but deceitful and had lied to me for the past year. They had been having an affair for the past year, while Jason lead me on this whole time because he didn't want to lose his health insurance. That's ok, because Karma is a bitch, and she will come for her revenge!!

So this is where I am at in this point in my life. Being strung along, lied to, and just being treated awful. I feel like there has to be something going on in Jason's life because he is not the same person I have known for the last 12 years.

     Until next time......

   

Life can really suck

     Life is a crazy thing. It controls you all the time no matter what it is. I work a full time Job, co-own a business (Gay Night Club) with My boyfriend/Husband. Life does not exist. Its Rough. Tiring. And sometimes overwhelming. We do have some good moments. We do things when we can together. But money wise, it's just not there.
     What I hate the most is how I have employees, that cry they live check to check, they can't lose their job because they would fall flat on their face. But then again, These same people Wont do what the are told.

     I have been going through some real shitty depression because of my sister's cancer. The Job I have, and the lack of support I feel I am not getting from anyone including my husband. I just don't know how to handle this all. I at times feel suicidal. All My Husband says to me is go see a doctor. That's the advice I get. With no love behind it. He doesn't tell me he loves me, shows no affection, and I don't know why.  I have said at times I just wish it would all end...me .... end... and I got a shut up, don't talk like that. Not, what can I do to help out, babe it will get better, let's go for help. I get nothing but a shut up!

My life right now in a nutshell
~Johnny

Cancer...It sucks and destroys lives in many ways....

     Cancer is a scary thing. It's something KNOW ONE wants to hear in their lifetime. But it happens. you think to yourself do I fight it? But I am so tired. What do I do? It's the first thing that crosses your mind. The pain that you go through sucks. Some days are good, some are worse. But that the thing about cancer, it messes with you. It wont tell you when it's coming, it drops by like an unwanted house guest. Once it's here , it's not like you can just say, "Hey, I think its about time you leave!" It looks at you in the face and Laughs!
     The Funny thing about the treatments is you fight cancer with something that causes cancer...radiation. The cure has been out there for years but the American FDA would rather let people die to control population, rather to save a loved ones life. It would also cause a Global economical collapse! Cancer is a money making disease. One of the biggest!Pharmaceutical companies would go out of business! Most insurance companies pay a portion, but it will still put you in the poor house afterwards. You are better off not having a job, or insurance and let your state pay for it. It's paid for 100%.
     This is all making me sick to my stomach. I am done talking about it for now....

Until next time.......
   

Toys for Tots Program

                                     U.S. Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots Program

MISSION:
The mission of the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots Program is to collect new, unwrapped toys during October, November and December each year, and distribute those toys as Christmas gifts to needy children in the community in which the campaign is conducted.
GOAL:
The primary goal of Toys for Tots is to deliver, through a shiny new toy at Christmas, a message of hope to needy youngsters that will motivate them to grow into responsible, productive, patriotic citizens and community leaders.
OBJECTIVES:
The objectives of Toys for Tots are to help needy children throughout the United States experience the joy of Christmas; to play an active role in the development of one of our nation's most valuable natural resources - our children; to unite all members of local communities in a common cause for three months each year during the annual toy collection and distribution campaign; and to contribute to better communities in the future.
ACTIVITIES:
The principal Toys for Tots activities which take place each year are the collection and distribution of toys in the communities in which a Marine Corps Reserve Unit is located and in communities without a Reserve Unit that has a Marine Corps League Detachment or group of men and women, generally veteran Marines, authorized by Marine Toys for Tots Foundation to conduct a local Toys for Tots campaign. Local Toys for Tots Campaign Coordinators conduct an array of activities throughout the year, which include golf tournaments, foot races, bicycle races and other purely voluntary events designed to increase interest in Toys for Tots, and concurrently generate toy and monetary donations.

Marine Toys for Tots Foundation

OVERVIEW: Marine Toys for Tots Foundation, an IRS recognized 501(C)(3) not-for-profit public charity is the fund raising, funding and support organization for the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots Program. The Foundation was created at the behest of the U.S. Marine Corps and provides support in accordance with a Memorandum of Understanding with the Commander, Marine Forces Reserve, who directs the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots Program. The Foundation has supported Toys for Tots since 1991.
GOVERNANCE: Marine Toys for Tots Foundation is governed by a board of eleven directors, all of whom are successful business leaders from throughout the nation. All directors served as U.S. Marines. The Foundation's professional staff is located in an office suite in the Marine Corps Association building aboard Marine Corps Base, Quantico, Virginia, about 35 miles south of Washington, DC.
PRODUCTIVITY: From 1991 - 2005, the Foundation supplemented local toy collections with 64.5 million toys valued at $344 million. Concurrently, the Foundation provided over $3.9 million worth of promotion and support materials, which enable local Toys for Tots coordinators to conduct more effective local campaigns.
MISSION: The mission of Marine Toys for Tots Foundation is to raise funds to provide toys to supplement the collections of local Toys for Tots coordinators; defray the costs of conducting annual Toys for Tots campaigns; provide administrative, advisory, financial, logistic and promotional support of local coordinators; provide other support that the Marine Corps, as a federal agency, cannot provide; and conduct public education and information programs, which call the general public to action in support of Toys for Tots.
GOAL: The primary goal of the Foundation is the same as that of the overall Toys for Tots program: i.e. - to deliver, through a shiny new toy at Christmas, a message of hope to needy youngsters that will motivate them to grow into responsible, productive, patriotic citizens and community leaders.
OBJECTIVES: The objectives of the Foundation are the same as those of the overall Toys for Tots program: i.e. - to help needy children throughout the United States experience the joy of Christmas; to play an active role in the development of one of our nation's most valuable natural resources - our children; to unite all members of local communities in a common cause for three months each year during the annual toy collection and distribution campaign; and to contribute to improving communities in the future.
ACTIVITIES: The Foundation engages in two categories of activities: Program Services and Support Services.
Program Services
Toy Distribution: This is the process of obtaining and delivering toys to local Toys for Tots coordinators and providing the support and assistance those coordinators need to conduct effective toy collection and distribution campaigns in their communities. Toys are a combination of those purchased by the Foundation and those donated by corporations.
Support of local coordinators: This involves arranging the creation, publication, manufacture and delivery of an array of promotion and support materials to local Toys for Tots coordinators. It includes managing all financial matters for local coordinators as well as updating and publishing a manual for the conduct of local programs. Concisely stated, this activity encompasses providing a wide range of support to approximately 550 local Toys for Tots coordinators and their support groups. Today, there are nearly 20,000 Marines, Marine Corps League members, veteran Marines and volunteers involved in annual campaigns.

Education: The Foundation conducts an annual public information and education campaign. This activity is designed to give the general public a clear understanding of the benefits that accrue to individuals, communities and the nation from Toys for Tots. It increases visibility and name recognition and stimulates the general public to action in support of Toys for Tots. The campaign includes distributing a series of news releases, distributing TV and radio public service announcements, publishing newsletters, arranging media events and appearances, arranging for national corporations to incorporate information about Toys for Tots into their paid advertisements, conducting special events, maintaining a website and distributing educational material about Toys for Tots to the general public.