Healthy Communities 2018

Healthy Hudson Valley AUGUST 9, 2018 • ULSTER PUBLISHING • HUDSONVALLEYONE.COM

Healthy Communities

Community support systems to maintain our health

The biking community of New Paltz is shown riding on Butterville Road last fall to raise bicycle safety awareness after two serious bike accidents in the area.

LAUREN THOMAS

9, 2018 2 | August Healthy Communities

Ulster Publishing Co.

The banality of health Everything can go wrong

By Dante Kanter

W

hile staying over at a friend’s house, I woke up earlier than I should have, around five o’clock. It was more than a couple of hours before anyone else in the house would be awake.

My friend’s family is very religious, and very practical. Lying on the coffee table in their living room was a children’s bible and a family medical guide. I read the story of Samson and the Philistines, with cartoon Samson bringing down the pillars of the Philistine temple on himself and his captors. Then I picked up the medical guide.

“What struck me then, as a seven-year-old, was how material her body had become, how unlike herself” The first pages were a series of flowcharts, meant to diagnose an illness. They had titles like “swollen neck,” “eyelid growth,” and “difficulty connecting with others.” I spent a long time following the arrows, answering the questions. According to the book, I was a depressed narcoleptic who had recently had a stroke.

The next page consisted of a series of graphic images illustrating what different cysts look like in

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alien my body really seemed, of all the inventful, terrible things it could do on its own.

My dad’s side of the family is obsessed with illness. He comes from a lineage of doctors who are disturbingly comfortable with the body’s machinery. The state of a body’s organs holds the same sway over them as do the details of their personal life. We will sit around the dinner table, talking of procedures — ligaments, tubing, staples, horrible violence — as though it’s nothing.

I was born sick, with a bacteria that had eaten through the womb and was trying to kill me. I spent time in the prenatal ward, with other sick children.

One kid, nicknamed “Big Fella,” was as long as his dad’s arm. There are not many pictures of me from then, just one — tubes feeding into my arms.

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August 9, 2018 Healthy Communities

Ulster Publishing Co. had was invisible, and confusing.

I was in and out of doctor’s offices, each with their own special quality of attention. Some were dismissive. Others had deep, penetrating stares, as though conveying that they were trying to figure out the quickest way to kill you with their bare hands. I was treated for mono, tested for meningitis. My brain deflated.

I began to think that there wasn’t anything really wrong with me, that this was the way that my body had decided to be, and that my life would be like this forever. I spent most of four months lying down, examining the different specks and marks on the ceiling of my bedroom. I was diagnosed with Lyme a week later, and treated. Whenever I get anxious now, that same sense of numbness drips its way down my left side.

At my tiny college, sickness is the same as breathing. Some 1600 of us eat together, shower together. In winter, it rains and freezes and rains again. Whenever the temperature changes, a wave of virus hits us. One of my friends had a cough that lasted three or four months.

Every time one of my friends fell ill, we had a ro-

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tating system of runners in place who could provide Advil, chicken soup or blankets at any time.

It formalized our care for each other. Our sickness became solidarity.

I took a Proust class this fall with a professor who had dedicated her entire career to reading the one long work the author had written. In the first volume, Proust says that most people will be surprised to find that the sensation of death is no more than a pain in your side, or a shortness of breath. Illness or death, in Proust’s mind, was so unbearable because it was unremarkable, with no meaning beyond itself. Pain is a simple fact.

My professor called this life’s “seamy side.”

It was the shameless display of that seamy side that kept me flipping through the medical guide that morning, before my friend got up to make breakfast. The medical terms seemed to me to come from another world, vaguely threatening in their unconcern for human comfort or understanding, and yet beautiful in their multiplicity, their capacity for complete unpredictability.

That morning, I held in my hands everything that could possibly go wrong with me, and hadn’t.

“I retained a sense of sickness, an implicit knowledge of what could go wrong in the body and what that going wrong felt like”

WIKICOMMONS

Medical manuals were common bedside reading in the days before the Web. So was hypochondria.

As I grew up, I forgot that any of this had ever happened. Life was weightless, as it should be. My parents tried to keep me from feeling like a sick child, although, I think, that feeling can sink into one’s bones and stick there. I retained a sense of sickness, an implicit knowledge of what could go wrong in the body and what that going wrong felt like.

The first person to get really sick in my life was my great-grandmother. For a couple of years, she stayed in a nursing home off a highway in New Jersey. The place was called Ruby Slippers. For weeks, she would get stuck on the same story. She and her brother went to a farm, and her brother hopped the fence.

When she died, I remember walking into her room at the nursing home, the whole family sitting over her body, each of us enacting some kind of a ritual that no one knew the steps to. What struck me then, as a seven-year-old, was how material her body had become, how unlike herself.

Whatever had made her skin her skin before — small movements, recognition of the world — was gone, and turned to stuff. I learned then what my parents must have been afraid during those days that I had spent in the hospital.

A

bout a decade passed before my face went numb. I couldn’t lift half of my mouth, and was slurring my words. The fear of Lyme disease had captured the imagination of the state, and my parents began to panic. Whatever I

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PHOTO COURTESY OF FAMILY

Family of Woodstock, seen here in front of its original home in Woodstock with several longstanding volunteers, has become a key Ulster County community agency, a linchpin to the region’s social fabric.

