welcome to the organic green doctor blog

i am a family physician who was diagnosed with
early mild cognitive impairment(mci) amnestic type on december 21, 2010
this is a precursor to alzheimers disease
because of this diagnosis i have opted to stop practicing medicine
this blog will be about my journey with this disease
please feel free to follow me along this path
i will continue blogging on organic gardening, green living,
solar power, rainwater collection, and healthy living
i will blog on these plus other things noted to be interesting

Thursday, September 22, 2011

video, thanks, garden for fall

VIDEO
my wife she and i celebrated end alz on alzheimers action day
by doing a video filmed at university of texas southwestern
we wore our purple for the video

for the video we were interviewed as patient and spouse then
i was video taped having a provider do a mental status exam
on me asking me questions from a standard exam

the goal of this is to show it to medical students, residents, and
doctors to show them how to do a mental status exam on a
patient
surprisingly many physicians dont know how to do this test well
including this writer when he was in practice

patients at different levels of the disease process were used
from mild like me to more advanced alzheimers disease
i had only minimal difficulties doing the test
but some of the short term memory problems showed up

if i was in a doctors office being screened using the old tests
no abnormalities would show up but
this newer test called the moca test (like the coffee) picks up
some of the difficulties that i have

hopefully this video will help these new doctors to be, new doctors,
and doctors to learn how to administer these tests

catching this disease early is important to begin treatment
and to help patients manage their lives

THANKS
thanks to those who wore purple yesterday in support of
alzheimers action day and to those who
helped raise donations to the cause

thanks to the clinic where i worked as they all wore purple
and to my wife shes school where they did the same
any awareness and support is appreciated

GARDEN FOR FALL
ok its time if you live where i do to get your garden ready and
to start planting for the fall

left over in one bed are tomatoes, peppers, egg plants, arugula,
swiss chard, basil, christmas beans, malabar spinach, amaryth
and okra that i have summered over
they are now starting to take off again as the weather is cooling off

recently i cleaned off the bed that i will be using for my fall garden
i removed all the old plants and composted them
then i added 2-3 inches of compost and worked it into the soil
i also added some organic fertilizer and worked it into the soil
it was covered for a few weeks and allowed to ripen

two days ago i watered it well with a drip system i installed so the
soil would have plenty of moisture when i planted my fall crops
i covered the area well with pine straw mulch and newspapers
to retain the moisture

today i will travel to my favorite organic nursery to buy my fall
plantings especially the cole crops
its a few weeks early for the lettuce

i will be looking for broccoli, cabbage, brussell sprouts (one of
my relatives calls these poot balls), swiss chard, mustard and
usually will find some other plants they have they ive not used
before

these will be planted and watered well with a seaweed solution
that stimulates root growth
they will be mulched well to retain moisture
the bed will be covered with a hoop of pvc pipe covered with
a thin white row cover to shade them
later a thicker row cover will be used to protect them from the
cold weather this winter

i use liquid fertilizer every 2 weeks and add more organic fertilizer
usually monthly
i water based on how much rain we have
which is none lately

last year i got a infestation of white flies that destroyed these so
i will be keeping a closer eye on them and will attack them early
if they show up

this garden will provide food all winter long until the spring garden
begins

enjoy yours

the organicgreen doctor

1 comment:

  1. I met a group of friends last night and 3 of the 4 of us had purple on. I did it on purpose, the other 2 it was an accident, or the universe telling them!

    ReplyDelete