Cell 2 Soul: The Humane Health Care Blog

​​​​​A Sense of Melancholy

by Rosanne Trost                                                           

At times in my life, I have had a vague feeling of being vulnerable and lonely. It comes and goes. I can best describe it as a sense of unrest. Fortunately,the
episodes are infrequent, usually brief.

Still I wonder what they mean, if anything. Is there a message I am missing?

In my childhood, when these uneasy feelings would occur, I never shared them. Why? I do not know. Probably because I would have been misunderstood. The pensive thoughts would not have been validated.

As a little girl I remember feeling guilty for these sad times. I should be more grateful.

During my junior year in college, I declined an invitation from my roommate to go home with her for the weekend. My excuse, "I have to study." The truth was I disliked her father. He constantly berated his wife who sat there and took the verbal abuse.

The dorm was very quiet all weekend. After a gentle Sunday afternoon rain, I looked out the window to see the sun appear. I felt peace. This was followed by an intense sadness. As darkness settled in, my mood lifted.

Through the years, the melancholia would sneak up on me without warning.

Always at the end of the day. Nothing seemed to precipitate the feeling.

Several months after my first husband's death, I was out at dusk watering the lawn. An unsettling gloom came over me. Grief probably, but no tears, just a profound sadness. Although it was warm, I felt cold. Inside the house, the feeling remained until dark night. I looked out at the slice of moon, and experienced a calmness.

After my second marriage, occasionally I would take a glass of wine, walk outside in the evening, and wait for my husband to arrive home from work. It became more of a ritual after my retirement. Recently, the familiar feeling crept in. As always, it took me by surprise. The sun was setting. A plane flew over. Birds were chirping. Yet as I saw his car turn the corner, I felt downhearted. The feeling was only fleeting. As the evening turned to night, my mood lifted. Somehow, the darkness seems protective.

Soon it will be daylight savings time. So many people rejoice at the gift of an extra hour of light.

I will wait for the long dark evenings when we turn back the clocks and the luxury of night returns.

Two Poems by Shirley Adelman

Equal at Last

A teenager, moon faced from steroids,
a halo of wispy hair round her baseball cap.

A shrunken woman alone, taking half steps
with a walker.
A son lifts his mother to a wheelchair,
"a piece of crap," he says as it rolls away.
"Donated." "See you three months,"
she announces, smiling, pleased to have
a date with the future.

The regulars are at home, snoozing between
rounds, complaining about sandwiches too
dry to eat, waiting it out for packets of mayo.

Here in the Infusion room we are equal, at last.
All poor, robbed of health, pale, wanting kindness,
a hot cup of sweet coffee, carefully placed
in our cold hands, something to hold onto.

Some will recover, and forget to remember
how the poor live: day to day.

* "Equal at Last" was previously published in "Blue Collar Review," Winter 2005-2006

 

A Perfect Pirouette

I rarely saw Zane,
yet I knew her,
the way one 
knows the heart
of a character,
drawn so deftly
she slips into
one's life.

Cutting carrots,
mending a scarf,
her voice returns,
from letters,
signed with love.
I see her dancing
on the page,
like a perfect 
   pirouette. 

 

In memory of my granddaughter, Zane Kenig, who filled our lives with love.

Zane was a dancer, a student, and writer who battled anorexia for many years. She died from the disease shortly after turning twenty-two. I treasure her many letters, in which she shared her thoughts and feelings, in our on-going correspondence.

 

Who is Gregory Hinton?

Saturday Profile, June 24, 2017, New York Times

Gregory Everest Hinton, sometimes called “the godfather of deep learning,” is perhaps the most influential person you’ve never heard of. This profile in the NY Times is a fascinating introduction to a remarkable human life.

Hinton’s career has helped to further the fields of neurobiology, psychology, neural networks and artificial intelligence (AI). There is much in this Times profile that will interest you.

Hinton famously said: “There is no reason to think computers won’t get much smarter than us.”  Can't wait for the dumbing down Hollywood biopic!

Ordinary Light

by Tracy Smith

Tracy Smith,  Professor of Creative Writing at Princeton, was recently appointed U.S. Poet Laureate. Her memoir, Ordinary Light, is fascinating and inspiring. It is the story of an ordinary/extraordinary daughter in an African-America family whose incandescent memories are a picture of her America. 

This is really the story of a daughter and a mother. There is hope here in her book for our country during what is, for some of us, a dark time.

NYT Review, April 2015

Tracy Smith PBS Interview. (seven minutes)

Honor The Navigators

Ben Finney: Voyaging Anthropologist Dies

Around 1991, a wizened heavily tanned New Zealander found his way to my dermatology office on Kauai. He had a few skin cancers and no insurance. I removed them gratis and in the process got to know David Lewis, a physician who left medical practice to learn the ancient navigational skills that were still practiced by a handful of men in the Marshall Islands.

Lewis, among others, worked with the anthropologist scholar and adventurer Ben Finney when the Hokulea made her early voyages from Hawaii to Tahiti. Ben Finney died on May 23, 2017 in Honolulu. His obituary in the NY Times is inspirational reading.

Finney, Mau Piailaug, Nainoa Thompson, David Lewis and the Pacific Voyaging Society were important players in the rediscovered of Polynesian migration and the recognition of Polynesians as the world's preeminent navigators.

Hokulea circa 1975

 

Fat Planet

Study Finds: More Than 10 Percent of World’s Population Is Obese

More than 10 percent of the world’s population is now obese, a marked rise over the last 30 years that is leading to widespread health problems and millions of premature deaths, according to a new study, the most comprehensive research done on the subject.

