Research in psychology abounds, but “naturalistic” research does not.
I am impressed by these nice female medical doctors on the faculty of the University of California School of Medicine in San Francisco for the work they have done. Read more on Medical Student Evaluations…
My medical career has so far encompassed training in multiple specialties (general and orthopedic surgery, neurological surgery, neurology, psychiatry, and psychopharmacology). I have practiced in France, Canada, the United States Army, and more States of the United States than I can name.
I have been sexually assaulted and harassed more times that I could count. “Bullying,” is common in medicine, often viewed as a necessary process of “toughening up” to deal with the all too frequent tragedies lived with by patients. Read more on Me Too…
Filed under abuse, life, Mental Illness, News, Psychiatrists, Psychology, Sexual Misconduct by on Nov 3rd, 2019. Comment. 
It had been a routine email, the kind I ask my husband (total personal assistant) to arrange on my letterhead.
Although this young woman had been a psychiatric hospital inpatient for suicidality a few years ago, she was doing fairly well. We spent most of the time talking about her future education, and choice of profession. Read more on She Could Handle Money…
Filed under depression, Family, life, News by on Oct 27th, 2019. Comment.
His mother had been seeing me and they had signed mutual releases. Mother wanted me to see him as soon as possible, because he was “nervous and unable to sit still at all.”
When he came, he denied a “nervousness” which his mother thought looked like “attention deficit disorder.”
I can’t treat what people don’t think they have.
He described problems with his girlfriend and his mother, since his mother had told him he could not go to a party in the home of his girlfriend’s family on the bad side of town, “where they would just as soon shoot you in the street as say ‘hello.'”
He sounded like he had pretty routine mother-and-girlfriend problems.
She contacted me on the weekend, worrying about him frequenting strip clubs, something I had not asked about and he had not told me about. Sometimes, she said he became so angry she physically feared him.
Their two narratives were simply inconsistent. I drew the line at her feeling scared of him physically.
I told her about “tough love,” and I told her if that happened again, to call the cops.
My husband reminded me of the ultimate authority in my profession — Hugh Laurie as “Dr. House” — who repeatedly said on television in public for all the world to hear, “Patients lie.”
Which one of them? Maybe both of them. I told her what I had told them; and would indeed, tell anybody who gave me the opportunity. I can try a session with the two of them together and help to resolve things, but I could not promise that it would resolve things. I would try. I always try as hard as I can to do the best that I can.
She said she knew this to be true.
I had told him and also told his mother on the phone, that the hardest thing a young man (or a young woman) ever had to do in his (her) life was establishing themselves as an individual distinct from parents. This usually meant a period of confusion before resolution. There may be (and there was) some confusion about vocational direction, too.
One can only press forward. The ability to communicate openly is precious, and irreplaceable.
- BE SURE TO CHECK MY FACEBOOK PERSONAL PAGE:
- https://www.facebook.com/estelle.goldstein
Filed under Alternative Medicine, depression, Diagnosis, Disease, Family, life, medicine, Mental Illness, Personality Disorders, Psychology, relationships by on Oct 11th, 2019. Comment.
We went for the entertainment, but had dinner during the show at an upscale establishment in Huntington Beach called “La Cave.”
The name was no accident — it was, basically, a cave.
Oh yes, it was decidedly upscale, since they don’t give you a physical menu (it is printed on their web page — tres modern) but once you are seated, they have to show the cuts of everything on a glass-covered cart.
Nothing wrong with the food. There aren’t many choices, but my husband raved that his basic steak was extremely well prepared.
But the show was the reason for going, and it was very good — although the poor singers and musicians were cramped in a small area.
The singers and their little band (drums and bass and keyboard) were decidedly retro, which may be part of the reason they were decidedly upscale. I guess you have to be old to find the music truly familiar, but pieces they played later in the evening were more newer stuff I think they were trying to make sound old.
My wonderful husband thinks it is good for me to go to upscale places, because I work hard a lot.
