Cell 2 Soul: The Humane Health Care Blog

Engage with Grace

"The One Slide Project was designed to help get the conversation about end of life experience started. The idea is simple: Create a tool to help get people talking. One Slide, with just five questions on it.  We're asking people to share this One Slide – wherever and whenever they can… Just One Slide, just five questions to get us talking."

This is an important, well-conceived project.  For more information go to web site:

Against Medical Advice

is an important book about a young man growing up with Tourette's syndrome and O.C.D.  I listened to it on CDs from my local library.  It is a moving and important work, and it was co-authored by James Patterson, a best selling author.

Here is a review from Amazon which addresses A.M.A. better than I could.

This book was a phenomenal retelling of the life of someone with Tourette Syndrome. As a mother of three boys who all have the same diagnosis as Cory, I feel like I can adequately say that I am more of an authority on the subject than most. As I read through his life struggles, weeping through a great many of the pages, I could identify with much of the grief and pain that he and his parents have gone through. I believe that everything in the book was very accurately portrayed, from the lack of understanding of the educational system to the medical roller coaster ride of trial and error, not to mention the misery inflicted by social situations. I feel like the book was tastefully written to not bash the people who do not understand this condition, (including medical/mental health professionals) but to portray the frustration and mental anguish caused by this lack of understanding.

I highly recommend this book to all, but especially to those who have the fortunate opportunity to touch the life of someone with Tourette Syndrome. As is obvious in Cory's case, these children are incredible. They have to overcome so much more than the rest of us would ever dream of imagining just to live, let alone succeed. Thank you Cory, for sharing your life with us.

Renaissance Kid

"Florida State safety Myron Rolle was awarded a Rhodes scholarship Saturday. He is the first major-college football player of his generation to win what is considered the world’s most prestigious postgraduate academic scholarship." from the NY Times... more

This is an amazing American story.  Rolle is a premed who intends to study medical anthropology at Oxford and open a clinic for poor people in the Bahamas when he is finished with medical studies and training.

(Photo and article from the NY Times)

5 Myths About Our Ailing Health-Care System

   

 Shannon Brownlee, a visiting scholar at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center and Ezekiel Emanuel, an oncologist and chairman of the center's Department of Bioethics give us cogent insights into the dysfunctional U.S. health care system.
 
 Brownlee is the author of Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making US Sicker and Poorer
Named no. 1 economics book of 2007 by the New York Times.  A kamaaina, she is an alumna of the famed Punahou School

Emanuel is author of Healthcare, Guaranteed and the brother of...
 
"With Congress ready to spend $700 billion to prop up the U.S. economy, enacting health-care reform may seem about as likely as the Dow hitting 10,000 again before the end of the year. But it may be more doable than you think, provided we dispel a few myths about how health care works and how much reform Americans are willing to stomach."

Read the article at Washington Post or on .pdf Download 5 Myths About Our Ailing Health

Village Voices

is Brian T. Maurer's  latest collection of vignettes. In it, Maurer captures life in a New England village. "Some of us are on the move; some of us stay put. Some are just starting out, trying their wings, while others are on their last legs, coming home to say good-bye.”

 You can order from Lulu.com or directly from Brian for autographed copies.

 

Bare Ruined Choirs

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
    This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
    To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

Sonnet # 73

Jamie's Pond, Hallowell, Maine

Also see: Stone Hill, Williamstown, MA Sunset 11/23/08

Village Voices

is Brian T. Maurer's  latest collection of vignettes. In it, Maurer captures life in a New England village. "Some of us are on the move; some of us stay put. Some are just starting out, trying their wings, while others are on their last legs, coming home to say good-bye.”

 You can order from Lulu.com or directly from Brian for autographed copies.

 

If you need a laugh...

from the New Yorker daily cartoon calendar:

Castes and Killings (India and New York)

From the Internet November 21 2008: Manish Kumar, 15, was kidnapped by members of the rival caste on his way to school and was killed as his mother begged for mercy, police in the impoverished eastern state of Bihar said.  One man has been arrested and a policeman suspended.  The victim's mother, Lalit Devi, told police she had watched "helplessly" as the wheels of the train passed over her son.  "The accused persons killed the boy for writing a love letter to the girl of the same village," superintendent of police in Kaimur district, Rajesh Kumar, told Reuters by telephone.  Police said the girl belonged to a washerman community, considered a lower caste, whereas the boy came from the slightly higher dairymen Yadav community.
    Love across caste lines is often violently opposed, especially in rural northern India, and it is not uncommon for outraged families to kill to "save the family honor."

Comment:

Shakespeare addressed this topic in Romeo and Juliet.

Aravind Adiga's recent Booker Prize winning book, The White Tiger is about caste and class in present day India.  Such an event could be depicted in the India of this book.

Lest we become too smug in “the West,” similar things happen here, too.  Recently, there have been beatings of blacks and Latinos in places like Staten Island and Patchogue, New York.  Hate is alive and well in the U.S. as well as other areas inhabited by homo sapiens.

1)  Nov. 20, 2008: Teenagers' Violent 'Sport' Led to Killing on Long Island

2) Nov. 16, 2008: In retaliation for the Obama victory 2 Held in Election Night Beating of Black Youth

Patients Are a Virtue

In three decades of medical practice, Brian T. Maurer has found his patients to be virtuous most of the time—virtuous in the sense that they have taught him much of what he has learned about the art of medicine.

For more information or to order: PAAV

Email Brian T Maurer with specific questions.