Category: Health and wellness

That’s the title of a wonderful book by Sherwin Nuland. I came across Nuland a little while ago when a talk by him was posted on the TED blog. As I said at the time, the talk is well worth watching and listening to. It brought tears to my eyes.

 

As a result, I sought out a book by him: How We Die.

 

I’m still reading it, but I am here to tell you that Nuland writes from a heart that is full of compassion, yet is realistic enough not to paint life in false colours. It is an amazing book. I have the feeling that he tells the truth, no matter how unpalatable that is. Yet he tells it in language that shows humanity, even at the direst end.

 

There are chapters in the book that spell out just what will happen when you have cancer, or AIDS or Alzheimers. He takes you to the brink of the pit and turns your face to gaze into its depths, but the strange thing is that having shown you the horrors, the reader (or at least, this one) comes away strengthened and ready to face what life (or rather, death) might bring.

 

I am reminded of this book because I was watching the John Grierson Awards on BBC Four, and Paul Watson won the Grierson Trust Award, in part for his documentary: Malcolm and Barbara: Love’s Farewell. I have not seen the whole documentary, only parts, but what I have seen only underlines that I would prefer to see the heartbreaking truth of things, rather than obfuscation and false colours. Truth matters, however uncomfortable it may be. In googling for the documentary, I came across this hit on the Orthfully Catholic blog that seems to me to miss the whole point so completely that it almost beggars belief. It’s a complete travesty of what Barbara Pointon was experiencing. That’s why I get so angry with religion, and the people who espouse such views.

I should note that today is World AIDS Day. While some things have changed for the better since the syndrome began to be noticed, some things have not, as Ben Goldacre notes. As he says, AIDS quackery is still very much with us.

Basic marketing. Create a fear, a gap, a need. Offer a solution. 

Look. Don’t just click away to the next attraction that the internet has to offer. Watch this personal testimony from Sherwin Nuland, a human phoenix. A wondrous affirmation of the human spirit.

 

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Liz has been invited to attend a Buddhist weekend meditation workshop called "The Art Of Being Human". She has mixed feelings about it. I can understand why.

Vaughan, over at Mind Hacks, points out that the famous sequence of cat pictures painted by Louis Wain that are supposed to illustrate his descent into madness actually do nothing of the sort. Damn, there’s another factoid that I’ve held on to for years suddenly whipped out from under me.

Just a note to point out that my somewhat reluctant attraction to roller-coaster rides may be something of a two-edged sword. 

…If I ever do end up contemplating suicide, then using a crossbow is probably not a good method. Dorothy Parker should have included it in her Resume. 

Jeff Atwood, over at Coding Horror, has a useful summary of best practice when it comes to computer workstation ergonomics. I have to admit, I don’t have the same position as the drawings show – I’m hunched over the keyboard staring closely into the screens. I know it’s bad for me, but up to now, I’ve been too lazy to do anything about it. First thing to do is to raise the screens a little more – that’ll be another couple of packs of A4 paper stuffed under the monitors, then… 

The Guardian has published an edited extract from a book called The Family That Couldn’t Sleep – A Venetian Medical Mystery, written by DT Max. Simultaneously fascinating and horrifying, it’s well worth reading. Oh, and the Guardian‘s links to the second part of the extract are currently broken, you’ll find it here. 

 

The thing that I find the most troublesome is that the disease – Fatal Familial Insomia (FFI) – is apparently passed on to 50% of the children of a person carrying FFI. The disease strikes and kills the carrier after child-bearing years. So, my question is this, would I be prepared to father a child knowing that there was a 50% chance that he or she would die no later than in their mid-fifties in a most horrifying fashion? I honestly think that I would prefer to adopt. I really don’t think the bloodline is that important.

Here’s a story about a teenager who is clearly aiming to get a Darwin Award. I find it slightly worrying that he was as old as fourteen. I had learned by the time I was seven that it was not a good idea to mess with electricity. I discovered that I shouldn’t check to see if a light bulb had burned out by removing it from the socket and then sticking in my fingers to see if the electricity was still on. It was. 

Come with me on a trip to the wilder shores of medical research. Ben Goldacre, over at Bad Science, raised his eyebrows at some research that has been published in the journal Medical Hypotheses. The "central thrust of their argument is that people with Down’s Syndrome have a lot in common with people from oriental countries". Oo-er, missus.

 

Vaughan, a contributor to Mind Hacks, has now referenced Goldacre’s article, and given some additional background to this esteemed journal, and its somewhat controversial founder. There’s clearly no shortage of hare-brained hypotheses in every field of human endeavour. Don’t miss the link to the hypothesis (also published in Medical Hypotheses) that asks: Is there an association between the use of heeled footwear and schizophrenia?  

That’s Asperger Quotient. Here’s a test, originally devised by psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen, that purports to give an indication of whether you exhibit the common signs of Asperger’s syndrome. I turn out to be boringly average with a score of 18.

Liz (of Granny Gets A Vibrator fame) tells us that we should live each day to the full. Quite right, too. 

Mo, over at Neurophilosophy, tells the history of the rise and fall of prefrontal lobotomy. Scary, scary stuff. 

Last weekend we discovered that our labrador, Kai, had a lump lurking under his fur. We took him to the vet on Monday, and on Tuesday, the lump was removed. The vet said that there was nothing to worry about, the growth was benign and easy to remove.

 

On Tuesday evening, Kai was feeling very sorry for himself as you can see from this photo. He’s wearing an old T-shirt to stop him worrying at the wound. After a couple of days, the T-shirt was removed, and now he’s back to normal. 

 

 

Another story from today’s Observer, but this time fiction is stranger than truth. Fiction, because a couple of weeks ago, The Observer had a front page story claiming that new research showed a surge in autism. That story was simply wrong on all sorts of counts. Today, the paper prints what it calls a "clarification". This is obviously a new definition of the noun, and one that I had not come across previously.

 

Ben Goldacre, over at Bad Science, is equally unimpressed. It’s worth reading his piece to appreciate how far journalistic standards appear to be falling at The Observer. Not good, not good at all.

 

Update: apparently The Observer have now removed the original story from their online archives.

The New York Times has a fascinating article on Williams Syndrome – a genetic disorder that results in a person having a cheerful, outgoing personality, but with poor understanding of social dynamics. Watch the video of Nicki Hornbaker, a 19-year old born with Williams syndrome.

 

(hat tip to Mind Hacks for the link)

Mr. Angry deconstructs a drug company’s web site that mentions the side-effects of a diet pill in a rather coy way. Mr. Angry obliterates the coy, and leaves you in no doubt as to what you are very likely to experience. Very, very funny.

Being a proud parent is all very well, but this is probably a cut too far. I have my doubts about Nurse Practitioners as it is; child surgeons seem even less of a good idea.