Our swing-dancing friends were elated by my revelation of untranslated extra verses in the old Yiddish (Judaeo-German) song, Bei mir bist do schön, which had been a major force in my young childhood.
Of course it was popularized in the Big Bad Era by The Andrews Sisters — and it was the version our evening’s entertainment provided.
The swing dancers — the supremely talented Alec Marken and Sarah Aisha — stole the show with a spotlight dance and afterward introduced me to a young oriental man who was trying to figure out what to do in life.
What is amazing is that I seem to have fallen into the “elder stateswoman” sort of role.
From a hospital file clerk to studying teaching English to foreigners. I did that as a substitute teacher.
I hope I have not done too much already, for I know I want to do, must do, new things. And new things are on the horizon — much more interesting than cave exploration.
Of course, you will read about them here — so stay tuned!
I had not set out to be a radical for anything other than mental health, but as of today I am forced to become a radical for something called “handicapped inclusion.” I walk with a cane because I have what I have come to realize is a familial peripheral neuropathy. It is quite benign and won’t kill me. I know it is possible to avoid a wheelchair because my mother and grandmother did that I do fight tooth and nail to move around the best I can, and build strength and such with both exercise and nutrition.
When a doctor told me once I needed disability and a wheelchair, I yelled Holy Hell at him and explained that I practice medicine with my head and not with my feet. I am still practicing, but I have no plans for competitive athletics in the near future. I do dance every chance I get, as you may have seen a video on one of my social media sites. Today I am at the DMV where they put me in the “handicapped” line, thus rushing me to an area with “standing desks,” where my husband had to fill out my application for an ID card because the ONE thing that is sometimes hard for me to do is-standing.
I see the instructions for “handicapped inclusion” are written by the CDC (Centers for Disease Control, U.S. Government). I am worried because after my research on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, I found the CDC write-up and it seemed to me that that with their new criteria, less people had the problem so it sounded like a less serious one. Was this propaganda? Who can tell? There is lots of stuff available about including students with disabilities in the classroom.
A classroom has got to be one of the most controlled human environments on earth. Contrary-wise (as Humpty Dumpty told Alice), the Department of Motor Vehicles office has got to be one of the poorest-controlled human environments on earth. I suggest neophytes (which some people I have known in the field call “TABS” or “Temporary Able-bodies,” since we all start as babies and end as needing some kind of care) start by directing some of the obviously confused people if you know how (not all handicaps are visible) or at least smiling at people in walkers or wheelchairs. Or with a cane, like me.
Filed under life, Mental Illness, News by on May 10th, 2019. Comment.
I know it was my third summer, for that was the time I went “public,” and many people have cited the event to me in succeeding years.
Even though they had called me “little genius,” and knocked into my
head the need for serving God and Civilization as described to me in
the English language pages at either the beginning or the end of the
prayer book, I was basically a nicely-kept secret.
I know it was in the summer because I was hot. I simply did not want
to sit in the living room, for with all the summer heat, the customary
breezes off the sea had not been able to make it inland to us.
My brother sat down with one of the old “Golden Books.” Me, I wanted
something interesting.
There was a New York Times on the sofa. Usually Daddy got it first,
then Mommie and I competed for sloppy seconds of everything he had not
crumpled up yet. No parents were in sight. I quietly took the New York Times out and sat at the top step, by the front door.
I wish I could say I remember exciting news from the mid-July day in
1956 when the neighbors stopped by and decided and told me that I was
“cute,” which is a certain stimulus for me to do something especially
endearing. Daddy was always saying the Herlihy sisters kept to
themselves because they were “old maid schoolteachers” so they were
“straight-laced” which I guess meant something like “serious” or
“terminally dull.
They wasted no time in commenting on how cute I was, pretending to
read the New York Times.
I told them I wasn’t pretending, and I passed the paper down so that
one of them (I forgot whether it was Sarah or Jane) asked me to read
silly (and dull, of course) article from the Business section. I read
it aloud for what seemed like an interminable amount of time when I
asked her permission to stop reading, for I wondered if that had been
enough to convince her I was not faking and she said “just fine.”
