This is a very difficult subject, because no one wants to be honest about it. And that’s okay. We whistle past the cemetery… or we wear gear that proclaims we got No Fear, dude. Whatever gets us through the night.

Still, it doesn’t hurt to take the boogeyman out of the closet every once in a while and contemplate the sheen on his empty collarbones. Fear. The fear of pain, of death, of failure, of making a mistake that harms or kills someone else, the fear of embarrassment, of loss, of… I could go much deeper, but it is not my goal to give fear too much celebrity.

The fact is… it’s just another day. It is always just another day.
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Conflict. Someone else in the immediate area wants to take charge.

Your instinct may be to let them do it, because then, if everything goes wrong, it’s their fault… despite the fact that there is a little voice in the back of your head saying you should step up and take on the responsibility because you’re more qualified. Or you may want to challenge them physically, because you have to be in charge, because, well, you just have to be. Or you are afraid of making a serious mistake, and hide your knowledge despite the fact that everyone needs the wisdom you’ve stored up for just such a moment.

When you see these inner thoughts in stark text, you know that they are obviously wrong. But unfortunately, that’s how things often work in reality. Question is, how do you resolve the conflict if it comes up in real life?
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You are.

As the saying goes, you’ve got the job until you get hit or somebody better comes along.

An interesting phenomenon occurs in many emergency situations. Most people stand with wide eyes and do nothing. They are waiting for someone to tell them what to do. I think that the syndrome has increased and deepened over the years, but that’s just my opinion. That it is currently very deep and very prevalent is not my opinion. Airlines are now training their onboard personnel to literally scream and shout at people in order to get them to start moving out of an airplane that has crashed and started to catch on fire. People have to be told to leave a burning airplane, and shocked into motion in order to get them out.

Unbelievable? Absolutely. True? Absolutely.
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Before I even start, I have to say that you must talk with your doctor and find out whether your use of any of the products mentioned in this post, or indeed anywhere on this site, is appropriate for you. All statements are only personal opinion, and have not been approved by any authority or agency or anyone else whatsoever. And read our disclaimer statement.

Skeptical about colloidal silver? I was. Then I read about nurses in England demanding that their hospital allow them to use silver-impregnated dressings for multi-drug resistant staph (MDRS) infections. I can no longer find that article, but no matter. There is a new article in nursingtimes.net from October 14, 2008, that now worries about the overuse of silver… mostly for cost reasons. Nurses are now using silver products so much in their normal care of burns that some people are concerned about the ‘huge amounts’ that patients are being treated with.

So the fact that they are in official use in hospitals is 100% documented. The fact that they are effective is 100% documented. “There is a wealth of evidence supporting the use of antimicrobial silver-based products“, they say in the article. “We know silver has an antimicrobial effect and it is particularly effective in treating pseudomonas.” And this is from institutional people who really prefer the old ways.

Does colloidal silver work for me? (more…)

“The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men, Gang aft agley,” is how Robert Burns wrote it.
But we know it better like this…the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray.

I encourage people to have an emergency plan. My close group has one. I’ve also said the most likely thing to happen with such a plan is that people will lose their copy. The best we can hope for is that they remember enough of it when the time comes.

But just as likely, it won’t work for another reason. You might be out of the box. That means you could be in a location that will simply not relate to the emergency plan. Out on the highway. Visiting a friend. An infinite number of possibilities, because life means movement. All of us are on the move a great deal of the time, and that leaves us vulnerable to being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
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Before I even start, I have to say that you must talk with your doctor and find out whether your use of any of the products mentioned in this post, or indeed anywhere on this site, is appropriate for you. All statements are only personal opinion, and have not been approved by any authority or agency or anyone else whatsoever. And read our disclaimer statement.

There are some things about silver and gold that we all know. They are precious. They are valuable. They are useful.

Gold has unique uses in electronics and many other practical things that give it value beyond any sort of monetary system. Silver is very useful too. We are just now remembering what some of the most important practical uses are.

People of long ago, no-AMA-medicine days, knew some of the ways (more…)

Do you know your neighbors? Because in an emergency, guess who will be right next to you? Them.

If you are on cordial terms with the people on both sides of you and across the street from you, you’re head and shoulders above most of us. Few Americans even know their neighbors’ names.

In many neighborhoods it seems impossible. And in some places, there are little nagging problems that have grown, or are currently growing, into large problems.  Or our particular neighbors just do not seem like the kind of people we would like to know.

But we should get to know them anyway.

It’s hard. It’s uncomfortable. But think how much more difficult (more…)

My wife started coughing up blood last week. She had a really unusual event of coughing very hard for about three full minutes, so I figured the coughing had broken a blood vessel in a lung and was causing the hemoptysis (which simply means ‘coughing up blood’. But it’s a fun word.)

Although a little gory, a few milliliters of hemoptysis is not necessarily immediately life threatening… but the underlying cause can be any of over a hundred different things, including cancer and a lot of other deadly and semi-deadly diseases. So we got on the hump and make it in record time to the local hospital, where they did X-rays and a CAT scan and more on that later. In any event, they could not figure it out. So we got Air Evaced to the big hospital about a hundred and fifty miles away. Where we ended up staying for several days. I slept on the floor, which was fine, because I wanted, and in my mind needed, to be with her.

I had about half an hour to get whatever we needed for the journey and stay at the hospital. Home was twenty minutes or more away from the hospital. No way I could get there and get things and get back in time. I would have missed going with her if I’d tried it. (more…)

Before I even start, I have to say that you must talk with your doctor and find out whether your use of any of the products mentioned in this post, or indeed anywhere on this site, is appropriate for you. All statements are only personal opinion, and have not been approved by any authority or agency or anyone else whatsoever. And read our disclaimer statement.

Additionally, some people are allergic to honey. You must never use honey if you are allergic to it, or put it on anyone who is allergic to it. You could initiate an anaphylactic reaction that could be life threatening.

(Read Part One)
(Read Part Two)
(Read Part Three)

I came across a source that talks about using honey for wound care that I think is important to read.

The page is at WorldWideWounds.com and goes deeply into the subject. There is some very good information, presented lucidly and interestingly.

It brings up points I had not thought to mention, including the need to use a ‘low-adherent dressing’, such as Telfa or equivalent non-stick bandage, when using honey with a dressing. I forgot to mention this because I almost never use any kind of dressing that will cause the healing wound to stick to the pad. Kind of defeats the purpose. The exception is in a first aid situation where there’s nothing but cloth from someone’s clothing to make a bandage with. Actually, using honey in this situation is helpful, because it provides some degree of lubrication to the wound, and actually lessens the sticking. But when I change the dressing, I would hope to have a non-stick type available. It’s better.
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Woops… forgot.

You need a Plan first.

Does your local living group have a Plan in case of emergency?
Oh no! you say, not a Plan!
What a pain!

Yeah, most plans are. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The most basic plan is simple.

Just decide:

1. Where everyone should meet in case of a disaster or emergency.

2. What each person should do if it’s impossible to get to that place for one reason or another.

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