Community health centers What unites us, both helper and helped, is greater than the differences that divide us

By Jennifer Brizzi

W

hen it comes to the health needs of the community in a system based on maximizing monetary gain and profit, to serve the underserved is no mean feat. People are needed to help the very young, those 20-somethings finding their way in the world, folks in their 30s and 40s and 50s struggling with hard times, the elders and others with mobility and isolation issues, the uninsured, the underinsured, the low-income, the homeless, people of all ages, genders, races, countries of origin and various levels of physical and mental health.

Local and national organizations are out there facilitating communities helping communities to cut down health-risk factors with preventative

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care that promotes healthy lifestyle choices from handwashing to tick control to aerobic exercise.

They help the sick who have no place to go.

Often, what’s offered is based on respect and empowerment. People are helped to acquire the skills they need to improve their health.

About 50 years ago the concept of the community health center was established. President George W. Bush doubled the number of patients served by them, now up to 27 million. President Barack Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provided $2 billion to help the centers expand and to build new ones. The impact of the current administration on the centers and their patients has been uncertain, although president Donald Trump did sign a bill in February that should help them.

When you sign up with a community healthhelper organization, whether local or national, your only reward as a volunteer is the knowledge that in some way you have made someone’s life better. In some cases, these organizations are manned in part by paid staff and some charge sliding-scale fees. But most do not have profit as their primary goal.

The local organization Health Care is a Human Right (http://healthcareisahumanright.com)

offers free care but welcomes donations. It emphasizes “holistic healthcare for all.” When you attend a clinic in Kingston, Woodstock and Phoenicia, you are triaged into the healing hands of volunteer practitioners of many kinds of holistic care. Your treatment may take the form of massage, chiropractic, homeopathy, acupuncture, reflexology, reiki, aromatherapy and essential oils, Feldenkrais, flower essences, craniosacral therapy, nutritional counseling, Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), hypnosis, psychotherapy and much more.

Family of Woodstock, which is staffed by both volunteers and paid staff, has been helping people with “any problem under the sun” for nearly half a century. They have walk-in centers in Woodstock, Kingston, New Paltz and Ellenville, a 24/7 call/text hotline and a Chat Now button on their website (http://www.familyofwoodstockinc.org).

Services are mostly free and include shelters, domestic violence services, emergency food pantries, court advocates, counseling and case management services, child care, and help with preventing homelessness and finding employment.

Grace Smith House in Poughkeepsie helps victims of domestic violence and uses volunteers in many different capacities (www.gracesmithhouse. org). Also Poughkeepsie-based is The Lunch Box, a community meal program run by Dutchess Outreach (dutchessoutreach.org/the-lunch-box/).

They serve lunch, after-school food, and dinner to the needy, and source many of the ingredients from their own farm and other local farms.

In Albany, Eric Breitung runs Albany Bike Rescue (albanybikerescue.org), teaching kids how to repair their bicycles, restoring and refurbishing used ones for donation and creating community around skills exchange.

When it comes to national health-helper organizations, Planned Parenthood serves 2.4 million people, many of whom are poor, rural and/or nonwhite. Planned Parenthood offers birth control, cancer screenings, STD tests and much more to people who might not otherwise have access to these important services. This is all being threatened by president Trump’s “gag rule,” which would block doctors from giving patients reproductive health care.

Meals on Wheels consists of more than 5000 independently-run local programs that contribute to the health of senior citizens in a couple of crucial ways. Volunteers deliver nourishing meals that the seniors might otherwise have trouble preparing or procuring, along with a serving of friendship and caring, antidote to the social isolation many housebound people experience. We know now that that’s one of the risk factors for an early demise, and being social extends your life.

Although their funding is thanks to the Older Americans Act, much of the staff is made up of

Healthy Communities August 2018 An Ulster Publishing publication Editorial WRITERS: Jennifer Brizzi, Elisabeth Henry, Dante Kanter, Harry Matthews, Jillian Nadick, Violet Snow, Meg Tohill.

EDITOR: Paul Smart LAYOUT BY Joe Morgan Ulster Publishing PUBLISHER:

Geddy Sveikauskas Genia Wickwire DISPLAY ADS: Lynn Coraza, Pam Courselle, Elizabeth Jackson, Ralph Longendyke, Jackie Polisar, Sue Rogers, Linda Saccoman PRODUCTION MANAGER: Joe Morgan PRODUCTION: Diane Congello-Brandes, Josh Gilligan, Rick Holland CLASSIFIED ADS: Amy Murphy, Tobi Watson CIRCULATION: Dominic Labate ADVERTISING DIRECTOR:

Healthy Communities is one of four Healthy Hudson Valley supplements Ulster Publishing puts out each year. It is distributed in the company’s four weekly newspapers and separately at select locations, reaching an estimated readership of over 50,000. Its website is www.hudsonvalleyone.com.

For more info on upcoming special sections, including how to place an ad, call 845-334-8200, fax 845-334-8202 or email: info@ulsterpublishing.com.

August 9, 2018 Healthy Communities

Ulster Publishing Co. more than two million volunteers. Besides bringing meals that cater to the seniors’ dietary needs or cultural preferences, they might also do homerepair tasks, provide transportation, or bring pet food. Payment for services is on a sliding scale.