By now neighbors were gathering from both sides of the street, and
even behind on Prescott Avenue, since it was so hot everybody wanted
to be outside, anyway.
Everybody was asking me to read one article or section or the other,
and really, I don’t remember finding any words that were hard to sound
out or to understand. One Herlihy sister dragged the other back to her
house. I asked if everything was okay and they told me I was just
fine. That seemed weird, mostly because they were a lot older than me
and more likely to be sick.
Apparently Mommie was disturbed by the noise because she was really
quite upset for no reason I could understand.
She told me to come back in the house instantly. Already socialized
somewhat, I told her I would come back in the house, after I said
goodbye to the nice people.
She was still angry. I tried to send the people away but was not very
successful. I mean our neighbor to the right, who I had never seen
standing so long in one place, was starting to talk about bringing
nice cold drinks for people.
By this time, the Herlihy sisters were walking back up from their
house on Webster Avenue (just around the corner to the right)
accompanied by their father.
I knew he was the Chelsea Superintendent of Schools, and was a very
important man in Chelsea.
He was spherically shaped and sweating profusely. My father came out
of the house (the only time I had ever seen him walk out on and
descend the front cement stairs ) and shook hands with Dr. Herlihy.
He had hired my Father to do a few days of substitute teaching shortly
after his degree from Harvard in the early 1940s. This magically had
permitted him, under Massachusetts law, to be “grandfathered” into a
teaching certificate in the Commonwealth without benefit of taking
formal education in how to teach.
My father was clearly no grandfather since I not only was not old
enough — but already was reasonably certain I did not want — to have
children, and my brother did not seem too excited about it either.
Anyway, Dr. Herlihy told my father he didn’t want me in Chelsea Public
Schools, and he raised his voice like I thought old, bald, and
probably smart men absolutely were not supposed to.
He must have been large enough for Mommie to hear in the House, so she
came out to help Daddy argue.
She did the one thing I couldn’t — she got the crowd to go away.
She started yelling about how it can’t be right to not let a little
girl to school.
He said he would falsify the records and say I was there and they
could even keep me home but he did not want me in his school, because
I would be a “disturbance.”
As the crowd left, I joined my parents.
“I’m a nice girl. I wouldn’t make a disturbance.”
He did not answer me, which was obviously impolite.
This started an orgy of being excluded/rejected/just plain kicked out
of schools that marked my childhood.
Filed under Education, Family, Government, life, News by on Apr 12th, 2019. Comment.
Their day started later than mine. The three of them would descend to the street from their apartment above.
First was Lois Bouchex, a handome older graying statesman, who looked pretty banal at 11 am, but in the dark of the evening looked practically British, with his smoking-jacket, silk ascot, and carefully waxed moustache. Read more on The Restaurant On Rue Leon Blum…
Filed under Doctors, life, News by on Feb 11th, 2019. Comment.
The show is “Hot Topics.” I do not know the personalities of the folks on the oversized screen of this breakfast room where we happen to be staying. They throw around the names of celebrities I never heard of and they tell their intimate family lives painting in broad strokes without any testimonial evidence. A “gossip” show, my mother would have called it.
My mother would have turned such shows off on the television. My grandmother of blessed memory, my “Bobie,” would have turned the channel back to the gossip show, and commented how my Mother, who seemed to think she was head of the household, ran the place in a way similar to Adolf Hitler. Read more on Estelle is Magically Stuck Watching Television…
Filed under culture, Family, Fashion, life, Memory, Mental Illness, News by on Feb 8th, 2019. Comment.
If you enjoy my memories of when I struck out on my own to France to attend medical school — an innocent abroad — you might want to read other entries on my Facebook page.
In this episode, after arriving in the small city of Amiens, I finally make it to the quartier de la rue Leon Blum where I would lodge. Read more on A Student Settles In…