Want to feel old?

• Bonanza premiered 60 years ago.
• The Beatles split 50 years ago.
• Laugh-In premiered nearly 52 years ago.
• The Wizard of Oz is 80 years old.
• Elvis is dead 42 years old. He'd be 84 today.
• The Thriller video is 36 years old.
• Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin dead 49 years.
• John Lennon dead 39 years.
• Mickey Mantle retired 51 years ago.
• Back to the Future is 35 years old.
• Saturday Night Fever is 42 years old.
• The Ed Sullivan show ended 47 years ago.
• The Brady Bunch premiered 50 years ago.
• The triplets on My Three Sons are 50.
• Tabitha from Bewitched is 55.
• The Corvette turned 66 this year.
• The Mustang is 55.
• If you were born in the '50s, you've had 12                presidents
• The Karate Kid is now older than Mr. Miyagi. 

• Ralph Macchio, who played Daniel LaRusso in The Karate Kid, was supposed to be a teen in the 1984 movie. But he was actually 22. Today, Macchio is all grown up—so much, in fact, that he's now older than Mr. Miyagi was at the time. Pat Morita, who played Miyagi, was a mere 52 years old back then, while Macchio is currently 57. 

• Kids graduating high school in 2019 were 
        born in the 2000s.
• Today's kids have always been able to           
         communicate with emojis.
From emails and texts to social media posts, emojis have become a common part of how we communicate since they launched in 1999. According to the official Unicode list, there are now nearly 2,800 different emojis in use today. And though people of all ages use emojis, some of us remember a time when inserting a smiley face into a text message was a colon and a half parenthesis. But kids born in the 21st century have always had emojis. Try explaining to a teenager how 20th-century teens communicated almost solely with words, and they'll look at you like you're nuts.

Many women think the signs of a heart attack are unmistakable

Every year, about 735,000 Americans suffer a heart attack, and, for many, the result is dire. According to the CDC, one in four people dies of heart disease in the United States, making it the leading cause of death for both men and women. And yet, in 2005 a survey found that only 27% of respondents were aware of all major symptoms of a heart attack, which is terrible because detecting early warning signs is crucial for survival.

Most people consider chest pain to be the only sign that a heart attack is on the horizon, but any upper body pain or discomfort in the arms, back, neck, jaw, or upper stomach can be a major symptom, as well.

As with men, women’s most common heart attack symptom is chest pain or discomfort. But women are somewhat more likely than men to experience some of the other common symptoms, particularly shortness of breath, nausea/vomiting and back or jaw pain.

Many women think the signs of a heart attack are unmistakable — the image of the elephant comes to mind — but in fact, they can be subtler and sometimes confusing.

You could feel so short of breath, “as though you ran a marathon, but you haven't made a move or some women experiencing a heart attack describe upper back pressure that feels like squeezing or a rope being tied around them. Dizziness, light-headedness or actually, fainting are other symptoms to look for

Twitter user @geewheezie, who is a nurse, learned this the hard way and decided to share her story as a warning to other women in a thread that now has over 26,000 retweets.

"I want to warn women our heart attacks feel different. Last Sunday, I had a heart attack. I had a 95% block in my left anterior descending artery. I'm alive because I called 911. I never had chest pain. It wasn't what you read in pamphlets. I had it off and on for weeks. The pain ran across my upper back, shoulder blades and equally down both arms. It felt like burning and aching. I actually thought it was a muscle strain. It wasn't until I broke into drenching sweat and started vomiting that I called 911. I'm a nurse. I'm an older woman. I had been spending the week helping my neighbour clean out her barn, I thought I strained some muscles. I took Motrin and put a warm pack on my shoulders, I almost died because I didn't call it chest pain. The day before my heart attack I drove six hours to help my mother who lives in another state. I thought I should go to a [doctor] but I had to help my mom who is 90 and I'd just tough it out because it wasn't really bad. I was lucky, I had no idea what hospital to go to, the female medics who picked me up took me to a hospital that does cardiac caths, I had 4 stents placed an hour after I got to the ER. That was Sunday. I was discharged Thursday and at my daughters' house and back to tweeting."

