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A beloved football coach – I might even say a living legend – finds his life destroyed after a luminous career.  All because of alleged inaction – perhaps to shield a friend, perhaps to preserve the “old school” or for other reasons.

Penn State coach Joe Paterno

More than a coach -- Joe Paterno has been a diety at Penn State

And the sad story of Joe Paterno is only one more chapter in how the victims who suffer are once again vilified, and how we wonder if it is even possible for justice to prevail when such tragedy is involved.

When I was in the year of training for psychotherapy, I felt fortunate to study under a knowledgeable PhD who ran the gamut from psychoanalysis to cognitive styles in his competencies.

The thing he told us was the most important thing to do during our psychotherapy training was for each of us to isolate the population with which we could not work. Read more on Penn State Sports Scandal Destroys Lives…

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Down the hall she came making sounds of distress and physical effort.  When she got to my door, it didn’t get any easier.  She had to push her way through the narrow doorway, one of those doors designed for thinner people of years past.

I saw a wildly obese 23 year old, with suicidal ideation, who told me her life was worthless.  Doctors had found a rare uterine cancer and done a total hysterectomy.  She was told that she could have no hormone replacement.  So she was dealing with some symptomatic treatments of hot flashes that weren’t doing very much.

I was pretty much impressed by the doctors who had made a rare save.  She seemed to be cancer-free now, although she was not “crazy” about the abdominal wall hernia repair that had been necessary to hold her stomach together.  Also, she was not enthusiastic about the bimonthly pap smears.  But she was alive, and granted, she could not have hormone replacement.  She sat in front of me telling me all about how the doctors had taken care of her.

She was crying and depressed.  It was not hard to figure out why.

“I will never have children.  I will never be a mommy.” Read more on What Can You Do With Your Life?…

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