Since my husband and I have been together for over 19 years, a rarity in this day, people often like to ask me about our “couplehood.”
It’s hard to miss if you are around us for any length of time at all. He still opens and holds doors for me and whenever we walk, it is always hand- in-hand. Oh — and we treat each other nicely and with respect. Those are all dead give-aways.
One question I get sometimes is when I first knew it was “real love.” I had always been cautious and protective about giving my heart away. After all, I had finished a year of psychotherapy training where most of my patients were women and nearly all of them were divorced women. I decided I was too sensitive for this divorce stuff. It sounded like something that would turn me inside out, render me basically non-functional, and leave me screaming for mercy. The only answer, to maintain a functional life, was to avoid it.
To choose a husband so perfect that the relationship would be “divorce proof” for sure by the time that I was actually involved in it. I used my reasoning skills and wrote the plan that worked. We were together for a good year before I decided that this was the one, and it is the rightest thing I have ever done. But with all the reasoning skills, I would be the last one to deny that there has to be an element of “chemistry.” There was and still is.
I do believe, however, that women are constantly duped by men who say or do things for the wrong reason. I can teach, to a certain extent, the things I did to eliminate such from consideration. But when I am asked when I first realized this man loved (and desired) me, I always say one of the things I often say that nobody believes. It is when his pupils dilated.
As the Rodgers & Hart song says, “If they ask me I could write a book,” and I suppose I am. Sorry, I couldn’t miss this one. I love Rosemary Clooney and Rogers and Hart. Read more on There Is An Actual “Love Light” In His Eyes…
Filed under relationships by on Jul 22nd, 2010. 1 Comment. 
Parents and grandparents want their children and grandchildren to have better lives than they did. They have always wanted this, but they don’t seem able to get it anymore, as they have in the past. I am curious why they think mine is a life to model after. Some ask a few indirect questions after I get them medication. Recently one women walked in, said she wanted the same medications she had always had, and took notes on some very precise questions.
Girls do not wait, Especially in the poorer socioeconomic groups they still get married because they happen to be pregnant, and finish out their lives with people chosen as partners in the suboptimal manner.
What made me wait? First, I was married to my career and got the “wear no man’s collar” message from my mother. But I was before a revolution that gave women options of part time professionalism so that they could mix it with mommying. I saw people take longer to get where they were going than I did. I especially remember a colleague in the same residency program I was in, in psychiatry, who I cannot think about without visualizing tiny children on her arm. I do not think she was smarter or better because she strung out things part-time. I doubt she would have completed things at all had she not chosen that option. Her husband was a resident, too; finished before he (obviously) as he did things full time. They ended up on the same hospital staff. Somehow, I suppose justice was done. Read more on You Can’t Hurry Love…
Filed under relationships by on Jul 21st, 2010. Comment.
I have a fable that is obviously too late for Aesop’s collection of same. It is unlikely to make its way into any later anthology. I might as well tell you about a tiny town whose sole virtue that it was on an interstate road that took a lot of people from various parts of California into Las Vegas, that famous refuge for people who are too sober and trying to get rid of excess money, sometimes while getting either married or divorced. Actually Littletown (we will call it that to avoid embarrassment to all two or three law abiding citizens). Had just one more virtue. Their county hired me as a consultant. I did last in that job for a while, even though it covered three different small clinics, each of which needed me just a day or two a week. Since every morning when I woke up, I had to have my husband remind me not only what day of the week it was, but what city and clinic I was supposed to be at. The clinic buildings looked different from one another on the outside, a fact which didn’t help me very much because I ended up working on the inside and usually ate lunch at my desk. The patients in all three clinics were different from those that I had seen prior to that time in my career, for I had not done more than sporadic work with addicts, and there were a fair amount of people on crystal meth. I practiced “from the book” and did the best I could (I always do) and helped some people somewhat, to get treatment and put their lives together. But it was in Littletown, where the stores on Main Street were empty and the only local culture was the yogurt shelf at the (chain) supermarket, that I really learned about crystal meth for the first time. Read more on Once Upon A Time There Was An Explosion…
Filed under Addictions, Substance Abuse by on Jul 20th, 2010. 2 Comments.
