Is It Christmas Yet? Let’s Have a Celebratory Tequila.

Courtesy of  Voodoo Pad

And Pixelmator

Time marches on.  Relentlessly.  Preparing myself for the joys of Christmas shopping.  Last minute burst of energy.  The world feels unwieldy.  I feel large and ungainly.  And I am growing too big for the world.  I am a big, clumsy rag doll.  I do not think I will cope well with the ravages of old age.  When my grandmother was my age she began to disintegrate.  Her hair fell out, her teeth fell out, her system failed bit by bit like an old used car.  And she was always so stoical.  I never heard her complain.  I never saw her eat although she was bordering on the obese.  I am afraid that this is happening to me..  I’m falling apart, bit by bit.  How can I halt my own inevitable, relentless, terminal decline.  This is what I am facing and I must confess that I am paralysed by terror.  I want to climb into my bed, pull the covers up over my head and never resurface.

Christmas and I am fatter than ever.  I once when I was very young and immature said that I would rather take my own life than be fat.

And we were all like that at one time in our lives whether we admit it or not.

The temperature plummeted.  I, rather foolishly, went walking in the rain.  I didn’t notice how wet I was until I came indoors.  I brace myself against the weather.  Unlike everyone else, for me, winter has its charms.

My mind is offline.  One thing I am terrified of is dementia.  Early onset.  It casts a permanent shadow over my life ever since my new consultant psychiatrist mentioned clear cognitive impairment in her assessment letter.

Faceless

I can’t see the stars anymore living here
Let’s go to the hills where the outlines are clear

Bring on the wonder
Bring on the song
I pushed you down deep in my soul for too long

I fell through the cracks at the end of our street
Let’s go to the beach, get the sand through our feet

Bring on the wonder
Bring on the song
I pushed you down deep in my soul for too long

Bring on the wonder
We got it all wrong
We pushed you down deep in our souls for too long
Find More lyrics at http://www.sweetslyrics.com

I don’t have the time for a drink from the cup
Let’s rest for a while ’til our souls catch us up

Bring on the wonder
Bring on the song
I pushed you down deep in my soul for too long

Bring on the wonder
We got it all wrong
We pushed you down deep in our souls, so hang on

Bring on the wonder
Bring on the song
I pushed you down deep in my soul for too long.

Bring On the Wonder, Susan Enan

featured in Bones

Books…

…that deal with eating disorders.

I was asked by a friend to compile a list of books that deal with the subject of eating disorders. This is just a preliminary version:

Bulimia: A Guide to Recovery by Peter J Cooper.
Fed Up and Hungry_ a series of essays on EDs edited by Marilyn Lawrence
The Beauty Myth by Naomi Woolf
Womansize by Kim Chernin and The Hungry Self by the same author which may be out of print.
Fabulous Figures by Rachel Swift – a humorous, critique of society’s obsession with aesthetic perfection.
Getting Better Bit(e) By Bit(e)_ (A Survival Kit for sufferers of Bulimia Nervosa and Binge Eating Disorders by Ulrike Schmidt and Janet Treasure
Some novels that deal with EDs:

The Passion of Alice by Stephanie Grant
Eve’s Apple by Jonathan Rosen
LifeSize by Jenefer Shute

About BED:
Sweet Death by Claude Tardat
She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb

And of course:
Second Star to the Right by Deborah Hautzig
The Best Little Girl in the World by Steven Levenkron (a tad too didactic IMHO)

Catherine by Maureen Dunbar

Oh, and OT: I now have a copy of Steven Levenkron’s The Luckiest Girl in the World. It is out of print but Amazon found a copy of it for me.  it arrived a couple of months ago all the way from some second hand bookshop in the good old US of A!  They are now scouring the continent on my behalf for a copy of  Kessa so, fingers crossed!

Oh, and a book I have just finished reading called  The Mermaids Singing by Lisa Carey (which I mentioned in another post) has an anorexia sub-plot.

Flying Blind

I have no navigator
I have no rear gunner
I have no radar
I have no lucky charm
I have been disarmed
I am flying blind

Medical Ethics (The Scourge of Incompetent Doctors Everywhere.)

The original source of a doctor’s duty of confidentiality is the Hippocratic Oath. Regarding confidentiality Hippocrates said: ‘Whatever, in connection with my professional practice or not in connection with it, I see or hear in the life of men, which ought not to be spoken of abroad, I will not divulge, as reckoning that all such should be kept secret.’ The obligation of confidentiality spoken of here is not absolute; it is up to the doctor to decide what information ‘ought not to be spoken abroad.’ Another Oath of confidentiality is the Declaration of Geneva which says: ‘I will respect the secrets confided in me, even after the patient has died.’ Here, however, the obligation is absolute. These are two sources of a doctor’s duty of confidentiality which, although they differ in extent, both highlight the importance of respecting the confidentiality of patients. J NI Ethics Forum 2006, 3: 146-153

‘The better part of valour is discretion; in the which better part I have saved my life.’

Falstaff, Shakespeare, in Henry IV, Part One, 1596.

This…

is the kind of school I went to:

England and Wales
In England and Wales, Catholic schools are either independent or voluntary aided, with the funding divided between the state and the Catholic Education Service. The service provides education for approximately 840,000 pupils each year through its 2,300 schools. In addition, some 130 independent schools have a Catholic character.[8][9] The Catholic Education Service in their website indicates that they interact on behalf of all bishops with the government, and other national bodies on legal, administrative, and religious education matters. This as their website indicates is to: “promote Catholic interests in education; safeguard Catholic interests in education; and, contribute to Christian perspectives within educational debate at national level.”[10] There have been considerable changes to the way the money has been collected to the support of Catholic schools. The money towards the Catholic community in regards to building and supporting schools has risen from 50% to 90% in both England and Wales. In 2009, Catholic schools in England comprised two-thirds of all religious secondary schools.[11]

Oh, and FYI, I had a reading quotient of 150 at the age of ten.

So suck that up, buttercup!

Why Would a Psychiatrist Think That…

the idea of a discovery for the causes of Schizophrenia is ‘boring’…

A Pittance of Time

 

in the eighties they called it realpolitik

Things Ain’t What They Used To Be

 

Why is it that drunkenness is regarded as a predatory monster that has crept up on us over the last decade or  so?

My mother vividly recollects the 1970s when she was in nurse training. She remembers accompanying her hard drinking friends to night clubs, resting her head on a beer stained table and falling asleep. She was a cheap date. She found it impossible to keep up with them. I live in a university town and the medical students are renowned for their hard drinking behaviour. But this has always been the case. Nobby’s son is a taxi driver who remembers a time in the early seventies when medical students behaved so disgracefully as a result of inebriation that the local taxi companies refused to carry them. And in our hospitals health care staff: from the consultant to the office cleaner would take any drug they pleased from the medication trolley. There was a nationwide investigation into this and security was tightened. The nurses ran the ward, just like the NCOs run the army.

And it would still be like that now if it were not for those pesky managers.