An exciting program called Cooking Matters, an offshoot of Share our Strength, helps families eat healthier on a budget, with hands-on cooking classes and healthy shopping-focused store tours.

Since the late-lamented Queens Galley in Kingston closed, there are no programs between Ossining and Albany, but hopefully something is in the works in the mid-Hudson Valley region.

If you’d like to be a community health helper without joining a national or local organization, you could contact your neighbors in times of flooding or extended power outages and offer them a place to stay or take a shower. You could start a food pantry that includes fresh produce and other healthy items, not just canned soup. Or you could participate in a neighborhood watch group that encourages everyone to look out for each other.

In the words of Family of Woodstock, “We believe that the common ground which unites us, both helper and helped, is greater than the differences which divide us, and that everyone deserves the respect and support of our larger community.”

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Ulster Publishing Co.

Aller-Jeez Louise Climate change affects our health

By Harry Matthews

A

h, summer. Ahhhhhhhhchooooo!

Yes that’s right. The secret word for tonight is “allergies.” On the menu for this evening we have ragweed, goldenrod, burning bush, cocklebur, lamb’s-quarters, pigweed, sagebrush, mugwort, tumbleweed and Russian thistle, as well as all other types of pollens, fungi, and those wonderful hard-to-identify alien dusts.

Summer allergies are not fun. Just when everyone else is getting outdoors, going to the beach or a favorite swimming hole, having a barbecue, or playing a pick-up game of waffle ball, you are stuck indoors, dark circles under your eyes, nose dripping ferociously. You are feeling like a truck just ran you over.

Unfortunately there is often little one can do to avoid the symptoms beyond just flat out avoiding the causes. Which basically means staying holed up inside or making the lovely high-fashion statement of wearing a surgical mask (and looking just this side of slightly ridiculous) when taking the ever-risky decision of venturing outdoors.

For all of our intents and some of our purposes, the term “seasonal allergies” in this context, and with blatant obviousness, refers mainly to those things that will affect you in the summer: grass, pollen, mold, and all those other lingering and invisible lovelies. But there are plenty of other seasonal allergies that arise throughout the year, triggers that are closely tied to particular seasons and often holidays. Among them, and in no particular

PUBLIC DOMAIN PHOTO

Scientists have been pointing out worsening pollen counts for years. Now year-long allergy seasons have arrived. order: smoke (campfires in summer, fireplaces in winter), insect bites and stings (mostly spring and summer), chlorine in swimming pools, ingredients found in certain candies including dyes and sugars (Halloween, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Easter), pine trees and wreaths (Thanksgiving and Christmas).

Though some of these might cause only mild discomfort, like the mostly benign smoke from a campfire, an untreated bee or wasp sting on the other hand has the power to cause anaphylactic shock, which can kill someone in no time at all.

And the crazy thing about any and all these allergies is that they can lie dormant or undetected

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in the body and then for seemingly no reason at all they can arise and wreak havoc with one’s life.

How many times has it happened that with absolutely no previous history of an allergic reaction to a bee sting does somehow find out that they are now in fact highly allergic?

Cautionary tales I heard a story not too long ago of a woman hiking in the Adirondacks who stepped off the trail to relieve herself and accidentally disturbed a bee’s nest. Naturally defending their home, the bees attacked, giving her ten or 15 stings. Within five minutes the poor woman’s face swelled to four times its normal size, closing her wind duct and making it almost impossible for her to get even a small breath. She very possibly would have died had not, quite miraculously, another hiker appeared with an EpiPen in his first-aid kit to give her the proper remedy.

Tragically, a few years ago I lost a very dear friend in almost exactly this way. My wife and I were out in Montauk to get in some serious summer surfing. I spent my afternoons doing handyman work on the beach shack where my friend was staying.

Skateboard legend and all-around great guy Andy Kessler disturbed some wasps. They swarmed him, stinging him numerous times. And with no prior history or knowledge of any type of allergic reaction to insect venom, he died at the way-tooearly age of 48.

For the kind of guy that Andy was who, in undaunted service to his passion for skateboarding had broken so many bones he had lost track, that he could be felled by a few little wasps was nearly beyond comprehension. But such is the mystery of allergies and the oft-times fragility of human bodies.

That mystery is at the heart of this beguiling ailment. For many it’s difficult to say who might be born with allergies, who may develop them at different times throughout their life, or who might never have any type of allergy at all. For the most part I myself fall into this last category, though both of my parents have been dealing with their own minor allergic struggles for years, my father with his hay fever and my mother with her generally mild summer reactions to pollen. And me?

Nothing, nada, zilch.

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Ulster Publishing Co. Different taste sensations That’s not to say that I don’t have the occasional odd response to certain things that crop up in the world. The following is an example, and a nearperfect instance of a summer allergy.

One of our lovely native species of sunflower that grows prolifically in our area is the Jerusalem artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus), also called sunroot, sunchoke, earth apple or topinambour. As its root is quite large and bulbous it is used as a vegetable and can be delicious if cooked properly. If it’s not cooked the right way it has the quality of causing sometimes severe gastric distress that may present itself in a loud, melodic and tooting flatulence. Thus it has been dubbed with the aptly applied nickname, for the some of us whose sense of humor can easily drop to that of a ten-year-old, as “Fartichoke.”

