The Dandelion Room in Traralgon, Victoria | Local business

The Dandelion Room

Locality: Traralgon, Victoria

Address: to be advised 3844 Traralgon, VIC, Australia

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24.01.2022 Painting as a tool for depression https://goo.gl/gEWk5U

24.01.2022 The clock helping reduce stress for Australian's living with Alzheimer's and Dementia. Includes 5 x medication alarms and 3 screen display options. $3 from each clock is donated to the Alzheimer's Australia Dementia Research Foundation.

23.01.2022 "I always find myself comforting people with the words I want to hear." Unknown artwork by Pride Nyasha Mapfumo

21.01.2022 Some Kids Find Everyday Stimuli Excruciating, And Scientists Are Finally Figuring Out Why

17.01.2022 BROKEN MAN by Jeff Cyr All I have to offer you is my own personal experience in life. What follows is a small part of my life story. ... The month was January, the year was 2004, my life would be forever changed. I had just spend 8 days in the hospital. I had just gone through with my final back surgery, a laminectomy and fusion of the mid back area. This was the third back surgery for me. 1- Laminectomy and fusion of the lower (lumbar) back in 1997. 2- Cervical neck fusion in May of 2001. 3- Laminectomy and fusion of the mid back area in 2004. This final back surgery left me permanently and totally disabled at the age of 44. I would be unable to return to work. My father was a potato farmer and a wood contractor in Northern Maine. He had instilled in me a very strong work ethic at a very young age. I had different jobs over the years. From a very young age I was a lumberjack. I used to cut down trees in the forest with a chain saw. Fell the trees, cut the limbs off of the trees and cut the trees into 4 foot long sections. I would load these 4 foot long sections of pulpwood onto a trailer with a pulp hook by hand. I would then proceed to unload this trailer full of pulpwood by hand by the side of the road. I would stack the 4 foot long pieces into piles 4 feet in height. I went on to work in a metal fabrication and welding shop. I was fully schooled in metal machinist work, metal fabrication and welding. I went on to weld on destroyer battleships for the US Navy in Bath Maine. This would be my final job. After my final back surgery in January of 2004, I fell into a big depression. I had worked at hard physical jobs all my life. I always worked as much as I possibly could, often times 7 days per week. I was one serious individual. A very serious individual that had a job to do, and I did my job. Here I was totally disabled, in severe pain from the combination of all my back and neck fusions. Fused with titanium rods, plates and screws, with lots of permanent nerve damage throughout my body. I became addicted to oral morphine from the severe pain that I was in. Morphine is very hard on the respiratory system. I had a hard time breathing from the effects of the morphine. I should say that I had a hard time breathing from the combination of 3 things. 1- Addiction to oral morphine in high doses. 2- Was very overweight for most of my life. During this time period I weighed 330 pounds. The photo on the right is me at 330 pounds in June of 2007. 3- I started smoking cigarettes at the age of 15. During this time period I smoked 3 packs of cigarettes per day. I was unable to walk on my own. I had to use a walker or a cane, and I was only able to walk very slowly, and very short distances. I was only able to walk from my lazy boy chair in my living room, to the kitchen sink. When I would go to the grocery store I would have to use the motorized handicap carts to be able to get around the store. I was unable to lay down in a bed to sleep because of the fusions in my back. I would also get severe muscle spasms in my back and my legs, on and off, all day long. I still do to this day. I would have to sleep in my lazy boy recliner, I still do to this day also. You can probably understand why I became depressed at this point in my life. The oral morphine was barely touching the pain. I had to find a way to accept the fact that I would never be able to work again. Face the fact that I could no longer do simple tasks around the house, simple tasks that normal men do every day. At the weight of 330 pounds and the condition that I was in, it would take every ounce of strength that I could muster, along with a cane for support to be able to get out of my lazy boy chair. Because of this, the way that I had to position myself with the cane to lift myself out of my chair, I ended up with a hernia. In April of 2005 I was scheduled for hernia surgery. I went to the hospital for normal blood labs that are taken pre surgery. The doctor called my house and told me that my hernia surgery would be postponed. He told me that I had a fasting blood sugar of 300 mg/dl, and a hemoglobin A1c of 12%. I was sent to a diabetes doctor, an endocrinologist. He gave me 2 scripts for oral diabetes meds. Told me that T2D was a progressive disease, that eventually I would need injected insulin and said, welcome to the club. I thought to myself, fantastic, what a wonderful world. I went on to have the hernia surgery a few months later. My life continued like this for a few more years. I was fed up living this way. I knew that something needed to change, a lot needed to change in my life. One day in the summer of 2008, I went to the grocery store with my wife. I saw a man getting out of his car, walking into the store. This guy was hooked up to an oxygen tank. He was pulling this oxygen tank. He was walking alongside this oxygen tank, pulling it with one hand. This hit me like a ton of bricks, boom! I thought to myself this is going to be me in a few years if I continue with my oral morphine and cigarettes. The only difference is that it would be more difficult for me. I need a cane to walk now. I would need my other arm and hand for the oxygen tank. This is when my life started to make a turn for the better. 