their irresponsible expression were very difficult for me to deal
with as a child, but it taught me to work on diverting someone's
negative thoughts, and to avoid getting dragged into them myself,
skills I had to use continually much later on when I began to manage
mentally and physically ill clients on a residential basis.

My own personal health problems had their genesis long before my own
birth. Our diet was awful, with very little fresh fruit or
vegetables. We normally had canned, evaporated milk, though there
were a few rare times when raw milk and free-range fertile farm eggs
were available from neighbors. Most of my foods were heavily salted
or sugared, and we ate a great deal of fat in the form of lard. My
mother had little money but she had no idea that some of the most
nutritious foods are also the least expensive.

It is no surprise to me that considering her nutrient-poor,
fat-laden diet and stressful life, my mother eventually developed
severe gall bladder problems. Her degeneration caused progressively
more and more severe pain until she had a cholecystectomy. The
gallbladder's profound deterioration had damaged her liver as well,
seeming to her surgeon to require the removal of half her liver.
After this surgical insult she had to stop working and never
regained her health. Fortunately, by this time all her children were
independent.

I had still more to overcome. My eldest brother had a nervous
breakdown while working on the DEW Line (he was posted on the Arctic
Circle watching radar screens for a possible incoming attack from
Russia). I believe his collapse actually began with our childhood
nutrition. While in the Arctic all his foods came from cans. He also