I know about statin drugs. I used to take some of them, various ones, to lower my cholesterol. Long ago, of course, when I was a VA patient but some sort of a “VA VIP” since I am a physician, good God, and someone had to make sure I was getting the best care that a federal institution could give.
One of the things they did was to tell me we had to do something about my awful cholesterol. I knew it was not that awful, but they told me I should get a “statin.” I tried about three or four different ones before I told my doctor never to give me these horrible medications. He told me I was insane, but my cholesterol has lowered considerably since.There are lots of wonderful ways to lower cholesterol (like dancing as much as you can) that do not carry statin risks. The article cited above is not the first one that blows the widespread use of statins out of the water, if someone bothers to listen. Few do. Read more on Cholesterol Drugs Could Be Worse Than Cholesterol…
Filed under medicine by on Jul 18th, 2010. Comment.
He was not a day over 35; actually, he looked younger to me; almost childlike. He rattled off everything they had brainwashed him with in the military. Yes, brainwashed. Do you actually think young men would go into combat if they were not convinced it is fun and glorious? Really, I do not think we have come all that far from the Romans who would say sometime early in their service “dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” (“It is sweet and beautiful to die for one’s country”) The hard part comes after the combat. Maybe some painful wounds, treated by an overextended medical system, but the memorized ideology remains. The young and impressionable repeat what they have been told so often that they believe it.
“The military teaches self-discipline. It is a fine preparation for the working world.” Wrong. It teaches following orders, stamping out individual ideas and initiatives like so many cockroaches who have dared to enter the kitchen. They could appreciate if you find a faster way to process internal paperwork. They neither encourage nor reward the kind of initiative that makes entrepreneurs, a pretty good way to rise like cream. Read more on So You Expect A Job?…
Filed under News by on Jul 15th, 2010. Comment.
This one makes my blood boil. Being a doctor, a good doctor, is not easy. It requires a lot of thinking, taking every patient who comes before you not just as a human, but as a clinical care problem. Knowing the facts, making judgments. It is because we have a tendency to abscond this role that “doctor extenders,” cheaper people, rush in to fill the void.
One of the things we have to do is to weigh the advantages and risks of every procedure.
Sure, there are some mechanisms in place to help us. Things like videotaped informed consents. Things like meters and technology and such.
In the case reported above, a woman who had Bell’s Palsy, a fairly common (and often, spontaneously receding) hemifacial paralysis was subjected to a CT scan. She got too much radiation and became quite ill; someone did not notice the excessive radiation noted on a panel somewhere. Read more on Should FDA Regulate CT Scans?…
Filed under medicine by on Jul 14th, 2010. Comment.
It has been over ten years since my husband and I visited this often-quiet community in Nevada. Gambling, resorts, a legal whorehouse not far out of town, pawn shops, bars; standard Nevada. Only the faintest echoes of the silver boom, people grasping for the romance, the all-night party feeling. We are not big gamblers, but we did some shows, and the party feeling was good for a weekend.
That was ten years ago. Now, there are a bunch of people looking for free beer, not caring about its quality. People talking about getting “wasted” and nobody, but nobody, talking about having “fun” doing it. There is a pall over the gambling halls. People are counting their pennies on 99cent specials. There are certainly no echoes whatsoever of the silver boom, and no evidence of romance, and only two or three people sitting in a room full of slot machines.
Some of what I do is very analytical. I actually figure out how many mg. of medication or supplement someone needs as a function of their weight. I think of the chemical reactions in their body that are either not working at all, or are working overtime. Some of what I do–sometimes I am surprised to know just how much and how effective it is–is feeling; is intuitive. Whether we are where the rich people go or where the poor people go, I feel fear. I am sure that this fear comes from feeling that the economy is “bad.” Read more on Don’t Get Wasted — Get Busy!…
Filed under Substance Abuse by on Jul 13th, 2010. Comment.
