Remarkable advances are occurring regarding health, according to findings reported in Prevention Magazine.

People these days are into natural remedies. I think we had Hadacol way back when. The major natural ingredient was alcohol. That put a healing on you right away.

I remember some natural remedies that our mother’s forced on us, like castor oil. I also was given cod liver oil with some sugar on the end of my spoon. Later I got sugar diabetes and bad teeth. That was from the sugar, not the cod liver oil.

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Today the cod liver oil comes in capsules so you don’t have to taste it until it comes up in a burp. You can avoid the unpleasantness by eating tuna fish, but you have to watch out for the mercury. That’s not the car, it’s some kind of slippery silver stuff. I haven’t seen silver stuff in my tuna fish, so I’m all right.

There is a new development where you can be declared temporarily dead as opposed to dead. I’m reserving judgment on it. After cardiac arrest you can be iced down and rise from the dead. It might have good possibilities. If you are watching the Super Bowl and chowing down on pig skins and chugging beer and you heart stops, your friends can just dump the ice in the beer cooler over your dead body. It cools you down and you come back to life and you can finish watching the game. After all, you’ve got money on it.

Personally, I’d prefer that tunnel of light where you wind up in green pastures and lie down along peaceful waters. There are heavenly beings in the distance and you walk toward them and you see God, and then ZAP. The contents of the beer cooler have returned you the world of the flesh. You can’t get a break. You won the pool but now they won’t give it to you because you were temporarily dead and you had to be present, as in alive, to win. Science has prevailed.

Problems arose with the beer cooler. The ice couldn’t get through the insulation around your brain and organs, and the beer got warm. Soon it will be possible to inject you with an Icee, only they call it an icy slurry. It works faster so you won’t make it to the tunnel and you will miss all the good stuff.

I’m making a living will forbidding the use of the slurry on me since I’m diabetic and there could be a rise in my blood sugar. Of course, if a sugar-free slurry becomes available, they can use it on me.

When the time comes that I may live forever on this earth and never go through the tunnel and see all my relatives coming to greet me, I don’t know how much of a disappointment that might be for me or them. It depends on who shows up. There may be a pump with which you can inject the slurry into your own body, but how would you carry a slurry machine?

I give up. Wherever that place is where you get a mansion, I want to go there. I can’t afford a mansion down here. All my money goes toward preventing me from getting there.

NANCY PEARCE is a resident of New Iberia and a former contributor to a liturgical guide for priests. Many of her features appeared in a major national publication for teenagers.