I am either blessed or cursed that it grows quite abundantly on my property, that I have a passion for cooking, and that I use as much of what I can grow in the meals I prepare. So my first outing with said sunflower, though it was delicious, had the unpleasant (to put it mildly) side effect of cramps and the serious clenching of certain very necessary muscles. The strange thing about the plant and its root is that whether cooked properly or not some people have no negative reaction to what made the wife and me rather ill.

Similarly (and I am aware how far off topic I may be straying) and equally strange is the mysterious nature of one of my favorite herbs, cilantro. To many people, a chopped-up handful or two can be added to almost anything. But to a select

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few, what to me is a glorious and heaven-sent herb taste is to them not unlike soapy dishwater, decidedly nasty and wholly unpalatable. I find the whole idea of someone having such a markedly differing taste sensation strange and hard to fathom. So maybe this little aside can be categorized as a summer allergy after all.

Help for sufferers If interested, one can literally go down the allergen rabbit hole, exploring the new hybrid allergies that occur when two or more allergies fuse creating a whole new beast of itchy burning eyes, scratchy throats, and heads so clogged it

Think Pink Locally

hurts even to think. Or perhaps one might delve into the worsening of allergen triggers due to the heightened levels of global warming. Asthmatics in particular are being hard hit by the unbridled, arrogant and blind abuse of our fragile natural world, making even our hopefully sweet air a hard torture to breathe.

All this sounds so horrific. What can be done for those who suffer? The basic treatment and first go-to medication is your standard antihistamine such as Benadryl. Though highly effective the side effects of these meds can be equally undesirable: extreme drowsiness, dry mouth, constipation, etc.

For some the exact opposite side effects can mani-

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HEALTHY COMMUNITIES BEGIN HERE

fest themselves when taking a med like Sudafed.

There are now so-called second-generation antihistamines that do a similar job fighting the allergy without the negative side effects.

Then there is allergy immunotherapy treatment which involves administering doses of allergens to accustom the body to induce specific long-term tolerance. They are introduced to the body in either sublingual tablets or subcutaneous injections.

As for natural remedies, certain herbs have been shown to be as effective as antihistamines in treating hay fever and other summer allergens such as those of the grass- and pollen-based variety. Butterbur, nettles and goldenseal are three herbs tthat have had great success in their own differing and unique preparations.

In the end none of us want to suffer or see others suffer either. Why some are burdened with seasonal allergies and some aren’t is just one of those unanswerable things that have to be dealt with.

If a surgical mask helps (to be precise, a NIOSHrated 95 filter mask), wear the damn mask and to hell with how it looks.

If you need to stay indoors on high-pollen days of summer, why not spend it with a classic novel you’ve always said you were going to read and had never gotten around to? Seek out what meds work best for you, whether natural or not, and take them.

Finding our own unique path through life is the job that each one of us is saddled with and whether we choose to find it or not is our decision alone.

As Ram Dass once so sagely said, “Our sufferings and challenges in life are the curriculum of our enlightenment.” Though I fall well short of living that truism on a daily basis I absolutely believe in its veracity.

With that said, happy summer. Now go jump in a lake.

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| 9

More chicken problems

M

ore than 100,000 people were sickened by food-related illness outbreaks between 2009 and 2015, according to a new analysis by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Chicken has been confirmed as the cause of about 12 percent of those cases, with pork and seeded vegetables coming in second and third for number of illnesses caused, both with about ten percent each.

Fish and dairy caused more individual outbreaks than any other food groups, according to the analysis, but those outbreaks were smaller and sickened fewer total people.

The CDC data, published in the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, found that only a small percentage of the 9.4 million foodborne illnesses reported each year are associated with recognized outbreaks, but still resulted in 100,939 illnesses, 5699 hospitalizations, and 145 deaths nationwide over a six-year period.

Ross named WMC regional executive

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estchester Medical Center’s health network has named Robert S. Ross executive vce-president and lead executive for the health network’s hospitals in Dutchess, Ulster and Delaware counties.

Ross will work with hospital teams at MidHudson Regional Hospital in Poughkeepsie, HealthAlliance Hospital: in Kingston, and Margaretville Hospital in Margaretville.

A native of Brooklyn, Ross most recently served as the chief operating officer at MedStar Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C., and previously served as President and CEO of St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital in Newburgh, where he spent 14 years.

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The war at home Veterans on the forefront of our opioid battles

By Jillian Nadiak

O

n the morning of April 1, 2016, I received a phone call I never expected, In hindsight, I should have been less surprised than I was.

Veterans are twice as likely to die as a result of an accidental opioid overdose than non-veterans, according to a 2011 study of the federal veterans’ (VA) health system.

Veterans who served in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are at an even higher risk.

My own brother will be part of the next slew of statistic reporting. Adam joined the United States Army right out of high school. He manned the border between North and South Korea and then served as a sergeant in the war in Afghanistan. He flourished in the military, and in 2005 was named Soldier of the Year for the 67th Signal Battalion.

He later worked as a contractor in Iraq before securing a position with FlightSafety International as an information technology analyst for security and disaster recovery.

His success, however, did not mute the chronic pain he suffered as a result of a back injury sustained in Afghanistan. He also struggled with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and anxiety. His family, including myself, still lack information on how he acquired his injury. We did not realize the severity of his PTSD. Like many veter-

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The late Adam Nadiak’s official military portrait. ans who suffer from the disorder, he was not one to talk about the war.

