The Woman's Place

Oh my, what a hornets nest this subject is. The feminists want you to think it is everywhere but, BUT some of us (present company included) still believe the woman's place is in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant, preparing a meal for her man after he comes home from a hard day's work (if she so chooses). Shoot down my opinion if you want, but please refer to my motto: This is MY soapbox and if you don't like what I have to say, hit the ditch, bitch.

What I wouldn't give to be the one home taking care of my progeny, watching every second of every miracle of their lives but missing so much because I work 100+ hours a week to support our family (not being immigrants, we do not qualify for help from the government I subsidize through tax dollars paid out through my nose and every other orifice of my body), and we do not even qualify for basic shit like WIC or reduced lunches for the school-aged kids.

IMO, there was a particular group of individuals (the ones burning bras) who fucked it up royally for the rest of us. We were forced into taking a piece of the shit pie they wanted served up for desert when they demanded equal rights. Just exactly where have these equal rights gotten "us"? Are women in 50% of the top spots of the Fortune 500 companies? Do they comprise 50% of the top-paying professions in this country? Hell no! So instead of forcing the rest of us to eat the shit pie, why not swallow a little pride, back up a few steps and sit your ass back down where you belong: Next to the stove.

BRING IT ON!

Oh, poop. No luck at the neurologist's office, so ever onward and upward and now on my way to Cleveland Clinic.

That EMG today was really quite.... interesting. I had read about it and was fully prepared to have needles poked into me, but I guess someone had forgotten to mention the part where they stick what looks like a battery terminal on you and SHOCK you. The first shock was the worst, when it gave me a nasty adrenaline rush and my heart started thumping and my kidneys started aching. Well, no, the second, third, and fourth shocks were the worst, because they made my leg flail uncontrollably and I had MORE adrenaline rushing to my vital organs. That was just the first leg. By the end of the test, I thought my heart was going to crawl out of my chest and up my throat, right onto the table next to me, quivering and begging for mercy, and my kidneys would have jumped in front of the nearest train if I had allowed it. She tested both legs and my right arm, the three extremities I'm having the most problem with, and still no answers other than it might possibly be the syringomyelia, depending on the exact location within my spinal cord: Right or left, anterior or posterior, and what fibers could be affected. Lovely. Bring it on, Cleveland Clinic (for possible muscular dystrophy).

Of course, I asked her if I could borrow her machine to use on my husband when he got out of line. She just laughed. Maybe I could rig up my own, and stick an electrode on his nose when he's a naughty boy. . .

We went up to the front desk and we could see hubby and the babies out in the waiting room, and the gals at the desk were giggling. "They've kept him busy." More like they were out there terrorizing everyone in the waiting room, throwing Cheerios at each other and unplugging the television set and laughing like hyenas, too cute to ever get upset about it. Everyone in the waiting room seemed to think so, too, and they were all helping the kids find their Cheerios to toss in the trash can before we left. *Note to self: No more Cheerios at the doctor's office.*

So-Called Psychiatric "Medicine"

I am continually amazed that there are so many people in this country suffering from mental illness. How in the world can we function with more than 25% of the population deemed "sick in the head"?

"Mental disorders are common in the United States and internationally. An estimated 26.2 percent of Americans ages 18 and older — about one in four adults — suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year. When applied to the 2004 U.S. Census residential population estimate for ages 18 and older, this figure translates to 57.7 million people." --National Institute of Mental Health (updated 1/22/07).

I have a problem with this. Does this mean that the burden of the cost of mental illness falls upon the other less than 75% of the population that does NOT claim a mental illness? Of course it does. What does that cost equate to?

"The costs of mental illness are exceedingly high. Although the question of cost is discussed more fully in Chapter 6, a few of the central findings are presented here. The direct costs of mental health services in the United States in 1996 totaled $69.0 billion. This figure represents 7.3 percent of total health spending. An additional $17.7 billion was spent on Alzheimer’s disease and $12.6 billion on substance abuse treatment. Direct costs correspond to spending for treatment and rehabilitation nationwide.

