Life would never be the same.

My father made it through his lung surgery ok, although I will not know any details until I get to see him on Saturday. The doctors do not know if they got all the cancer and I am not sure how they determine that. I am not looking forward to seeing him in that hospital bed wrapped in all that equipment. I am going to take my camera and take pictures so that I can keep them on hand to show my girls as my personal anti-smoking campaign. I want them to see the direct affects of a lifetime of abusing your body. Not now, of course, they are so young that I do not want to scare them with seeing their grandfather like that. But, as they get older, I think it is important that they see the direct correlation between a healthy lifestyle, loving yourself and your physical being. I, unfortunately, come from a background that lacks education on the relationship between diet, exercise, drugs, alcohol, mental health and physical health. I have seen this poor education in other small communities as well. I am witness to this deficit in life tutelage significantly shortening the life of those close to me. I believe this is another issue that is falling through the cracks with our current education system (see previous post.) Our government wants to make sure that our kids can 'read & write' (not even well, at that) but where is our physical education, our health classes dealing with nutrition, our counselors who can deal with esteem and psychological issues? That is why we can see a rise in obesity, eating disorders, drug and alcohol abuse and all the related health issues. It is all so frustrating...