So It's been a while since I had a rant here on the blog....but this post is definitely going to be one!
......But hear me out..... as it may be a very valid rant for those of us who look after our own care budgets and use payroll companies to help with pay calculations, payslips, and tax and national insurance liabilities.
You start out (at the beginning of time) purely as a parent/carer of a disabled child...... and over time somehow you end up as a "multi-conglomerant employer of care workers" with all the extra responsibilities that the roll entails. For some people that may not be such a big deal as they may very well have done that roll before... but for others like myself (who had never employed anyone before) it can be a hugely daunting task.
I love to read books related to health, healing, well being and nutrition so when I was recommended The Blue zones recently I thought that I would give it a try. Here is a brief summary of what it's all about.
Dan Buettner (Author and National Geographic Explorer) together with some of the top scientist in the field of longevity traveled around and studied why some people tended to live longer in certain geographical areas in the world.... these areas have been labeled as the "Blue Zones". The areas they researched were Okinawa Japan, Sardinia, Loma Linda California, Costa Rica, and Ikaria Greece. For some reason, each of these regions has a higher than normal density of individuals who have lived to be centenarians.
Dan and his fellow researcher's purpose was to find out why this is the case and to see if they could discover any common factors.
Why Henibean?
I mentioned in my introduction that I have four children. My second eldest is a girl named Heni. Hence my nickname for her being Henibean. She is super cute and super special in more ways than one. She is a little miracle. In July we will hopefully be celebrating her 20th birthday. This is no mean feat considering that she has Edwards Syndrome (Trisomy 18...full form) and considering the statistics have always been against her!
Live birth prevalence is 2.3 babies per 10,000 births. Only 9% diagnosed pre-term make it to birth. Sadly most babies with Edwards are usually miscarried.
