A Vietnamese girl has been dealing with a steadily growing schwannoma tumor on her face for over ten years. It is a giant tumor. I won’t include a photo because it is quite disturbing. You can click this link, though, if you want to see it. It’s sad because we have a choice about whether or not to look at the photo, and yet this 15-year old girl has to live with this tumor everyday - and know that looking at her face is something that most news services won’t show because of how shocking and disturbing she looks.

Girl to Have Giant Facial Tumor Removed
Surgeons Prepare for 10-Hour Surgery to Remove Enormous Growth
By DAN CHILDS
For most of her life, 15-year-old Lai Thi Dao has lived a life that many teenagers could not comprehend.
For the past 10 years, a slowly growing tumor has gradually consumed the lower part of the Vietnamese girl’s face. As it grew, normal tasks such as talking, eating, drinking and sleeping became increasingly difficult.

Lai has never been to school. And since the tumor is heavy and located on one side of her body, even walking has become a challenge.

Tragically, the growth, known as a schwannoma tumor, started off as little more than a cyst on Lai’s tongue. At this stage, the surgery to remove the growth would have been quick, cheap and relatively painless. But Lai had little access to medical care where she lived, leaving the tumor to continue to grow.

Now, a team of surgeons at the University of Miami is preparing for a marathon 10-hour procedure next Tuesday intended to cut away the growth, which now weighs an estimated 10 pounds and could be the largest recorded tumor of its kind reported in the medical literature.

Now the news is reporting that the tumor is 16 pounds. God bless this young girl and bring her safely through this surgery.

Lord have mercy! Do you recall that back the first of March I ordered the NutriSystem food, and I waited and I waited - and finally after many emails and phone calls, I finally received the food several weeks later. Only to discover that the food was mostly inedible. So I shipped it back. Almost two weeks ago, I decided to give The Biggest Loser Meal Plan a try. I placed my order for FIVE DAYs worth of food. I barely missed the deadline for last week. Supposedly the food is shipped each Monday. So my order would have been shipped this past Monday. It is Friday. No food has arrived. Do I have a curse on me? Am I jinxed?

If you read The Median Sib regularly you know that I’ve tried a couple diets lately.  Nutrisystem was a bomb.  I shipped all the food back today.  A lot of it was simply inedible.  Now I’ve ordered a week’s worth of The Biggest Loser food.  My shipment should arrive tomorrow, and I’ll let you know how that goes.

Now there are two other diets that are making headlines:  The DASH Diet, and the Dr. Siegal’s Cookie Diet. 

Here’s a little info on the DASH Diet:

A healthy diet rich in fruits and vegetables and low in fat has long been touted as heart smart. Now, increasing evidence suggests that a similar diet reduces blood pressure and decreases a woman’s risk for heart attack and stroke.

Scientists reporting in the April 14 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine have found that healthy, middle-aged women who closely followed the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet have lower rates of cardiovascular disease (CVD) than women who do not follow such diets.

And Dr. Siegal’s Cookie Diet:

Obesity expert and author Dr. Sanford Siegal, best known as the creator of the popular Dr. Siegal’s® COOKIE DIETâ„¢ weight loss system and hunger controlling foods, today announced that he has posted on the CookieDiet.com web site a new entry in his personal blog that addresses recent comments made by Madonna pertaining to husband Guy Ritchie’s loss of libido while on “the cookie diet”. Madonna made her comments last week during an interview on the Johnjay and Rich radio show which originates on KZZP-FM in Phoenix, Arizona. Coincidentally, Dr. Siegal’s company is a frequent advertiser on the station.

Hmmm - not that’s not the kind of publicity Dr. Siegal wanted!
Stay tuned for my review of the Biggest Loser Meal Plan.

Yes, it’s an old joke, but as soon as I told RT that I had hurt my knee earlier today, he said I must have an ACLU injury.  Ha! Ha!  I laughed.  RT’s corny, but I enjoy his humor.

It DOES hurt like crazy when I put any kind of strain on my knee - as in bending it or stretching it out - basically any movement at all.  I remember when it happened.  I was bending down and I felt it pull on my knee - but I wanted to finish whatever I was doing, and so I didn’t stop.  I don’t even remember what I was doing - tying my shoelaces, maybe.  But when I stood up, I realized that perhaps I should not have so quickly dismissed that initial warning pain.

RT and I flew down to my mother’s this evening in order to attend a family funeral tomorrow.  The plane trip was not very comfortable since it is RT’s plane and it is very small and there was no room to stretch out my leg.  And the pain has gotten progressively worse this evening. 

So I’ve been researching ACL injuries.  The diagram above is one thing I’ve found.  I have no idea if I have an ACL injury.  I just know my left knee hurts.

