Mostly everything that comes up and hits you in the teeth about the current controversy around “core standards” seems to be more political than born of actual knowledge.
This no surprise, really, since this is the reductionistic American mentality that makes it difficult to have meaningful conversations with the American Public without making them sound a lot like radio talk show rants.
With customary naiveté and sheer guts, I made the decision that I could not have an opinion about it without knowing what it actually was. Read more on Core Standards For Education – Political Grandstanding?…
Filed under Government, News, politics by on Apr 23rd, 2014. Comment. 
I was in my specialty training when I read Peter D.Kramer’s “Listening to Prozac.”
I remember thinking he was articulate and observant and all kinds of wonderful things, riding the cusp of a great change in psychiatry, doubting him to be a “real” scientist who would hang out at a meeting of the Society for Biological Psychiatry as I once did.
I was wondering what to do with the result of his observation that certain character traits, such as “rejection sensitivity,” could be somehow changed for the better with psycho-pharmacology. Read more on “Listening to Prozac” and What People Really Want…
Filed under Alternative Medicine, News, Sports by on Apr 17th, 2014. Comment.
I do not claim to be perfect but I DO claim to be a good doctor. Not just a good psychiatrist. Being a good doctor comes first.
One reason is that despite a lot of medical practice since graduation (I will admit to wincing a bit when I quote the figure in years–34) in multiple specialties, I still believe that taking care of other human beings and trying to help them through life is a sacred trust. I actually believe that doing what I do the best I can is more important to whatever religious future my soul can scrape up than showing up at public worship. Honest.
Another reason that I am a good doctor is that I am old enough that an amazing amount of bad medical things have happened to me. Often before I knew better, they were the side effects of prescription drugs. I now accept them only as temporary solutions. I would rather dive into the world of alternative natural substances — which do work — if the practitioner is someone who knows what they are doing which I do. Read more on Cholesterol Lowering and Drugs…
Filed under Alternative Medicine, medicine, News, prescription drugs, Research by on Apr 4th, 2014. Comment.
I was traveling the United States looking for a graduate level training job in neurosurgery. Women were not as accepted in medicine as they are now. Personally, I think it is at least in part because medicine was still considered a serious profession. Most of the places I interviewed had never hired a woman as a neurosurgery resident before. They would ask me behind closed doors (with no witnesses) if I planned to have a family or practice part time and thus compromise the investment in time and money they planned to make in me.
Oy!
I had met Mother Rocky, the great Jewish matriarch of a hunk of St. Louis, on a flight to that august city, where I had lucked out by getting a free upgrade to first class.
She seemed to think I would have some interest in an arranged marriage. Read more on The Part of Being Female I Still Wrestle With…
Filed under News by on Apr 3rd, 2014. Comment.
In my two years of fairly regular attendance at nail salons, I have learned plenty.
The people who run the salon are generally oriental in origin; everyone who has spoken with me about their lives has been of Vietnamese origin. They tell me of families being in the business, and speak to me of America as a land of opportunity in a way I have not heard since my own Grandmother-Of-Blessed-Memory spoke of such things.
The “boss” of the salons is usually a male. He answers the phone and masterminds schedules. The general mood in the salon seems to be a function of his personality. I have seen a few, especially in the larger salons, look angry and raise their voices at employees who seem to cower in fear. The employees in such situations generally tell me that they respect such owners and deny any kind of abuse, even verbal. They generally have structured rules about having clippers sterile and such and they tell me that he monitors such things. Read more on The Nail Salon As A Social System…
Filed under News by on Mar 27th, 2014. Comment.
Query: Why do Belgian women have square nipples?
Response: To teach their babies to eat French fries.
That probably did not make you laugh out loud, reading it off your computer. But about forty years ago (gasp) when I was in medical school it was not unusual to hear this very joke in cafes in northern France, between Amiens and the Belgian border. I still think of it when I see, for example, a Franco-Belgian movie production. In fact, I wrote this because I was enchanted by just such a movie on home video – “A Cat In Paris.”
(I recommend it – a very cute thing for both young and old) Read more on Prejudice, Proximity and Humor…
Filed under News, Religion by on Mar 19th, 2014. Comment.
We dropped in on the new Disney movie “Frozen” on the way home from work, where I had been “beatup” spiritually by some demanding and decidedly un-charming patients — some of whom would have been more appropriately treated by a stint in the local state “correctional” institution.
My omniscient husband seemed to know that this movie, of which I knew basically nothing before dropping in, was exactly what I needed, and more.
It is a work of art, a piece of magic wonderment. Not just artistically, but on every imaginable level. I mean Disney — especially since annexing Pixar — is not only on top of everyone else, but keeps topping itself in what I would have considered impossible ways. Read more on Frozen Is A B-r-r-r-fect…
Filed under Family, News by on Mar 17th, 2014. Comment.
It is noble to teach the history and pharmacology of marijuana. After practicing as a medical marijuana doctor and writing some for The NORML Women’s Alliance, and Ladybud (among others), my endorsement of marijuana and its constituents as nothing less than medicinal marvels is a matter of public record.
What is going on in Florida is something very, very different indeed. Like the days of the Old West, when the gunslingers lived by the weapons on their holsters, now entrepreneurs are living on the cusp of an extraordinary wave of public opinion. The pro-marijuana opinion in these United States has never been higher, and those who watch, comment upon, and work in the field seem to have little doubt that a generalized legalization of use is not far away.
Recreational and medical use are very different entities. Read more on Tampa Marijuana School…
Filed under Alternative Medicine, Government, medicine, News by on Mar 12th, 2014. Comment.
I have been “taking” tap in the not too distant past. That means, I have been studying tap dancing, in a city just far enough from Los Angeles that we were pretty sure nobody in the class would go pro. I had a real problem trying to get enough “sound” out of my taps. I believe, without too much in the way of pretention, that I was able to get my feet in the right place at the right time. Other students, obviously younger, just seemed to have more slap in their tap.
The sound is part of the great fun in tap dancing; I mean, come on, Fred Astaire danced on the radio. My dance-teacher (I still have a tendency to call her “dance-Mistress,” in the European way told me that if I imagined my feet hitting one inch below the floor, instead of on the floor, that would treat the problem. It did not. After a day of psychiatrizing it seemed to be hard for me to find the force to stomp loudly. Read more on Dancing Outside The Box…
Filed under News, weight by on Mar 3rd, 2014. Comment.
In my previous entry to this blog, I talked about heroin overdoses and how people might be rescued – even if no doctors or EMTs are around.
Due to the timeliness, I mentioned the latest celebrity fatality, Philip Seymour Hoffman. I am usually asked for my take on these things when a high-profile person dies because of drugs – whether legal prescription or illegal street drugs.
I hate doing this – mainly because it is a sad and depressing topic. And yet, I do this not to capitalize on the notoriety of the victim, but with the intent of teaching the public about the dangers, possible solutions and new developments in treatment and education. Read more on Death From Drugs, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Staying Alive…
Filed under Addictions, News by on Feb 21st, 2014. Comment.