The more I look the more I find. In reliable sources. More ways that my beloved veterans are getting screwed over that nobody knows about. I know what I am doing and I collect facts–of science and of history — and I find myself too often in crying mode. Not that the controversies are necessarily new ones. Sigmund Freud said a long time ago that a lot of psychiatry seemed to be the neurology you did not yet know. I have been treating Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for a long time. I was incredulous, shocked to my limits, when I first tried to take care of these wonderful, brave, and once fearless men, who would have crying meltdowns and end up in my arms. The best thing I did was to learn Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) and to decide I was professional enough to do it “my way,” not according to verbatim directions, but adapting it to folks’ needs. Using EFT has put me on the spot plenty of times; with the VA, even prisons, where I have been told more than once that it robs people of “free will,” which is of course, complete and total rubbish. Patients are awake, alert, and voluntarily tap on their own acupuncture meridians. I have heard at least one hypnotherapist tell me it is “kind of like a light trance,” but patients could not, in my estimation, be more awake and alert. Read more on Another way veterans are getting screwed — crying time again….
I am glad that Frida Ghitlis covered this, glad as always that other women in other countries fight against arbitrary and repressive regimes.
Of course a woman should be allowed to show her face, that great bastion of personal identity.
I cannot claim to be surprised that Fox News, that lovely stronghold of all that is conservative, trivialized it into a headline about it being impossible to tell women “what to wear.” Read more on What “Womanstuff” Really Means…
Filed under News, politics, war by on Nov 15th, 2013. Comment. 
We don’t learn from history. America sounds like it is starving with several stories on food bank cuts that have just started. A lot of people seem to skimp and save to be able to eat. Some of my marijuana patients tell me it is the only medical care they can afford. One asked me where the nearest food bank was, and if I knew any good ones.
My Grandmother-Of-Blessed-Memory had a couple of raspberry bushes in the back yard, and some very aggressive strawberries that sent runners under the sidewalk to the garbage can, pushing up the already fragile cracked concrete. This infuriated my Mother-Of-Blessed-Memory who always had to do such repairs, as my father of blessed memory had “such delicate hands.” At least that is what his mother would lament as she stroked them. He had an honored place in our household for being a composer and choir director and music teacher and supporting the lot of us. Read more on Is This How We Thank Our Veterans?…
Filed under military by on Nov 11th, 2013. Comment.
The current rate of suicide among soldiers should make us angry, maybe enough to destroy our computers or, heaven forbid, write to congress or even try to stop war.
I checked out this institution¸ the National Center for Veterans Studies, the best I could. I am not sure why the Department of Defense and the Department of the Air Force seem to have a love affair with this division of the University of Utah.
Of their current projects, some of the proposed studies are randomized clinical trials of various therapies as suicide preventives. I am a great believer in research. But there is one question I am asked frequently, still, although I evaluate research but am not currently engaged in it. People ask me if I am a doctor first or a researcher first. There is absolutely no contest. I am a doctor first. I want lives saved, first. Read more on Why Soldiers Commit Suicide These Days…
Filed under News, politics by on Oct 11th, 2013. Comment.
We are in an era when all reporting — wire services, networks, whatever — looks the way tabloid reporting did when I was small. Aggressive, emotional, mostly verbal renderings of disasters that are meant to strike terror into the heart of the reader. Sometimes, something miraculous or near miraculous. Once in a while in this constellation of stories there is something “inspiring.” We all need inspiration. It is tough to define and highly individualistic.
I actually like this definition more than others: That “feeling of enthusiasm” that makes you “do” or “create” something. Read more on We All Need Inspiration — Here Is Today’s Dose…
Filed under Doctors, Religion by on Sep 26th, 2013. 1 Comment.
I worked in prison situations, where inmates complained about everything and sometimes I even agreed with them. Invariably, some older world-weary inmate would say: “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.” When spoken by a muscled, or at least strong and/or angry looking inmate, I have seen that shut people up. Let’s try this one when it’s time for troops to deploy: “Don’t appear, if they ain’t got the gear.” Read more on Look Mom, No Gear…
Filed under Government, military, News by on Feb 25th, 2013. Comment.