Perhaps tomorrow I will wake up and it will be much better, and within a few days it will be completely back to normal.  Yes, that is definitely what will happen.

Borba seems to be THE hottest thing in skin care products lately.  I keep hearing about it.  It is obvious that the Borba line of skin care products is growing quickly because it doesn’t just cover up skin care problems, it truly works to promote healthy skin.  I’m really picky about the lip treatments I use.  I tend to find a product I like and stick with it for years.  Seriously.  Besides everyday lipstick, I use a lip treatment at night because my lips get dry at night, and the lip treatment keeps them soft and moisurized.  Because of that, it has been many years since I experienced the pain and discomfort of chapped lips.  For women like me who take their lip treatments seriously, Borba has Lip Kix which has apricot kernel oil, coconut oil and vitamin E which provide a triple-layer of soothing softening.   Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?

Borba has a special promotion for April going on. If you spend $100, you get a cool gift. Check it out here. Borba also has a blog where you can read all about skin care options.

Borba should be the first place you look when you want the best in skin care products.  They’ve got it all.  Their products are affordable, are the highest quality, and there was no animal testing involved in their developments.  Best of all is their philosophy about dealing with skin beauty from not only the outside but the inside as well.  Check out their website.  There’s nothing more convenient.  Just go online and place your order.  They have a convenient auto shipping program that allows you to keep your favorite products on hand.  Just sign up for auto shipping and you’ll automatically receive you choice of products whenever you need them.  There’s no obligation.  So there’s no risk in trying it out.

My Cotillion friend, Beth, told about this article.  Read it and weep for the sorry state of parenthood - at least some of the parents.

Melanie Engle was trying to just pluck the stray hairs here and there. She was trying to deliver an age-appropriate eyebrow wax to her client. It was hard, though, because there was a foot tapping next to her, and a voice shouting in her ear: “No! Not like that — like a supermodel’s. I want them arched.”

After years in the beauty biz, Engle had seen her share of crazy ladies demanding perfect, Glamour-cover-worthy brows. But this Crazy Lady wasn’t talking about her own brows. The brows in question belonged to Crazy Lady’s daughter. Who was eight.

After sweating through the kid’s eyebrow wax, Engle, today an aesthetician at the Adolf Biecker Salon/Spa outposts in the Rittenhouse Hotel and Strafford — and, it should be noted, one of the most sought-after eyebrow specialists in the region — was directed to give her pint-size client a … bikini wax.

Engle was, predictably, extremely uncomfortable with the idea. But she sent the girl next door to the spa to have it done anyway. “It was clear that this girl was getting a bikini wax no matter what,” she says. “Better for her that we did it, instead of her mother dragging her off somewhere else to get it done.”
There’s more, but it’s almost more than I can stand to read.

I’m mid-way through my second day of using Nutri-System.   The news is not good.

Day 1 Breakfast:  Cereal.  It came in a small envelope that reminded me of the envelopes of seeds that you buy at Home Depot.  It was quite small.  Certainly not a complete serving.  It tasted okay, though.  And since portion-control is a major issue, I figured it was good to make myself get accustomed to eating smaller portions of food.  So the small amount didn’t bother me.

Day 1 Lunch: Black Beans and Rice.  It came in a styrofoam cup that I added boiling water to and let stand for a few minutes.  It looked horrible - black gunky paste.  However, it actually tasted okay.  So it ended up being better than I had anticipated.

Day 1 Dinner: Thick crust pizza.  I love pizza, and I figured it would be difficult to mess it up completely, and so I ordered a bunch of these for this month trial.   The crust was maybe 4-5 inches across.  Certainly much smaller than any individual pizza I’d ever seen.  But I was learning portion control - right!  I could handle it.  It had a little package of pizza sauce - about the size of a ketchup packet.  And there was a very small packet of grated cheese.  I put a couple slices of a fresh tomato on top and popped it in the oven.  With a salad on the side, it wasn’t bad.

Day 1 Dessert: A chocolate/caramel bar.  It tasted like a vitamin bar - kinda pasty with a chalky aftertaste.  Definitely NOT something I would choose to eat.

None of the food could even remotely be described as “delicious” but none of it was horrible either - although that chocolate/caramel bar came closs.  It was an okay day.  One day down - 34 to go.

Today is Day 2.  Here’s how it has gone so far.

It’s Sunshine’s 5th birthday, and so we were up at dawn  (well - a little before 7 A.M.anyway) to go to Kroger to get some balloons to take over to Sunshine’s house and tie on the mailbox.  Sunshine met us at the door, and we gave her the balloons and birthday cards from us and from Grandma Ruth.  She loved them.  Then RT wanted to go by Panera Bread for breakfast. 

