Husband had to see the doctor today and found out that

At least he went to the doctor when he started to feel something was wrong. His oldest sister had a series of strokes, but did not do anything, and now she is in a nursing home. Anyway he has to go for another evaluation next week. I guess that he will have to follow a diet, and do the exercises.

The trouble is my husband does not like any healthy pasta even the one that Catelli came out with. He can taste the difference even when he puts lots of sauce on it. I will look to see if there is any at Barillos.

I am usually calm. I was prepared for something like this to happen as his oldest sister had a stroke, his oldest brother died of cancer, so when he reached sixty, I thought "Oh no, here it comes." What makes me mad is he took early retirement and wanted to spend a lot of it traveling instead of going to the doctors all the time.

Strokes run in my husband's family. I suspect the diet he ate as a kid sort of helped. He was raised Mennonite and they ate lots of pork sausage, potatoes, perogis, and hardly any salad. And well even in the over thirty years we have been married, I wonder whether the healthier food he has eaten has made any difference.

It runs in his family, just like heart disease and diabetes runs in mine. I am rather confused, I mean how can we go on traveling> I was hoping for us to become snow birds, go away in the winter, but I guess that is now out of the question. We do have Blue Cross, so that is a good thing. I know God will take care of us though.

oh, it is always never easy when it runs in the family i am cautious in mine too.
anyway, at least you guys have insurance i have seen others who dont and it is not a good situation, i wish this country can be helpful to those who dont have one coz not all can afford it specially the older ones.
i am telling my husband to tell his parents to enjoy life while they can and stop worrying and savings for something that they dont need now.
i feel it is necessary to save but it is also necessary to enjoy life and not worry too much specially if you are retired.
just my own opinion i guess.
anyway, i wish you all the best and hope things will get better.
takecare

I hope so. We were at physiotherapy and the doctor said my husband is making improvement. We have another appointment next week and then he will see a specialist or someone to see if anything else can be done. (Like someone to tell him that white bread and margarine are not that good for him and he should eat more vegetables.)

that's great to know that you're husband is showing improvement i hope his next appointment will be easy and will not instruct him to avoid eating foods he likes/enjoy. i know it is only for his own goodness, just know it is hard coz it happened to me before and all i can eat is soup and cracker for 2 weeks, ewww.
takecare and hope your hubby get/feel better soon.

Thank you for your concern and your prayers. He is going to see a specialist sometime in the next few days. Then I hope he gets more interested in healthy food and also that his leg gets better. I want things to get back to normal. Hard when I get along faster than he does and I am older.

you're very much welcome,. i understand what you mean by wanting his legs to get back to normal. im sure he dont like that he is slower than you but hopefully his check ups and healthy foods will help him a lot.
it is not easy when you are in that age though. my mom used to tell me that she used to think she will be so active till her 70's but she is only 57 (soon 58) and complaining about having a hard time getting up when she sits for a long time.
anyway, i wish you both the best.
takecare

That's why I try to avoid sitting as much as possible. My maternal grandmother told me that she did not like sitting for a long time. She had arthritis and was always moving about. My husband is lucky though, he has good cholesterol and it is not due to his eating, although he is eating more salads than he did when we first married.

yeah arthritis is one of the biggest problem in old age. my mom is very active on her younger days till now but when she do gardening that's the time she feel like her weights are all in her knees and she cant hardly get up.
im glad that your husband likes salad, i have learned to love it too. my husband is still not wanting any of it so i try to make steamed broccoli or mashed potato or vegetable soup so he can have a normal vegetable in his system. he will tell me that multi vitamins will do the same.
oh well, such a hard headed one.
takecare and thanks for the response

Yes it is amazing how much healthy stuff you can sneak in a soup. My husband does not like cauliflower and he does not like those Romano beans, but I made some Minestrone and used a package of frozen Italian vegetables that had the vegetables that he hated, and he liked it.

haha, that is so true the only way to trick them is to be sneaky about it.
it's funny how your husband hate it and love it on the soup you made.
i do the same not only to hubby but to my nieces as well.
have you tried adding grated carrots to your spaghetti? my husbands and my nieces dont like carrots so that is another way of me to trick them eating it, the carrots is so fine that they wont even noticed it when it is cooked, another secret that my hubby found out one time haha
takecare

That sounds like a good idea. Only my husband does not like too many carrots in tomato sauce.

oh dont worry my husband is the same so i only put a piece or two depends on how big they are. i dont want to overwhelmed the tomato sauce and just a little is enough as long as the nutrients of the carrots is there, so far it is working and it doesnt seem to affect the taste if you do it right.
takecare

I had to get rid of the tomatoes when we went to P.E.I and I used a bit too much carrots. Did not like it much myself.

sorry for my ignorance but what is P.E.I. i try to look it up but couldnt see anything other than prince edward
anyway, i dont like anything too much so i try to make it as balance as i can or at least not overwhelming the other flavor except of course if it's meant to be that way.
have a great weekends.
takecare!

P.E.I. stands for Prince Edward Island. It is that small ISLAND across from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick off the EAst Coast of Canada.

Thank you. He is getting better, doing the physiotherapy and now we are waiting for an appointment to see if more can be done. I find it worrying that I am now walking faster than him. It used to be that I had to really walk fast to catch up with him. NOw I feel like he is much older than me, and I am older than he is.

I try to get him to read the labels but he is more interested in saving money. Why I was looking at crushed tomatoes and he told me to get the store brand, but that contains more salt. He has enough money, stocks and stuff, and yet he feels as though he was still living on the farm as a kid when they hardly had enough good to eat.

Yes, that is how my husband is, save money, not his health..

They are working on it. But I do wish he would do the exercises at home instead of laying on the couch watching TV or sitting at the computer listening to his radio plays. He does get physiotherapy and he found out that his blood pressure and everything else is normal and that clot probably happened when he was giving blood. So he will have to continue his blood thinner medicine and maybe not have anymore of that thick salad dressing he likes. So I do not have to worry about him dying prematurely.

very good but he does need to get off the couch and do something phisical

He will be. He just have to take his blood thinner medicine and get off the damn couch, go for walks more often and decide that he no longer loves white bread. That is going to be hard to do. He is so stubborn.

Give up white bread? Oh no!

In my husband's family, things start to go wrong in their sixties. His oldest brother died in his sixties, his oldest sister got als after so many strokes in her sixties. He does have another brother who is all right, but then his wife is a manic depressive. My husband has a bad back and arthritis, got it from his mother, and I felt that was what he had at first. He sits around a lot. I figured it was what they ate when they were young, not that healthy. But if it is in the family, you know what to do.