After consulting with a VA doctor to manage his pain, Adam was prescribed a prescription painkiller. Surgery, he was told, was too risky.

Thus began his almost-ten-year struggle with addiction.

“It is an old story with a new coping mechanism, a deadly one,” said Kevin Keaveny of the Veterans Wooden Boat Workshop group, based in Connelly. “Some veterans are susceptible,” he explained.

“By our nature and training, we don’t always seek help. That would be considered weakness. So we attempt to manage things on our own. Unregulated and in a susceptible state, this can be disastrous.”

Many of the veterans Keaveny has encountered are nursing injuries from their time in the service.

“They eat painkillers like candy and joke about it.

They also talk about the opioids they were prescribed and how easy it would be to get hooked,” he said. “When recovering from an injury, it was the first thing they prescribed me. It’s apparent why opioids would be used to self-medicate physical and mental-health issues.”

My brother used the pills to numb his back pain as well as for his mental health. I know about the dreams of motors and negative messages he had. I found more about his feelings of lack of self-worth only after finding letters he wrote that I am not sure he ever sent their intended recipients.

In 2016, Adam had left a tiny apartment his family set him up in and moved into his own place. His pride was palpable. The dark circles and bags had left his face. He searched for opportunities to spend time with his loved ones, regardless of whether he himself enjoyed the activities. He signed the papers and made his down payment to begin training for his master’s belt in karate after years of letting it take the back burner due to his injury.

He died in his bed on a beautiful April morning, his new apartment was hardly moved in to.

Sharing the voyage After several years of scandals hitting the press regarding overprescribing and a knee-jerk reaction to the epidemic by underprescribing to those they used to overprescribe, the VA is now taking measures to combat the opioid crisis in the veteran community. Over the last four years, the VA has reduced opioid use by over 41 percent among the veterans they serve. The federal agency is establishing evidence-based collaborative approaches, reducing reliance on opioids through improved pain management. It is issuing naloxone, a drug designed to rapidly reverse opioid overdoses to over 100,000 veterans, and is acting on more initiatives. According to the video ‘Prescribed To Death,’ awareness of the prescription drug crisis has been heightened. VA’s Stratification Tool for Opioid Risk Mitigation (STORM) “estimates overdose or suicide risk among veterans using or considering opioid therapy,” according to a press release published by the VA. STORM also offers risk-reduction interventions and non-opioid options.

Our community continues to pull together with passionate grassroots approaches. When Kevin

August 9, 2018 Healthy Communities

Ulster Publishing Co.

PHOTO COURTESY OF JILLIAN NADICK

The author and her brother on one of their last vacations together in Cape May, NJ. Keaveny came home from his 2010 deployment to Afghanistan, he was having trouble adjusting to civilian life. In an attempt to find focus, he began building a boat. He had never done so, but having grown up on the water he accepted the challenge.

During the process, he found himself focused, calm and “even happy at times.”

He wanted to share his voyage with other veterans. He has helped seven veterans build their own kayaks since the workshop’s inception in 2016, and will be working with four more in his next workshop. Many other veterans have been volunteers with the organization. Those who benefitted from the workshop’s services plan to return by aid the next group.

The workshop continues to work with veterans recovering from opioid addiction. All are doing well at this time, Keaveny said. The workshop collaborates with resource professionals for guidance in regards to addiction.

“Our biggest strength is peer-to-peer mentorship,” Keaveny said. “Spending time with others that share the same experiences makes for a comfortable, welcome and familiar environment. It is made clear to all participants there is no judgment [here] and that our mission is them. They earned that. We spend more time bonding than building, to be honest. The kayaks are secondary. Trust and healing are primary.”

Getting vets out for sports In Newburgh, Play For Your Freedom works with hospitalized veterans through peer-to-peer support and fitness. The group’s mission is to help others who have gone through the same experiences. NFL players like Gary Brown of the Green Bay Packers and Odessa Turner of the New York Giants volunteer their time to coach veterans.

“It helps these men and women realize that they are not alone, and that there is hope for a new life and purpose,” Play For Your Freedom founder David Lionheart said. “They fought for for everyone else. Now it is their turn to take advantage of the freedoms that they have helped establish and maintain.”

Lionheart established Play For Your Freedom in 2016 when a friend of his returned home from the Iraq-Afghanistan war. “He looked perfect on the outside, but he helped educate me that not everyone is visible,” he said. “It was at that moment I began the journey to raise awareness and funds for veterans and their families who bear wounds both seen and unseen.”

Lionheart works on a daily basis with veterans who struggle with substance abuse issues. “You see men and women who are physically out of shape, mentally out of shape, and struggling to maintain confidence within themselves,” he said.

“To realize that they do not need drugs or alcohol to have a good time is one of the nuances of our programming. Surrounding them with positivity instead of people who are putting them down and continuing the circle of bad habits, including substance use.”

Some veterans in these facilities have made continuous bad choices. Their family and friends of-

ten either don’t know they have been admitted or choose not to come until the patient is discharged

| 11

and back on their feet. “These are the toughest and most important visits,” Lionheart said. “We promise that we will be on the outside when they get out providing fitness programming and support, so it’s crucial that we actually are when they do.”

