I think the major risk is Guillain-Barre. I can find no research to tell me that if you had Guillain-Barre before you are at risk of getting it again, with this vaccination. But that is what it said on the only printed informed consent instrument I could find.
I have a peripheral neuropathy. About 20 million folks do in these United States. Eight million stems from diabetes and the rest from other metabolic stuff. Sometimes it’s from medications — like chemotherapy –and that is plenty enough nerve damage for me to deal with in life. Read more on No Flu Shot for Me This Year I did not get my flu shot this year. Collective gasp!…
Filed under Alternative Medicine, News, Research by on Feb 15th, 2013. Comment. 
The first time I heard of the fruit mangosteen, I thought it was just a Jewish mango. Turns out it’s Southeast Asian and in no way Jewish. Makes sense; I mean, how do you circumcise a fruit? Let alone teach it to read the holy books.
The second time I heard of it, I was trying to help a manic-depressive who went manic on it. A degree professional had suddenly thrown angry tantrums, put his hand and other weapons through nearby walls, and tried to burn down the apartment building where his woman-friend lived. He succeeded in burning down part of it. It all happened within a few hours of him ingesting mangosteen. I told him to stop the damned mangosteen. I remember seeing him through bars, and I doubted he could get any mangosteen in there, anyway. But he would not hear ill of his dear mangosteen. It was a multi-level-marketing product and he seemed to believe in it for that reason, despite some factors I was trying to introduce. Things like biochemical truth, behavioral pharmacology, and my decades of medical practice experience — as opposed to his multi-level marketing experience. His family stopped paying me as an expert. I think they all sold mangosteen. Read more on Utah, Mangosteen, and Bad Stuff…
Filed under Alternative Medicine, medicine, News, politics, Research by on Feb 14th, 2013. Comment.
TRADITION! It’s the Fiddler on the Roof song. TRADITION! It’s my grandfather showing up at 6AM on Sunday morning to explain to me that a really smart girl would be working on finding a man who was rich enough to keep her at home so she would not need to work at all. TRADITION! It’s my parents telling me that if medical school did not work out I could come back home to suburban Boston and quietly become a French teacher. I don’t much care for tradition, mainly because I perceive it as the opposite of change. I am in favor of empowering individuals, opening up the fan of possibilities, removing things that make people feel poorly. I guess the father and daughter dance is a great American tradition. Me, I tried to dance with my father once at a Bar Mitzvah reception when I was young. He was quite inept, spun me around in a circle and actually stepped on my little foot. I can only wonder if that hasn’t anything to do with why my feet are problematic. It matters little; I would never have sued dear old dad. Great American tradition? I think not. Read more on Tradition!…
Filed under Family, News by on Feb 13th, 2013. Comment.
Back in France, when I wished there were more hours in the day to study, two female Mormon missionaries showed up at my door. They tried to get inside, wanting to assimilate me to that religion. I had not yet developed the method of chasing Mormon missionaries that I used years later, when we lived in Palm Springs. I took the bus and the Mormon missionaries would nail me at the bus stop. I did not want to run away and miss the bus, so I yelled “Devil get thee behind me” in English and numerous Psalms in Hebrew. This method worked quickly and efficiently for getting rid of many southern California Mormon missionaries. This method has been replicated by me in numerous situations.
Back in France, I was less experienced. I hit them with Genesis Chapter 3 verse 16; in French “Tu enfanteras avec douleur.” I suppose I could have used the English standard version. I basically convinced them not only that I knew my Old Testament pretty well, but that I had enough problems being female and a French medical student without being a Mormon. The older of the two women, a preceptor guiding a young student, said the equivalent of “she knows Scripture; we better leave her alone,” and I hid my joy. Read more on Women’s Pains…
Filed under Disease, News, Religion by on Feb 12th, 2013. Comment.
When a marijuana patient visits me for permission to use that drug, I have to ask them, gently, how long they have used it. Most, if they are old enough, do not give me an answer that I can quantify. Instead, they start with something like, “It seems like yesterday I used it for fun. Now, I need it just to (fill in the blank).” Survive, live, walk, or keep from throwing up. They wonder about how and when it changed from a form of recreation to a form of drug treatment.
They never seem to believe it has already been a drug, for thousands of years, in other cultures. If I give them enough time, they count their own age and their own problems by how they use it. With a few thousand papers published every year, mostly in other countries, it would be crazy at this point to try to believe it wasn’t a drug. For an amazing number of folks, it seems to be the way they reckon the passage of their lives. Read more on The Passage of Time…
Filed under Alternative Medicine, Family, News, weight by on Feb 6th, 2013. Comment.
