As strange as it seems, I got bullied a lot when I was a kid.
I could hardly blame the other kids; I was a prime target for bullying. By the time I was 11, I was overweight, wore glasses and those old metal braces, and had a really bad complexion. With five kids, money was tight, and my mom, God love her, made a lot of my clothes herself. And cut my hair herself. Read more
My Mom has a wonderful way of dispelling fear, anxiety and trouble with just a few words. I guess when you make it to 82 (don’t tell her I told you how old she is!), you pick up a few things along the way.
About things in the future that could be problematic: “Don’t borrow trouble! Today has enough!” Read more
Gene therapy is the new moon shot. And the space race of the 60s is a lot like the race for new vaccines, medicines and prescription drugs of today. Developing these new treatments and in some cases, outright cures, that the U.S. is known for takes a lot of work, a lot of risk and a lot of money. Read more
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times in the Bertaut household, and, oddly enough, both times were happening simultaneously.
On Wednesday, Oct. 7, I started feeling a bit puny. Sinus-y and a little fuzzy around the brain. Over the next couple of days, those symptoms stayed about the same and I started feeling fatigued. On Saturday, Oct. 10, my daughter, who lives with us, started feeling bad and had a fever. She got tested for COVID-19. Her result was positive. My wife and I decided to go get tested. I was positive; she was negative. Read more
It’s not that often I go after a specific, single behavior, but today I’m in a mood. And I just went through COVID-19, so I’m especially fired up.
Blessedly, my symptoms were not that severe, and I’ve recovered well. But while I was sick, I read a LOT about the impact of tobacco use on people trying to recover from COVID-19, and the news there is not good, especially for Louisiana. I’ve got several pre-existing conditions that could have made my bout with COVID-19 worse, but thankfully tobacco use is not one of them.
I was so blessed growing up. I was a small-town boy (Morgan City was a city in name only!), an oldest child with four brothers and sisters, and had an incredibly talented, hard-working mom who stayed home with us until I was in high school. I was raised with a hard-working, strong moral character of a dad who had a job that allowed him to spend two out of every four weeks at home. And just for a little spice, his mom, a hard-charging, widowed “Maw-Maw,” lived two blocks away and worked well into her 70s. My Paw-Paw, her husband, passed away three years before I was born, when she was in her 40s. She never remarried.
