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Medicine
My Totally Awesome World
My husband has just left for work, and I’m already knotted / by the window, watching him like a dog. I should paw the glass. / I’ve got problems, man. Let’s get that out of the way.
May 2012Sunbeams
March 2012We are, perhaps uniquely among the earth’s creatures, the worrying animal. We worry away our lives, fearing the future, discontent with the present, unable to take in the idea of dying, unable to sit still.
Side Effects May Include
Christopher Lane On What’s Wrong With Modern Psychiatry
There are more than a hundred more mental disorders in the DSM today than we had in 1968, including incredible new ones such as “sibling-relational problem” and even “partner-relational problem.”
March 2012
Oh Baby
Ina May Gaskin On The Medicalization Of Birth
There is an energy associated with labor and birth. Birth is holy and sacred. But you have to be respectful of mother and baby, or you’ll miss it. If we come to it with a sense of awe and treat the mother with kindness and respect, birth can be a truly spiritual, empowering experience.
January 2012
A Country Where You Once Lived
It starts when you’re thirteen, and those tight shorts make your crotch wet when you ride your bike. You like these shorts, the way they make you feel this new way: sexy. You fall asleep at night thinking about sex. You listen to songs that encourage you to think about sex, and you discover you can even think about it at church and in the classroom without anyone knowing, if you keep a certain demeanor and cross your legs a certain way.
January 2012
The Voices Inside Their Heads
Gail Hornstein’s Approach To Understanding Madness
We must remember that no matter how serious someone’s emotional difficulties have been, they can completely recover. It’s crucial for them and their friends and family to know that. No expert knows enough about mental illness to say that you can’t improve. You might not know how to get better at this moment, but you have to start by knowing that it’s possible.
July 2011
Sunbeams
January 2011I had never gone to a doctor in my adult life, feeling instinctively that doctors meant either cutting or, just as bad, diet.
January 2011
I haven’t written in more than a week. Forgive me, O Muse, for being absent without leave. Maybe it’s the Prozac. Maybe it’s the rain. Maybe it’s because I’m too damn vain. Can’t I put down simple words and send them out the door?
January 2011The Mysterious Placebo
excerpted from
Anatomy Of An Illness As Perceived By The Patient
Over long centuries, doctors have been educated by their patients to observe the prescription ritual. Most people seem to feel their complaints are not taken seriously unless they are in possession of a little slip of paper with indecipherable but magic markings. To the patient, a prescription is a certificate of assured recovery.
January 2011Medicine
Han’s Clinic in Hongsong, South Korea, an adopted dog, a kidney transplant
January 2011
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