I remember my final day as a neurosurgeon. “Washing” a human brain with two humongous syringes of sterile physiologic saline, the same way my mother of blessed memory used to baste a chicken.
I thought maybe as a psychiatrist I had a chance, at least a fighting chance, of preventing a disaster like the one I was standing there trying to treat. Read more on The Decisions You Make…
Filed under Brain, Doctors, Family, life, News, Substance Abuse by on Jul 18th, 2018. Comment. 
I am recommended News Fasts a lot these days.
I don’t think people have a clue what is going on in their brains and spirits when they watch television news.
Watching television News is like hypnosis, but with even less control about the kind of content that washes over your brain. Read more on You May Need A News Fast…
Filed under culture, Family, News by on Jan 23rd, 2018. Comment.
Too many Americans can’t afford to and simply do not–take their medicines as prescribed. That estimate is based on information from the (American!) Centers for Disease Control). I have had patients come into my office who take their medications –in both cases, for life-threatening infectious diseases — only every other day, simply because that is all they can afford. I explained to each one individually the idea of the half-life of a drug. They only stay in your body for a certain length of time, then they leave your body in waste products. That is why taking a drug every other day is not really effective. They both gave me almost exactly the same response — It was all they could afford, and it was probably better than nothing. Read more on Big Pharma Is Capitalism Out Of Control…
Filed under Alternative Medicine, Diagnosis, Disease, Doctors, Education, Government, Hepatitis C, medicine, News, politics, prescription drugs, Psychiatrists, Psychotherapy by on May 29th, 2017. Comment.
She was, and is, a close and cherished friend. Someone decided she had Alzheimer’s. At least somebody said she did. She had wonderful plans for retirement. Now the retirement community she had been dreaming of did not seem to want her and her husband around. She has just made the decision (I don’t know with who’s help) that it is a better idea she does not drive. She would surely not remember the details of how the diagnosis was made. I wonder if it had been made properly. Probably not.
Filed under Aging, Alternative Medicine, Alzheimer's Disease, Diagnosis, Disease by on Jan 9th, 2017. Comment.
Filed under Doctors, News, prescription drugs, Research by on Jul 4th, 2016. Comment.
The fastest, easiest test of the memory that I know is the one where you have to remember three objects five minutes after you’ve been told what they are.
This is part of a standardized test of cognition (typically testing for dementia) known as the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE). Actually there has been more debate of the “what is this test and what objects should be used?” variety than anyone can possibly imagine. It is usually not too tough to engage someone in talking about something else for five minutes, to keep them from repeating it in their head. Read more on MEMORY TESTS…
Filed under Brain, News, Psychiatrists by on Oct 24th, 2014. Comment.
“Concordance.” That means doctor and patient wanting the same thing. In psychiatry we call it a “therapeutic alliance.” We work for it — assuming we have the time. But if the time is not there, on some level we all know that nothing will happen.
Leave it to the pharmacists to at least touch on a reason for “lack of concordance” that nobody seems to discuss. “With increasing numbers of medications shown to do more good than harm when taken as prescribed, low compliance is a major problem in health care,” reads an unpretentious sentence in the abstract.
And people wonder why there is no “trust” between patient and doctor. Read more on Trusting Your Doctor…
I don’t care if Dylan Thomas was drinking himself to death while that was being written. It is a sentiment close to my heart, and undoubtedly the stanza of poetry I quote most often.
Do not go gentle into that good night
Old age should burn and rage at close of day
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
I will not accept the allegedly inevitable “cognitive loss of age.”
I suppose my mother did me a service at age 10, when she dragged me fairly close to the oversized window of an oversized ladies room, and told me never to linger trying to make myself attractive, for it would be a waste of time. I was – in the opinion of my parents – destined for brains, not beauty.
Time lost in fixing my appearance would be noted sardonically by my father, and bother him, as we wasted his time.
But my strong suit was my brains, and even I agreed that I should work on them — working very hard in school — and that way I could win in life. I actually took my mother seriously, for a very long time. It was not until my late fifties that I started to be anywhere near a fashionable woman’s size, finding to my amazement that people found me attractive, and taking more notice myself than ever in my life.
But even now, I don’t give a damn if they call it “cognitive loss for age” or “dementia,” I want nothing of it.
Nothing at all.
Filed under Aging by on Jan 23rd, 2012. 1 Comment.
Gail Sheehy, author of the groundbreaking book “Passages,” (and 15 subsequent spin-off books) is still using that way of looking at life to make a living. I certainly give her points for having figured out how to do that.
The reason is because one of the immutable laws they give you in marketing class is that it is essentially impossible to sell “prevention.” If you do not do “fill in the blank” something horrible will happen.
Something like illness.
When I thought I had diabetes (I don’t) and followed the directions I was given, I told my beloved husband — as well as my parents of blessed memory, who thought that since I was always thought of as a healthy and reliable one and couldn’t possibly be REALLY sick — that I would take good care of myself so that my old age would see me being strong. And comfortable. And of course, reliable to others.
That was when I really believed things that doctors told me., Especially the things that academic doctors told me. They were the people who had taught me, after all, be that in one country or another.
Filed under Memory by on Feb 23rd, 2011. Comment.
Even I – a supposed expert — have only scraps of information on this drug.
I remember a wonderful professor in medical school, who introduced me to her mother, who had some problems with dementia. Mother had improved greatly, it seemed, in a loving homey institution on a medication called “Centrophenoxine” — which I have since learned is also called “meclophenoxate” or “Lucidryl.” Read more on Mostly Harmless “Smart Drug” — But No Endorsement (Yet)…
Filed under Alzheimer's Disease by on Jan 12th, 2011. Comment.