1- In October of 2008 I quit smoking cigarettes cold turkey. 2- In January or February of 2009 I quit morphine cold turkey. I had very bad withdrawal symptoms for about 1 month. 3- In April of 2009 I joined a local Gym and started riding a recumbent bike. I Had decided that I had to try and lose weight. I kept a diary of my daily bike rides at the gym. I started off very slowly, 2 minutes the first day. I gradually increased the time and intensity on the bike. I bought myself a heart rate monitor to track my heart rate during my workouts. I started keeping a daily log of my food intake. I kept track of my daily caloric intake. I went on to lose 163 pounds in 14-15 months. My Hemoglobin A1c dropped to 5.9%. My doctor took me off my oral diabetes medication. I felt a lot better. I could breath a lot easier. I was able to get around a little easier. My life was starting to look a lot different, I started to have hope again. Then in the early spring of 2011 I went for routine blood work at my hospital. My primary care doctor called and said she needed to see me. She said that some of my liver enzymes were very elevated, along with my total bilirubin. She told me that I would have to be checked by a gastroenterologist, a liver doctor. The gastroenterologist repeated the liver enzyme tests along with a few others. My liver enzymes came back very elevated. GGT, ALT, AST were all over 120. ALP was also very elevated. Total bilirubin was 2.8 to 3.0. The gastroenterologist ordered a series of diagnostic tests to get to the bottom of this. 1- Ultrasound of the liver. 2- Cat scan of the liver. 3- MRI of the liver, and the liver bile ducts. 4- Biopsy of the liver. This process took a few months to take place. My Gastroenterologist finally gave me the diagnoses in November of 2011. I was diagnosed with a fatal auto-immune liver disease, Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis. Once diagnosed with this fatal auto-immune disease you live on average 8-10 years, meaning that you will end up with total cirrhosis of the liver....https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirrhosis ...total liver failure. You will die, unless you are fortunate enough to be able to receive a liver transplant, good luck with that one. You can also die of cancer of the bile ducts of the liver from this liver disease, Walter Payton the great running back of the Chicago bears actually died at the age of 45 from this liver disease, he had cancer of the bile ducts....https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp ...https://www.cbsnews.com/news/payton-needs-liver-transplant/ ....https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Payton ... This diagnoses of a Fatal liver disease hit me with full force. Yes It did knock me to the ground, it did take me a moment to get back up. The key point would be that I did get back up. I recovered and started fighting back. My Liver Doctor had told me that there was no known cure for this dreadful liver disease, really no medications of any kind, basically he sent me home to die. In November of 2012 I started a low carb ketogenic diet, combined with intermediate fasting and exercise. Because of my liver disease I had to go for blood work every 6 months. My liver enzymes started to improve. It took somewhere between 18 and 24 months and we started to see dramatic improvements in my liver function. I only need to go once every 12 months now for my liver function panel. My liver function panel is like that of a normal healthy liver today. Here are the results of my latest main liver enzymes 1- GGT = 11 mg/dl 2- ALT and AST are both 20 3- Total bilirubin this last time was 1.2 mg/dl Here is my latest lipid panel. 1-Fasting triglycerides = 40 mg/dl...The last 5 years my fasting triglycerides are always between 30 to 40 mg/dl......Prior to low carb diet. Back in the years 2004 to 2008 my fasting triglycerides were 250 mg/dl. 2- HDL cholesterol = 87 mg/dl..The last 5 years my HDL is always between 87 to 105 mg/dl...Prior to low carb diet. Back in the years 2004 to 2008 my HDL cholesterol was 29 mg/dl.. 3- LDL cholesterol is always between 65 to 75 mg/dl... 4- My latest hemoglobin A1c in November was 4.9% In closing I would like to say that my original short story that I wrote a few years back can be found on the blog of Esmée La Fleur...zerocarbzen.com ...right here...https://zerocarbzen.com//how-a-high-fat-ketogenic-diet-sa/ ... I would also like to say that I have finally found peace with myself. I have finally accepted the fact that I will never be able to work again. I would also like to say that I am no longer a broken man. Thank you to those that read all the way through my post.