TRADITION! It’s the Fiddler on the Roof song. TRADITION! It’s my grandfather showing up at 6AM on Sunday morning to explain to me that a really smart girl would be working on finding a man who was rich enough to keep her at home so she would not need to work at all. TRADITION! It’s my parents telling me that if medical school did not work out I could come back home to suburban Boston and quietly become a French teacher. I don’t much care for tradition, mainly because I perceive it as the opposite of change. I am in favor of empowering individuals, opening up the fan of possibilities, removing things that make people feel poorly. I guess the father and daughter dance is a great American tradition. Me, I tried to dance with my father once at a Bar Mitzvah reception when I was young. He was quite inept, spun me around in a circle and actually stepped on my little foot. I can only wonder if that hasn’t anything to do with why my feet are problematic. It matters little; I would never have sued dear old dad. Great American tradition? I think not. Read more on Tradition!…
Filed under Family, News by on Feb 13th, 2013. Comment.
“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.” “It is sweet and right to die for your country.” The line, in Latin, is from Horace’s Odes, 3.2.13. It is a memory from Miss Lovering’s 8th grade Latin class at the Beaver Country Day School. Everyone said Miss Lovering was a truly great Latin teacher, mostly because she was old enough that she was surely there in Rome when it happened. She was one of the older living Radcliffe College alumnae and had, it was said, found marriage a pale alternative to the glories that were Rome. I remember the above quote as the moment I started thinking Romans were simply not very nice guys. The “lie,” apparently often quoted to soldiers at the beginning of World War I — ostensibly to give them courage — was nicely incorporated into a poem by Wilfred Owen that expresses what yucky stuff war really is. People die of a lot of horrible things, and anyone who has seen combat veterans or lost family has probably figured out that death is just as ugly, if not more so, when it is for your country.
In the poem, he cites, “vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues.” Our friends at the Center for Disease Control show — avoid this page if you are faint of heart — a syphilis sore on a tongue, which is what this sounds like. An attempt to get sexy prior to combat is my guess. Soldiers have tried to use the “I could be in combat and die tomorrow” line on me; it never worked, obviously. Opening combat to women might be good in some ways. Good for military rank climbing or professional climbing. If a woman feels compelled to do this, I guess she should be allowed to. Read more on Women in Combat…
Filed under military, News, Religion, Sexual Misconduct, war by on Feb 4th, 2013. Comment.
What this man did was wrong.
We all know that killing civilians during war is wrong.
Does it happen? Absolutely, all the time. Unfortunately, punishing one officer will not stop it. It will continue as long as we train and send soldiers into war.
If you or I were sent to a place where terrorist and guerrilla type warriors wanted to kill us, we would be scared. Moreover, we would be deemed “crazy” if we were not scared. Read more on Thrill Killers In The Military…
Filed under Government, military, News, Violence, war by on May 17th, 2012. Comment.
When we talk about sending troops out to fight with numbers that have lots of zeros on them, chance are that nobody is thinking about how the lives of the survivors will never be the same.
Recently, ABC News made an attempt, a praiseworthy attempt, to help people see at least a little of what the human devastation means. “PTSD” stands for “post-traumatic stress disorder,” which leaves lives devastated. People come out with devastated personal relationships, often unable to maintain marriages, unable to maintain jobs, with sometimes a high potential for violence. The devastation all too frequently progresses to suicide.
Adding to this the fact that the bureaucratic institutions do not generally encourage or even permit the most efficient means of treatment, we have a domestic mess and a domestic mortality of veterans, the very people who put their lives on the line, that is nothing short of horror.
Read more on PTSD — Often Denied, Resistant To Mainstream Treatment…
Filed under PTSD by on Dec 24th, 2009. Comment.