"When economists calculate the costs of an illness, they also strive to identify indirect costs. Indirect costs can be defined in different ways, but here they refer to lost productivity at the workplace, school, and home due to premature death or disability. The indirect costs of mental illness were estimated in 1990 at $78.6 billion (Rice & Miller, 1996). More than 80 percent of these costs stemmed from disability rather than death because mortality from mental disorders is relatively low." --Mental Health: A Report from the Surgeon General.

The classifications of mental illness in the "Bible" of psychiatric diagnoses (DSM-IV) include everything from addictive disorders to emotional disturbances to organic disorders such as Alzheimer's. The DSM-IV is considered the Bible because it is the means by which to get paid; and mental illness is BIG BUSINESS. It behooves psychiatrists, psychologists, and especially Big Pharma to ensure as many people as possible are diagnosed with some type of disturbance.

My thoughts on the issue: If it is not organic in nature (i.e., Alzheimer's, chemical disturbance, structural CNS insult or trauma, etc.), then it is a matter of individuals either unwilling or unable to accept personal responsibility for their own actions and to learn methods of coping with the everyday stress every single one of us encounters in life. There are also individuals who claim "mental illness" as a means of escaping punishment for a crime they have committed or as a means to avoid having to work to earn a living (malingering), to collect a Social Security check on the backs of others who choose to be personally and socially responsible.

My interest in this topic is forever piqued, and I cannot help it. I am sickened continually by cases where someone has destroyed another person's life, either by:

1. Claiming their own mental illness and willfully harming another (the "disturbance" cited as a cause and later justification for escaping punishment); or
   
2. Claiming the mental illness of a child (MSBP, collecting monetary benefits, or just so as not to need to deal with kids being kids), as in the case of Rebecca Riley, who died as a result of her parents seeking out then administering a dangerous cocktail of powerful psychotropic medications that were never meant to be given to a child.

Psychiatric medicine has failed not just the 26.2% of American adults currently labeled "mentally ill," but the children of those adults, the children not included in that percentage who are receiving treatment, and the remainder of 100% of the population of the United States who suffer personally, socially, and financially for the shortcomings of this money-generating venture.

In the words of Loren Mosher, MD, in a letter of resignation from the American Psychiatric Association: "Biologically based brain diseases are certainly convenient for families and practitioners alike. It is no-fault insurance against personal responsibility. We are all just helplessly caught up in a swirl of brain pathology for which no one, except DNA, is responsible."

If it is the case that psychiatric illnesses are truly biological (as psychiatrists purport), then it follows that these patients should be treated by NEUROLOGISTS, not PSYCHIATRISTS. (Psychiatrists are, in fact, trained physicians but primarily direct treatment by administration of pharmaceuticals, rather than biologically based treatments). Anything less has the appearance of social and medical malpractice.

Psychiatry and the other "specialties" under that umbrella (psychology, therapy, etc.) are turning into a joke, a means to generate profits for Big Pharma, seemingly a more sinister means by which to medicate the citizenry into docile sheep, incapable of free thinking and generating sparks to give society the dynamic flow it needs in order to evolve.

Red Shirt Phenomenon

I have always been a fan of Star Trek, for as long as I can remember, and being a night owl I can usually catch re-runs on one of the late-night cable programs. Growing up, I always wondered, "Why would any crew member on the Enterprise want to wear a red shirt? They're just going to end up dead."

As a child, there was little I could do to satisfy this morbid curiosity I had about the ill-fated red shirts aboard the USS Enterprise, but in the age of the world wide web, I just KNEW there had to be others who wondered the same thing. Of course, I turned to Google to give me the answer:

Analytics according to Captain Kirk by Matt Bailey

It's amazing! It's wonderful! It has statistics and graphs and charts. Now I am confident there is at least one other human being walking the planet who has a curiosity as rabid as my own (actually, maybe even more so, since I probably would not have gone to the lengths necessary to create such a detailed analysis).

I know, of course, not all members of the crew who perish wear a red shirt. In fact, some blue shirts and gold shirts have also met an untimely death, but....

I also found a wealth of information about the "Red Shirt Phenomenon" at Wikipedia, which has a collection of great information and trivia about red shirts.

I knew it wasn't my imagination but have to chuckle over the fact that so many others have put as much or more thought into the issue as I have. I guess I need to "get out more" and I would have had this curiosity satisfied years ago.