15.01.2022 Some survivors live inside of our heads. There is always conversation going on in there, so much so, that we don’t pay much attention to what is happening aroun...d us. The only things we pay attention to are the things that make us happy and the things that make us sad. Our external world can become quite black and white while our internal world is so complex. We use the complexities of the internal world to make simplistic observations about the external world and we often don’t get the results we want. Our beliefs do not match our behaviors. Our expectations are inconsistent with experiences. Our interpretations lead to unreliable predictions. We end up with conflict instead of cooperation and emotional distance rather than emotional support. Healthy relationships are difficult to build and maintain. If we learn to view the external world with the complexity in our minds we get a better outcome. We don’t just look at the world with tunnel vision, we use our mental peripheral vision to observe people and their behavior, including ourselves. Dr. Rosenna Bakari, #We2 Too Much Love Is Not Enough

08.01.2022 Miscarriage is still such a taboo grief in our society today.

07.01.2022 Courtesy of Turner & Pooch Co.

05.01.2022 What seems like a reaction to some present circumstance is, in fact, a reliving of past emotional experience. This subtle but pervasive process in the body, br...ain, and nervous system has been called implicit memory, as compared to the explicit memory apparatus that recalls events, facts, and circumstances. - Gabor Mate See more

04.01.2022 Further proof "Generation Youcanbeanything" is ruining Australia. Instead of going and learning vocational skills Australian industry actually needs - they are... all studying degrees at university often with very little job prospects at the end. We need to go back to having a linkage between tertiary education spots - and what industry actually requires. Not everyone can go to university. Not everyone can win a prize. And some people even though they have a 'degree' (in some bullshit subject on their choosing) are barely employable anyway. Going to university should be more restrictive, and more young Australians should be pushed into doing courses and qualifications that we actually need for our industry, and for our future. You want to stop importing skilled immigrants? The answer is simple. Tell your children not everyone wins a prize. Tell your children they aren't special. Tell your children to go and learn a skill or a trade that industry actually needs (even if it's not a sexy subject or qualification). Tell your children that the world doesn't owe them a living just because they ticked a few multiple choice boxes on an exam and got a bullshit piece of paper. The sooner we wake up in this country and realise that unless we start having difficult conversations with our children about career choices, and unless we start actually training people in the industries where they are required, the better off we will be in the long term. Sometimes you have to be brutal and blunt to be kind. https://www.smh.com.au//tafe-and-vet-enrolments-plunge-ami

04.01.2022 Many Aboriginal people feel like hospital is a place where they "go to die" but a groundbreaking trial is underway to change that. Interpreters have been introd...uced at hospitals in Western Australia's far north to improve patients' relationships with medical staff. Speaking between three and nine languages each, the 22 interpreters are being stationed at five hospitals between Broome and Kununurra in a six-month State Government partnership with Aboriginal Interpreting WA. Broome-based interpreter Ainsley O'Connor has been honing her skills since she was a teenager living in a remote community. "I'm proud to interpret for my mob, it's such an amazing feeling and I feel so privileged to be a part of this," she said. ABC Kimberley: Andrew Seabourne See more

02.01.2022 Sugar is a leading cause of weight gain - a risk factor for 13 cancers, heart disease and type 2 diabetes It's critical for consumers to be aware how much add...ed sugar is in packaged food, so they can make informed choices about what they eat. At a minimum, an ingredients list needs 'added sugar' clearly spelled out. But to REALLY help people be aware of the health implications of high-sugar products, health advisory labels should be considered, especially for sugary drinks. (FYI most 375ml cans of cola have 10 teaspoons of sugar)

02.01.2022 The news comes after the baby was rushed to hospital in a critical condition.

02.01.2022 Make yourself proud!