Day 2 Breakfast: I did pretty well for my first dining out experience while on NutriSystem.  I didn’t get my usual sweet bagel and cream cheese.  Instead I got one of their new egg sandwiches.  It was truly delicious and I savored every bite.  I figure my breakfast took up two protein servings for the day - plus bread and fat.  So I blew some of my allowances with that one breakfast.  However, it was worth it.

Day 2 Lunch:  I hurried with all my errands and got home around 1:00.  I had eaten an apple on my way home for a snack.  I decided to try the pasta/parmesan/broccoli lunch.  Again, it was a styrofoam cup that I added boiling water to.  The “broccoli” were a few tiny specks of green mixed in with the pasta.  The “parmesan” was apparently part of the sauce that in no way resembled a cream sauce.  I managed a few bites, but it was truly inedible.  I checked the calorie total on the package - then threw it away and ate a carton of yogurt that had about the same number of calories.  NutriSystem should be shot for selling a dish as awful as that pasta dish.  Yuck!

So that’s where I am right now.  If you decide to order NutriSystem, do NOT order the pasta/parmesan/broccoli dish.  It is beyond awful. 

I remember about ten years ago my face suddenly started breaking out. There hadn’t been a change in my diet or anything else that I could pinpoint. I just knew that I was in my 40’s, and suddenly I had acne.  I felt so self-conscious.  After all, my teen years were a distant memory!  Fortunately, I saw a commerical on TV for Proactiv Solution, and I decided to give it a try.  The package arrived quickly and I started using it.  My face started clearing up immediately, and within a few weeks my acne troubles were a memory.  I was thrilled, to say the least.

Acne.com is a website with a lot of information about acne - its various causes and effect,  the types of acne, how to take preventative measures against it,  along with the common myths and claims about acne.

From my own personal experience, I know that Proactiv works.  If you’re bothered by acne - at any age - give it a try.

If you’ve read The Median Sib recently, you probably already know that I started a diet last week, but I have deifnitely not been happy with the progress so far.  So I’ve been looking for other resources to help me lose weight.  When I read that 95 per cent of people who lose weight end up gaining it all back - plus at least a few pounds more - I feel discouraged.  It sounds so simple: Just eat less.  Research has shown that emotional eating is the greatest cause of regaining lost weight, and that makes sense to me.  Why else would someone eat something that wasn’t good for them.  There are reasons besides hunger. 

Today I was looking at www.ShrinkYourself.com - an online weight loss resource - which stresses that it is more important to look at WHY you eat instead of WHAT you eat.  They offer a free emotional eating profile - which I immediately took.  The results were not only insightful but helpful.  It clarified some of the reasoning behind my emotional eating.   I will look into it further.

I remember as a young girl reading the book The Pearl by John Steinbeck.  What a wonderful story of the search to find beautiful pearls, along with the determination and training necessary long ago for divers to go deep enough in the sea and stay there long enough to find the oysters that contained the prized pearls!  Ever since then I’ve been fascinated by pearls.  Oysters and pearls have always been almost magical - the whole idea of finding something that is valuable and cherished in something as ordinary as an oyster. 

Since I’m an avid reader and writer, I’ve thought about how cool it would be to write a story about finding a magical bed of oysters that, when opened, yielded a truly unusual prize.  I’ve thought and thought, but what could be more special than pearls?  So that’s as far as that particular line of thinking went.  I still think it’s a good idea for a fantasy story, though.

Did I write earlier that oysters are ordinary?  Well no, they’re not!  I also remember having oyster stew as a child.  There’s just nothing that tastes quite like oyster stew.  I love it.  When RT and I went to New Orleans back in 1975, I had raw Gulf oysters for the first time.  I was hesitant since I’d never had raw oysters before, but RT assured me they were wonderful.  So we sprinkled a little hot sauce on them, put them on a cracker, and down the hatch they went!  And he was right - they were great!  Since then, I’ve had fried oysers a few times, although I haven’t tried raw oysters again.  RT, though, always orders oysters on the half shell whenever we’re at the beach and he knows the oysters are fresh.

I’ve learned, though, that eating raw oysters can be dangerous for ‘at risk’ people because of the Vibrio vulnificus bacteria.  At risk people are those with a weakened immune system, diabetes or liver disease.  However researchers are busy developing methods of processing oysers so that they aren’t a threat to at risk consumers.  They are also educating consumers on determining if they are at risk and how to enjoy the delectable taste of oysters without putting themselves at risk.  The webiste with all the information is the Be Oyster Aware website.  Click on over to find out if you are at risk and how to protect yourself.  You’ll find some great oyster recipes while you’re there, too.