JMJ
January 06,2012
Epiphany or Kings’ Day
Christmas for many people whose Church calendar is before the Julian Reforms
Our Christmas at Home
Mr. Verne Studer told us this story. His uncle John Studer had to travel on his trap line to get supplies. He ran into difficulty and he got serious frost bite of his feet. He was taken to Turtleford Hospital . He heard the doctors whisper in the hall that one foot would have to be amputated. He grabbed his clothes and his boots and ran or stumbled out of the
hospital . He told his friend that he had to get back to Loon Lake and to take him in the horse and wagon. However the pain in his foot was so bad that he couldn’t sit up front. He tied himself with a rope connected to the wagon and walked behind, keeping up with the horse and wagon. He walked the 30 miles to Loon Lake. By the time he arrived at his cabin the foot was healed. Mr. Studer is including the full story of this in the book that he is writing.
Mrs. Martin Peterson, wife of a past Conservative leader, told me this story. She was in a blizzard and she had to walk many miles. Her legs became frost bitten and she was taken to the hospital. The doctors thought that her legs needed to be amputated. However she was pregnant and they did not want to do anything to jeopardise the life of the baby. For many months she stayed in the hospital. Her blackened legs healed. She left the hospital walking on two legs holding a lovely baby daughter.
The leading cause of amputees in Canada is diabetes. It would seem that we need a serious review of the value of amputations. Many diabetics die of heart failure . Their cardio- vascular system is inadequate. The solution is exercise. So how can you keep on doing physical work and exercising with toes removed, then a foot removed, then sitting in a wheel chair with two stumps?
As I was staring at my no longer plump feet when we were trying for months to correct the situation with no access to proper health care, I noticed the ligaments, nerves, blood vessels connected to my toes. We visited a home farm and mill this summer. The toes were like the pullies of the machinery that sent things up and down, connected to other pullies and other supply and output routes. Long before December 21st I decided that no toe is going to go. It would be like cutting the pullies connected to the top of the machinery and watching the system collapse. Perhaps a mill specialist could come and tie the right ropes and wires together. Perhaps not.
When people bead with a loom a wrong colour on the first row can’t be corrected with taking a pair of scissors and cutting that first line. The whole warp and woof of the pattern collapses and beads are scattered everywhere. You can’t keep healthy with whittling away at your first row of nerves, blood vessels, bones of your body.
Everyone I know who has lost one toe is now dead. Where are these living examples of nine toes are fine, eight is just great?
In the United States where health care is still an individual responsibility 95% of diabetics recover . In the United Kingdom with generations of socialised medicine 15% recover. I said recover. I didn’t say manage.
Diabetes is like a demonic plague in the North. Here are some solutions:.
1.Work your trap line and do it well
2. Heat with wood, that needs to be gathered, cut down, hauled, stacked,and split.
3. Fix up your own house. Even if it’s a Sask Housing Corporation house paint, renovate, decorate. Refuse to be a kept captive controlled by indifference.
4. Don’t drink. 5.. Don’t do dope and don’t let others do it in your home. It cuts your oxygen supply, causes inertia and despair. Love life, your own. God gave it to you Gay