The sports outings are useful. “The reality of it is that it has nothing to do with the sport itself but with getting someone out on the field moving and part of a team,” said Lionheart. “When was the last time that you gave somebody a high-five while smiling? Imagine what these men and women feel when they get that for the first time. It’s beyond being happy, it’s actually becoming alive again.”

There is no substitute for the natural endorphins that run through our body while we are physically active.

It is my hope that men and women like my brother will not have to face another, and perhaps, more difficult war upon returning home.

Play For Your Freedom will be hosting a workshop on September 10 at Dietz Stadium for any local veterans and their families. Lionheart can be reached at david@playforyourfreedom.org.

The Veterans Wooden Boat Workshop is actively seeking volunteers and participants. Applications are available on their website at vetsonwater.org.

If you are a veteran struggling with the effects of drug addiction or are having thoughts of suicide, call 1-800-273-8255 and press 1, or send a text message to 838255 to receive confidential support 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

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9, 2018 12 | August Healthy Communities

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Insufficient resources Mental-health counseling at SUNY

By Meg Tohill

A

t a time when the need for mental-health counseling on college campuses is on the rise nationwide, more than a dozen SUNY New Paltz students I talked to have reported dissatisfaction with the services provided by their institution last spring. They complained about long wait times, small staff numbers and referrals to outpatient programs.

Though the three students quoted in this article have not been identified by name, their names are known to the author and editor.

Some students expressed concern that the campus Psychological Counseling Center (PCC) was acting more like a triage center than a guidance facility for mental-health issues. The PCC reported having seen 700 students in 2017 and receiving over 1500 phone calls.

A 2016 survey by the American College Health Association found that more than half of college students reported feelings of hopelessness and anxiety. Director of the PCC Gwen Lloyd said the local numbers have increased since this study.

Lloyd thinks student discontent about campus services may have to do with the limited number of sessions each student is allocated. The center limits each student to up to the possibility four sessions a semester, or eight annually. But Lloyd said it’s rare for the center to allocate an individual student that many sessions. Most students are given a referral instead.

WIKICOMMONS

Many students feel that SUNY’s mental- health safeguards for students are too few, and too troublesome to navigate.

“What students don’t understand is that the policy is a blanket policy,” she explained. “Very rarely will we let a student come in eight times for sessions, because with each individual student we conduct a close assessment, trying to figure out what is best for them. To have a student open up and trust one of our staff members only to have to end the progress could be detrimental.”

After the staff determines the best course of action, the student is usually referred to outpatient therapy or one of the counseling groups offered on campus.

J., a sophomore at the college, said that she wouldn’t suggest the school’s services to everyone.

“I had been struggling with an eating disorder last fall when it got particularly bad,” she said. “When

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Ulster Publishing Co. I went to the PCC, they didn’t have anybody on staff that dealt specifically with eating disorders, and I was referred to an outpatient program almost immediately. The problem was that I didn’t have a car on campus and had no way of getting there.”

The eight-session policy is not there to discourage students, Lloyd said, but to allow a larger amount of students to be seen. Currently, there are five counselors to accommodate over 7000 students.

The college administration expects the program acceptance rate to grow steadily over the course of the next few years. Lloyd believes more staff members will be needed. “We placed a request for an additional staff member back in the fall of 2016, and it only just got approved,” she said. “We’ve had a few prospects, but hiring someone for the position cannot be taken lightly. We need to find someone who will be a perfect fit for our student body.”

M

any students are appreciative for the help they can get. C., a sophomore, said she was appreciative of the attentiveness of the existing staff. “I was struggling with how to address a friend who very clearly needed to talk to someone,” she said. “I went to a group counseling session, and the counselor on hand guided me through how I could help my friend. They assured me that both my friend, as well as myself, had the tools to get help and that I had done the right thing in coming to talk to someone.”

Lloyd explained that wait times for an appointment can be as long as three weeks, and the delay causes some students to become discouraged.

“Based on the urgency of a student’s need, we assess when the best time for them to come in would be,” Lloyd said. “I ask them, ‘Is this an emergency, or can this wait?’ Based on their response, we make a decision. Sometimes students will say they can wait, but given the tone of their voice we make the quick judgment to see them earlier.”

In 2015, SUNY New Paltz conducted a statewide survey with campus officials to assess student mental-health issues. The study was facilitated by the SUNY Mental Health Task Force.

After a year of working with SUNY professionals, the task force found similar issues throughout the SUNY system in mental-health counseling. The investigation resulted in a call for more staffing, including the addition of a psychiatrist to existing services, more convenient operating hours, and outpatient referrals tailored to accommodate students’ health insurance.

Lloyd has noticed students are less amenable to outpatient referrals when there’s a co-pay. “For some students, a co-pay is a big responsibility that they can’t undertake,” she said. “Because of this, we typically look for offices with a sliding-scale copay, which means it would be waived. This doesn’t always work out, though.”

L, another sophomore, expressed great dissatisfaction with the on-campus center. The process of getting help only increased her anxiety. “It was

hard for me to go and ask for help and when I walked in, I had to fill out an incredibly long form before anybody would even pay attention to me,” she said. “After that, it seemed like they were more focused on handing me off than focusing on my problem. I was in a bad spot. I couldn’t focus on the co-pay and filling out forms when I needed help.”

