From The Editor: A Health Journey

Welcome to 2024!

I hope your Holidays were Merry and Bright. I hope your New Year’s Resolutions began on the right foot. I hope you’re looking forward to a great year ahead.

Every year, our first issue focuses on Health & Wellness. As the first issue of the year, we try our best to focus on how to make your lives better with healthy solutions, tips on getting better care, and discuss wellness topics that are relevant to our lives.

In developing this issue, I had many conversations with the community and healthcare providers to understand how we should craft an issue that will engage with us. That includes additional topics that should be in this issue, despite not having enough pages to publish those articles.

While I was having these conversations, I was dealing with my own health journey. Let me explain…

First off, I’m a Type II Diabetic – first diagnosed in 1998. That diagnosis was hard to deal with. I had challenges, such as medication and diet to try to navigate in getting better. I will admit that ignoring the issue and thinking I can outdo this disease was the wrong thing to do.

The result was a hard pill to swallow. It continues to be.

Last year, I had all of my toes amputated on my left foot. There had been subsequent surgeries due to complications of this foot. In addition, my bad posture caused a cinch on my spinal cord at my neck. That has caused some minor arthritis and some imbalance issues. We’re discussing scheduling surgery for that issue.

Right now, I’m still plugging away in this position at full speed. Resilience, determination…that’s what’s keeping me motivated every day. Not every day is good, but I take the good with the bad. You have to, right?

The important piece of this journey is to have a good care team working with you. My core care team have been wonderful. They challenge me, but they also listen. It took a very long time to get to that point. With that, I’m thankful.

The lesson here is to do the best with what we got. You could regret, be guilty, and so forth, but it takes putting in the effort to keep on going.

We are not alone on these healthcare journeys. There may be a topic we will cover in these pages that will evoke some response or call to action. You might relate to the articles we came up with in these pages. I certainly hope you do.

To health, Lavender readers!