Published Monday in The New England Journal of Medicine, the study showed that the problem had swept the globe, including regions that have historically had food shortages, like Africa.

The study defined obese as a body mass index of 30 or higher and overweight as a B.M.I. from 25 to 29. By those measures, nearly 604 million adults worldwide are obese and 108 million children, the authors reported. Obesity rates among children are rising faster in many countries than among adults.

No country in the globe has reduced overweight or obesity levels. This is astounding given the huge health and economic costs linked with overweight and obesity.”

The study largely did not go deeply into the causes of obesity, but the authors said the growing accessibility of inexpensive, nutrient-poor packaged foods was probably a major factor and the general slowdown in physical activity was probably not.

Here is a BMI calculator if you want to see where you fall.

Just so you don’t feel too bad if your BMI is hovering at 30 or above, there is the Obesity Paradox hypothesis which holds that obesity (and high cholesterol) may, counterintuitively, be protective and associated with greater survival in certain groups of people, such as very elderly individuals or those with certain chronic diseases. It further postulates that normal to low body mass index or normal values of cholesterol may be detrimental and associated with higher mortality in asymptomatic people.

The Haida Chronicles

Dii gii hla Xaayda kihlgii suu ga*

In Haida Gwaii, off British Columbia's Northwest Coast,the first Haida-language feature film, “Edge of the Knife" is taking shape.

The loss of one language, said Wade Davis, a University of British Columbia anthropology professor, is akin to clear-cutting an “old-growth forest of the mind.” The world’s complex web of myths, beliefs and ideas — which Mr. Davis calls the “ethnosphere” — is torn, just as the loss of a species weakens the biosphere, he said.

A Haida glossary is said to dedicate three pages to words and expressions for rain.

Fewer than 20 fluent speakers of Haida are left in the world, according to local counts. For the Haida themselves, the destruction of their language is profoundly tied to a loss of identity.

“The secrets of who we are are wrapped up in our language,”

Read NY Times article: Reviving a Lost Language of Canada Through Film  (June 12, 2017)

*  say it to me in the Haida language

The Rise of the Red Carpet M.D.

High-end boutique health services – doctors on retainers, 5-star hospitals – are transforming care (for the very wealthy).

[This article in the NY Times Sunday Business section describes what care for the wealthy is like. Those who can afford it can now jump the queue. The poor and even the average patient can wait in the wings while the privileged few are ushered into clinics and hospitals first.]

You have no idea how much money there is here,” said Dr. Harlan Matles, who specializes in internal medicine and joined MD Squared after working at Stanford.

Most of these groups do not advertise, virtually no presence on the web, and new patients come strictly by word of mouth. With annual fees that range from $40,000 to $80,000 per family (more than 10 times what conventional concierge practices charge), the suite of services goes far beyond 24-hour access or a Nespresso machine in the waiting room.

There are rewards for the physicians themselves, of course. A successful internist in New York or San Francisco might earn $200,000 to $300,000 per year; but these boutique practices pay $500,000 to $700,000 annually for the right practitioner.

Nowhere is the velvet rope in health care rising faster than in Northern California, where newfound tech wealth, abundant medical talent and a plethora of health-conscious patients have created a medical system that has more in common with a luxury hotel than with the local clinic.

The traditional model of having a good internist is dying,” said Mr. Traina, a scion of a prominent San Francisco family said. “Even the 25-year-olds at my company either have some form of concierge doc, or they’ll just go to an H.M.O. or a walk-in clinic. No one here has a regular doctor anymore.

 

As I read this article, I kept thinking, "Something is definitely wrong here.  This is immoral and flies in the face of what being a healer is about.

Williams Commencement Speaker 2017

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

She was an articulate speaker who said a few things that made sense. If you want to listen to her, go to her TED talks.

1. We Should All Be Feminists
2. The Danger of a Single Story

She told the graduates that Williams is the college of cool geeks.

Even if you're not a famous published writer, the benefits of writing are reading and dreaming.

When she started out she got rejection after rejection. She realized that rejection can mean that the piece submitted is a bad fit for the publisher or maybe it's just bad. Rejection does not necessarily mean the piece is bad.

Incompetence dressed up as leadership is still incompetence. (A veiled reference to Trump (got sustained applause).

She has a rant that she addresses to her nieces and nephews, "Put your damn phones down."

Regarding social justice, living in a just society is a great gain. She sees all politics as being deeply tribal. Regarding privilege: a straight white male hits the privilege jackpot.

Privilege can get in the way of seeking social justice. Beware of social justice.

There are important learning opportunities in everyone's stories and these will make the raw material for what you communicate to others.

She ended with Emily Dickinson's poem, "Hope is a thing with feathers."

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all –

Ist Peony of 2017, June 4

 Wellesley Commencement Address 2015 (C.N. Adicie)

Latest Edition

by Carol J. Rhodes 

Grade school, first bicycle,
high school, first date, first kiss,
college, first car, first job,
third floor walk-up flat.
Bought latest edition of Cooking for One. 

Engagement, marriage, honeymoon,
newness of sleeping in the arms of love,
instead of a kiss at the door.
first house, dinner parties, trips.
Gave Cooking for One to a single friend.
Bought latest edition of Elegant Meals for Two. 

Children, carpools, Little League games,
empty nest, daughters-in-laws,
doctors, hospital, funeral,
strangeness of  small apartment.
Gave Elegant Meals for Two to newlyweds
across the hall.
Bought latest edition of Cooking for One.

Author Bio: Carol J. Rhodes lives in Houston, Texas with a household zoo of two poodles and four cats.  She plays bridge once a week, and always has an online Scrabble game going with her best friend.  She can be reached at: rhodes.cATatt.net