“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.” “It is sweet and right to die for your country.” The line, in Latin, is from Horace’s Odes, 3.2.13. It is a memory from Miss Lovering’s 8th grade Latin class at the Beaver Country Day School. Everyone said Miss Lovering was a truly great Latin teacher, mostly because she was old enough that she was surely there in Rome when it happened. She was one of the older living Radcliffe College alumnae and had, it was said, found marriage a pale alternative to the glories that were Rome. I remember the above quote as the moment I started thinking Romans were simply not very nice guys. The “lie,” apparently often quoted to soldiers at the beginning of World War I — ostensibly to give them courage — was nicely incorporated into a poem by Wilfred Owen that expresses what yucky stuff war really is. People die of a lot of horrible things, and anyone who has seen combat veterans or lost family has probably figured out that death is just as ugly, if not more so, when it is for your country.
In the poem, he cites, “vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues.” Our friends at the Center for Disease Control show — avoid this page if you are faint of heart — a syphilis sore on a tongue, which is what this sounds like. An attempt to get sexy prior to combat is my guess. Soldiers have tried to use the “I could be in combat and die tomorrow” line on me; it never worked, obviously. Opening combat to women might be good in some ways. Good for military rank climbing or professional climbing. If a woman feels compelled to do this, I guess she should be allowed to. Read more on Women in Combat…
Filed under military, News, Religion, Sexual Misconduct, war by on Feb 4th, 2013. Comment.
Prez and first lady painting a bookcase? Service day may be a good idea, but this is a little bit much the “photo opp” for my taste. I think the idea of helping others is wonderful, and the idea of putting group survival ahead of self-survival even better. I always thought this was good for any species. I remember quite a while ago how touched I was when I saw crows get food for an injured crow. Good for us folks, too, although we have a tendency to build hospitals and charge for services.
What is good for our species as well as for others is putting the group ahead of the individual for both us and others. The use of mathematical modeling to do this, although the subject is wonderful, is open to debate still, although there is to me a certain romance in pure intellect predicting actions around us. Read more on Seen On Jan 19th – The Day Of Service…
Filed under News, politics by on Jan 29th, 2013. Comment.
At some time in our lives, we all need to be told we’re good or shown the way. A simple story about giving kids from Oakland’s toughest neighborhoods a chance to rise above the violence in their communities strangely touched me and compelled me to write. As I do this, I am not that far from Oakland. I have heard enough to tell you that the culture of violence described is not exaggerated. Patients who see me for marijuana permission are happy and delighted they do not have to drive there.
So there are children who grow up in a culture of violence. I see adults. Not too long ago, I was seeing adults for social security evaluations in Los Angeles. Many of them had been caught in crossfire, perhaps shot on their way to the supermarket or even in front of their own homes. They told me they did not know why or by whom, and sometimes they still had bullets in them somewhere. Other times it was just a memory that so overwhelmed them that the quality of their post-traumatic stress disorder was like the sort of thing that you see in Vietnam veterans. Read more on It Takes So Little…
Filed under Family, Government, News, PTSD, Violence by on Jan 25th, 2013. Comment.
A few days ago one of my patients called me “Dr. Pollyanna.” He told me this was a reference to the fact that I would not validate that his pain, from old injuries, would be lifelong and without useful treatment. This is what his primary doctor had told him. “Dr. Pollyanna” was not wrong; but maybe, not quite subtle enough. I try to sneak ever so gently into patient’s thought patterns and convince them there is a way out of their problems. There always is, especially since I have been dishing out marijuana permissions. Read more on A Positive Message for Veterans…
Filed under military, News by on Jan 24th, 2013. Comment.
I’m getting getting ready to send out my first private-list email of the year — and it is long overdue!
If you are not already on my mailing list and want to make sure you receive this newsletter, you can still sign up.
Just fill in the form in the top right-hand corner of this page and click the button. You MUST opt-in to receive this letter, it is sent directly to your email and not available on the web for public viewing. Of course, you can opt-out at any time, if you wish. But this is a non-commercial, non-spam type of newsletter. It is chock-full of my personal opinions and details on what I’m doing in various parts of my life.
You won’t want to miss it — and it is free — so try it out and see. I predict that by Monday, it should be delivered and ready to read.
Take care and be happy — enjoy your weekend.
Dr. G
Filed under News by on Jan 17th, 2013. Comment.