“We know there is a developed interest from professionals in giving these students sufficient resources,” Topping said. “All we can do now is hope the new provost values the same thing.”

S

UNY policy prevents the PCC from contacting a student’s parents about a visit, but a student’s anonymity vanishes the minute they are escorted to a hospital or begin outpatient therapy. Health-insurance quotes will be sent to the student’s household.

Although the task force compiled its report for the provost in 2016, committee chair Ann Topping, dean of students, said that there’s been a slow start to changes. She thinks this to be a direct result of limited funding. “We held a conference in Syracuse on April 27 of this year and we had about four or five representatives from different SUNY institutions,” she said. “What we found was that there was an overwhelming amount of people who were interested in continuing the efforts put in by the task force two years ago.”

There was no representative from SUNY New Paltz.

Some things discussed in the initial report, like early prevention, were difficult for campuses to practice, Topping conceded. “The provost requested the formation of the task forces to combat the increase of incidents occurring across the board involving mental-health crises,” she said.

“We developed a SUNY-wide concept of promoting ‘resiliency.’ This means that we will provide students with the tools to cope and adapt when things go wrong and they need help.”

The provost who initiated the task force has since left the position. Topping says the ball is in each campus’ court now. The SUNY provost’s office was not available for comment.

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Lord have mercy

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She went to the doctor with a gynecological issue, which turned into a nightmare. She was in the very early stages of pregnancy.

Surprise!

However, the pregnancy was in crisis. She would lose that baby. And, if that wasn’t enough, she was diagnosed with fourth-stage lymphoma. There were no symptoms. It was as if this killing presence lurked all around, undetected, until it was too late.

The doctors recommended that Franke Ogg make her arrangements, make peace with her fate. They suggested chemo, but did not predict survival. It was too late for that.

“So I didn’t do it. I would have done it if they offered a hint of hope. But why poison myself?”

Ogg began doing what she needed to do to change her life. She changed her diet and her lifestyle. She ate only organic food. She removed sugar from her diet.

“Cancer feeds on sugar,” she tells me. “I do eat meat,” she adds.

Once a compulsive workaholic, she adjusted her schedule to support her peace. “I used to work day and night. I was a specialist in stress management. I had all the tools for health, but I didn’t use them.” She turned her attention to life. She became a devotee of meditation, and practiced it deeply. “Meditation is where I got what I needed to do.”

She was diagnosed in 1984. In February 1985, she knew she was in remission. And she conceived a child. And carried that child.

And bore that child, now a grown woman, and a mother herself.

In 1988, Ogg’s story was made into the film Leap of Faith. It was produced by Marlo Thomas, starring Anne Archer and Sam Neill.

“I wanted to influence culture, offer an alternative, but still complementary to conventional medicine,” she said. “Had I been offered a conventional cure, hope, I would have taken it. I do not wish to discourage anyone from pursuing actions that seem, feel right for her or him. I do wish to empower people, and to assist them in finding that active, enabling energy in every day.”

Franke Ogg continues to work in the mentalhealth field, with a specialty in counseling those facing serious challenges, as well as those who simply wish to live honestly and bravely.

The zeitgeist, Franke Ogg remarks, is much better now than it was. “The thinking has advanced, the methods have improved. I do not have, nor have I ever had, an axe to grind. I am doing my best to make an impact where I can.”

Rediger believes that miracles only contradict what we know of nature at this point in time. Modern physics is, for example, way ahead of traditional science, and its implications have not been fully incorporated into its science’s perspectives and methods yet. “So I believe that miracles actually are consistent with mental and spiritual laws that we are only beginning to study,” Rediger says.

“This is the only way I can understand the similarities among all those with remarkable recoveries.”

Debby Franke Ogg practices in Olivebridge. Her website can found at DebbyFrankeOgg.com.

Stephen Larsen, PhD, LMHC, BCIA

Wayne T. Miller, O.D., PLLC

One woman’s step back from terminal cancer

By Elisabeth Henry

B

ack in the smoky days of Coca-Cola on the supper table, when MacDonald’s was trendy and most people left physical activity behind in the high-school gym, disease, like sex, was a taboo subject. Nobody said “cancer.” Someone might say “c.” Most, in answer to a question about someone’s gaunt appearance, would grow very still and stare into the questioner’s eyes meaningfully.

Today, one cannot listen to a commercial radio program without hearing advertisements about healthcare facilities that deal exclusively with cancer. There are many ways to suffer and die, but in this, our time, cancer is the thing that scares us most.

It is the fear that may hold the key. The key to what? The cure? Are we talking miracles here?

“I do not believe that we can think ourselves into health. But I do believe that principles of mind and spirit exist that we have not even begun to scientifically map in the West, and that we should be doing so.” This from Jeffrey Rediger an instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School in an interview in the Washington Post. A medical doctor, Debby Franke Ogg. Rediger also earned a master’s degree in divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary.

“It’s amazing to me that in the history of media great athlete I would study Michael Jordan or cine we have never studied the people who beat Serena Williams. But in medicine we have too the odds and find a path to health after being told long ignored or dismissed people with remarkable that their illness is incurable or that they are gorecoveries.” ing to die,” continues Rediger. “You would think Rediger related documented cases of people that these are the people that we would most want who have received terminal diagnoses, only to go to study, that perhaps they found golden keys to on to confound the medical establishment with health and vitality that we would want to undercomplete and total remissions. Health. And wellstand. Certainly it’s true that if I wanted to become being.