While nausea, vomiting, and soreness in your arms are listed as major warning signs of heart attacks in general, @geewheezie

is right to want to "warn women our heart attacks feel different."

If you have any of these signs, call 9-1-1 and get to a hospital right away.

·       Uncomfortable pressure, squeezing, fullness or pain in the center of your chest. It lasts more than a few minutes, or goes away and comes back.

·       Pain or discomfort in one or both arms, the back, neck, jaw or stomach.

·       Shortness of breath with or without chest discomfort.

·       Other signs such as breaking out in a cold sweat, nausea or light-headedness.

Be aware that something very different is happening in your body, not the usual men's symptoms but inexplicable things happening. It is said that many more women than men die of their first (and last) heart attack because they didn't know they were having one and commonly mistake it as indigestion, take some Maalox or other anti-heartburn preparation and go to bed, hoping they'll feel better in the morning when they wake up, which doesn't happen. My female friends, your symptoms might not be exactly like mine, so I advise you to call the Paramedics if ANYTHING is unpleasantly happening that you've not felt before. It is better to have a 'false alarm' visitation than to risk your life guessing what it might be!

Seniors and Medication

I was asked to think about issues that are important for seniors so over the last few days I have come up with a few that perhaps I have not talked about before. The first one is the overprescribing of Medication to seniors.  In many jurisdictions, there is work being done on the issue of medication for seniors in Long Term Care and that is important. There are, however, many seniors who are taking too many medications and they are not in Long Term Care, although if they continue to be overprescribed, they may end up in Long Term Care. In 2018, the Canadian Institute for Health Information found that 2 out of 3 Canadians (66%) over the age of 65 take at least 5 different prescription medications. 1 out of 4 Canadians (27%) over the age of 65 take at least 10 different prescription medications. 

In a report by the BC Care Providers Evidence from numerous studies also shows that many medications prescribed to elderly patients are inappropriate in that they introduce a significant risk for adverse drug events when there is evidence that alternative medicine may be equally or more effective. In primary care, for example, one study notes approximately 1 in 5 prescriptions issued for older adults is inappropriate. (Source: Deprescribing in Clinical Practice: Reducing Polypharmacy in Older Patients Linda Brookes. November 26, 2013. Accessed at: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/814861_2.)

This is important because if seniors are taking too many and inappropriate medications then they will become a burden on the health care system, so an examination of what steps are being taken to wean seniors off drugs would seem in order.

What dream lives on in me?

For as long as a dream lives inside of you, there's a plan for its time in space. A is a cherished hope; ambition; aspiration. A cherished hope of mine and many of you I think is to be able to contribute a sense of legacy including values, principles and ethics to my grandson so that the dignity of the family lives on in future generations.

Being appreciative of those who sought wisdom at the end of their life beyond the accumulation of material things gives me a sense of gratitude for lessons learned from my parents.

Here are five ways you can start living your dream life today so you can pass it on to your children and grandchildren.

·       Get honest about what you want from life.

·       Use the Internet to research your dream.

·       Put a plan together and take the first steps.

·       Ignore self-limiting beliefs and negative people.

·       Choose to live life every day.

Once you commit to living your dreams a new world will be opened to your view. I tell people that opportunity keeps knocking but we don’t hear her until we are ready. Once you commit to your dream you will notice opportunities that have been in your reach all along, ones your conscious mind simply didn’t pay attention to when you saw these opportunities. The fundamental change taking place is your self-identity. Your only limitations are your consciousness, which is quickly expanding. Whatever you want quickly becomes yours because you see what most people don’t.

 A quote by William Hutchison Murray makes a lot of sense for those who are hesitant.

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation): that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.”