She was a friend. Other people sometimes live their entire lives in one place and keep friends for life, but she was more distant, clinging to me loosely, trying to live off free advice. Like almost all the friends I have in one particular region, she was a therapist. Not a bad thing to be, and I believe her to be a competent therapist. But she had the same problem most people in my age group have. She wanted help fighting it.
I suppose the name for it these days is “cognitive loss for age.” Not Alzheimer’s, that “presenile” (the earliest cases described by Kraepelin himself was in mid-fifties) dementia, but getting older.
Mainstream medicine comes up with names and categories and prescriptions, that may or may not offer significant clinical improvement. The human spirit comes up with, well, at least a little good anger. If there is one piece of poetry I quote more than any other, it is Dylan Thomas “Do not go gentle into that good night/Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.” Of course this brilliant Welsh poet, the way I heard it, died of alcohol poisoning in New York; not exactly how I plan to rage against the dying of my light. Oh, how many people who have tried to feed me alcohol I have told I cannot afford to lose any brain cells by that method. I need everything I have to continue to live by my wits. Read more on Advice From A Poet About Memory Loss…
Filed under Alzheimer's Disease, medicine by on Jul 13th, 2010. Comment.
The 94th Aero Squadron is my favorite restaurant in San Diego. I have been surprised to learn it is some kind of a chain, with restaurants in the Los Angeles region and Ohio and God knows where else, but this does not matter to me.
I have had their luncheon buffets, where sometimes things that are supposed to be French are confused with Mexican things. I have visited their “artifacts” and decorations and I think they are poor historians, confusing World Wars I and II. There is a vague notion of being part of the American military hanging around in France, enjoying things European, presentation that seems formal enough to a San Diego human that it is definitely European, and the opportunity to watch inept pilots take off and set down on a local airfield.
No, I am not sponsored by them — this is a free plug, and I’m hoping it guides others to experience the pleasures there. I did not say the food was extrordinary — although it is absolutely marvelous — or had anything to do with why this is my favorite restaurant in San Diego. It doesn’t.
It is my favorite because it plays into my personal story. I do not think many people even collect or remember their personal stories, or know how those stories can enrich their lives. I have been here before with a couple of friends. Today, a cherished friend (who happens to be from France), my husband, and someone who was my friend’s friend (visiting from France), who listened with a gaze akin to a deer in the headlights when I told my story. Read more on But Don’t Worry About Me ……
Filed under Memory by on Jul 9th, 2010. 1 Comment.
Most of the really effective compulsive lying folks are not patients. Such people, if ever seen as patients, do not stay as patients very long.
I remember a young woman, the daughter of a woman scientist who befriended me in France. She was beautiful, I could tell from her photographs, in a way I knew I would never be beautiful. Sometimes a poet, sometimes a singer, more often, this young woman in her late twenties, was manipulating (sleeping, I think) her way into bit parts on the Paris stage. We were interested, her mom and me, in the manifestations of the powers of the brain, ranging from raw intelligence, which we both knew we had, to the sort of metaphysical magic her daughter, who was calling herself LaFleur at the time, definitely had. I remember we knew someone who allegedly read photos. He was a “serious” person, an effective hospital administrator in one of the larger Parisian hospitals. Among his occult practices, he read photos. We asked LaFleur to submit him one, with no information other than her age (28 at the time) and name. She gave us a photo. It was one of the strangest photos I had ever seen. The lens distorted her myopic gaze in the vague direction of the camera. She wore some kind of soft cloth that descended low enough to reveal a single nipple and not the other. Of course, the “reader” declined the photo. He said a simple photo that would be used for a passport or drivers’ license would be helpful. LaFleur never submitted one. Read more on My Own Breakfast At Tiffany’s…
Filed under Personality Disorders by on Jul 8th, 2010. Comment.