This is mildly reassuring to read. However, it is the fact that there is someone living in our very own community with this history that makes it real.

Debby Franke Ogg was a successful professional in mental-health care, newly married, and in the prime of life. Beautiful, with a keen wit and gentle nature. Her life was good.

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Growing old Three main choices await us now

By Violet Snow

N

ow that our kid is well out of the house and launched on her own course, my husband and I have turned to taking care of our parents.

Once upon a time, elder care meant moving Mom or Dad into the house of one of their offspring. My great-grandmother rotated through the homes of her five grown kids, spending a few months at a time with each one.

Every elder has different abilities and preferences to take into account. When figuring out a living situation, it takes ingenuity to figure out options that work. Fortunately, there are many resources we can turn to. I hope your aging family members get what they need.

Today, not that many seniors are eager to live with their children, who may have very different lifestyles from their parents. My husband and I, with the help of siblings, have settled on various options for our three surviving parents: an independent living facility, a nursing home, and staying at home with a full-time aide. They each have benefits and drawbacks.

Independent living facility My mother nursed my father at home for a year when he was ill. After his death from a heart attack, she continued to live in the house they had owned since 1957. Gradually, while continuing to work part-time in the family business, her energy diminished until she was nearly bedridden with exhaustion.

I considered moving her into my house. I knew one person who had had a great experience living with her mom for the last eight months of her life, but I was discouraged by the example of two other friends who were miserable living with their parents. Plus, there was the issue of stairs.

It was my father-in-law who suggested my mother might be happier in a retirement home, known these days as “independent living.” In a building reminiscent of a college dorm, Mom is surrounded by other seniors but has her own room with private bath and kitchenette. The monthly rent includes three meals a day, a weekly room cleaning, and a schedule of group activities.

Mom goes for bridge, rummikub (an offshoot of mahjongg), and “Mind Your Mind,” a set of word games aimed at keeping aging brains nimble. The place is clean and affordable, and with 120 residents there are plenty of options for friendship, as well as the means to avoid people she doesn’t like.

Mom is frustrated by a couple of aspects of the community. She has no patience for people with dementia (of whom there are many) asking her the same questions over and over. It’s depressing for her to worry she might share a similar fate down the line. Luckily, she’s made a few friends who “have all their buttons,” as she puts it, and can keep her sharp mind company.

Another problem is the slow service in the dining room. The underpaid waiters and waitresses don’t always arrive at work, and the rapid turnover means a chronic lack of experienced workers.

Waiting an hour to be served is understandably annoying. On the other hand, she doesn’t have a full calendar of appointments to get to on time.

And the food, while often lousy, is intermittently quite good.

Sometimes I feel bad about consigning my mother to a community of old people, but it’s better for her than being isolated in a suburban house that she doesn’t have the energy to take care of.

My brother lives nearby, and I’m an hour away. I call her on the phone every night and visit a cou-

PHOTOS BY VIOLET SNOW

The author’s in-laws, Helen and Jack. happy to see us, although she tends to ask, “How did you find me?” The aides and nurses adore her placid good nature. I’m sure there are less expensive nursing homes that are also more depressing, but this one seems to work well for Helen and the family.

The author’s mother, Barbara.

ple of times a month, taking her out for doctor visits and meals. After almost two years there, she’s presently flourishing.

If, at some point, her ability to take care of her daily needs declines, the residence has an assisted-care option. Aides can be hired for as many hours as needed, and Mom can remain within the community.

Nursing home My husband’s parents, Helen and Jack, managed well in their Brooklyn apartment up until their mid-nineties. Helen was going blind, and Jack was going deaf, but they compensated for each other. She cooked and made phone calls.

He navigated when they took their walkers to the elevator and across the street to sit on the bench outside the park.

Then Helen fell in the kitchen and broke her ankle. After a hospital stay, she went into a nursing home in Westchester, near her daughter’s house, for rehab. The exercises were unsuccessful, and she ended up a long-term resident of the nursing home, since by then she was unable to get in and out of bed by herself. My sister-in-law visits several times a week and drives Helen to Brooklyn twice a month to visit Jack.

Many of the nursing-home residents have severe physical and mental limitations and spend hours grouped around a television. Helen has some dementia, but rather than making her bitter and miserable it has preserved her dry humor. It has given her a sense of living in the present that seems to work in her favor. When we visit, she is

Staying at home with aides When Helen first went into the nursing home, Jack moved in with my sister-in-law. But he missed the many friends he had made over the years among his Brooklyn neighbors. After a few months, he moved back to his apartment. Two men were hired, each of them living with Jack for half the week to make meals, clean the house, take him outside in a wheelchair, and make sure all his transitions to and from bed are made safely.

Jack’s mind is crystal-clear at 99. He spends most of his time reading books and watching TV with the captions on. Neighbors drop in often, and the aide takes him to the lobby in the afternoon to greet kids on their way home from school. My husband, who works from home as a freelance writer and loves the city, spends about a third of his time at Jack’s apartment to keep him from getting too lonely, especially in summer, when the neighbors go on vacation. Since my husband doesn’t drive, I stop by for a weekend once a month, and we take Jack out for a meal, which he finds a welcome break from the apartment.

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