Mental & Emotional Health

On Sunday, I had the opportunity to volunteer with Special Olympics of Oregon for their Regional Swim Meet, and it was not only a fun experience, it made me more aware that even in my darkest times, I’ve got life pretty easy. There were two swimmers who really touched me on Sunday, and I’ve been thinking about them quite a bit since then.

Special Olympics athletes are a wide array of sportsmen & women: I helped swimmers
* of all ages (4 to 71!),
* of both sexes (it seemed to be pretty equally distributed),
* of all abilities (from developmental swimmers who participated in 10m walks across the shallow end to swimmers who swim on their high school swim teams to those who have been to the World Games) and
* of all mental capacities (from swimmers who initiated and then lead entire conversations with me and other volunteers to swimmers who had a hard time forming even basic words).

By 1pm, I thought the highlight of my day was Justin; a young man who was participating in the developmental swimming events. After getting his flotation belt on him (and laughing with him as we realized that it was really cold from being in the pool previously) his coach and I helped him into the pool. Although he was non-speaking, he was obviously nervous. Justin was to swim in lane 3 - the lane furthest from the wall – and getting him down to the right area was almost a 10-minute event. Once in the pool, I spent five minutes on my knees at the edge of the pool encouraging him to move towards me. He used the wall, and it took 10-times longer than it would have taken a fully mentally developed person, but the intense feeling of pride I had in him when he made it to the third piece of blue tape was better than anything I had felt in a long time. The second time Justin got into the pool, he was obviously more comfortable and moved down to his lane in no time. After he collected his awards, I was excited to find him and tell him how proud of him I was. It was really an amazing feeling.

Soon after spending my time with Justin, I met Sarah. Sarah was in two of my escort rows (I spent the day escorting the swimmers from the bullpen to the starting blocks) early in the afternoon and was a quiet girl worried about her diabetes. She told me about her low blood sugar level and how she had dealt with it at a previous swim meet and was worried that it would happen again. I encouraged her to try one lap and if she felt poorly that she should get out. She ended up winning a medal for that race and came back to swim again. After two races, she had a bit of a break before her relay race and so she sat near me and we chatted. Sarah is not only diabetic (two shots of insulin in the morning and evening), she’s a leukemia survivor (five years of remission) and she has a pretty severe mental disability. Once Sarah warmed up to me, she didn’t stop talking. I so much enjoyed talking to her that I was sad she left and I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye. I am hoping to see her at the state meet and be able to talk to her more.

Volunteering is good for the soul, and volunteering with Special Olympics definitely made my soul feel better, and now I have something absolutely positive to think about every time I let myself get down.

mental & emotional health, discussion autism, Special Olympics of Oregon, swimming, swim meet

“A new mice study by Stanford University indicates that an old useless drug may actually help patients with Down syndrome improve their learning ability and memory. The study published Feb. 25 in the advance online edition of Nature Neuroscience also found that once the therapeutic effect of pentylenetetrazole, or PT is established, it can last for up to two months after the treatment is discontinued.

Craig Garner and Fabian Fernandez from the Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital fed mice with Down syndrome symptomes milk with PTZ for 17 days, subjected the treated mice to two tests and found that mice treated with PTZ performed as well as wild mice without Down syndrome.

PTZ has not been approved by the government for any medical use. High doses of PTZ can cause seizures. The researchers say the drug did not improve mental capacity in those healthy mice. They say further human trials are needed to determine if PTZ has the same effect on patients with Down syndrome.

Down’s syndrome, the leading cause of mental retardation, affects more than 300,000 people nationwide in the U.S. About 5,000 children are born with Down syndrome in the United States each year. The condition is caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21. Children with this condition have high risk of heart disease, leukemia and early onset Alzheimer’s disease.”

Quite an interesting idea, eh?

Nutrition May Help Those With Down’s Syndrome

nutrition, down’s syndrome, illness, genetics, food, preventatives, Stanford University