Wednesday, December 05, 2007

I Just Want To Talk

It's snowing here in Baltimore, it's kind of lovely. Victor, friend of our blog, told one of his classmates to sit down, it's only snow, and the boy told him he'd never seen snow before, they don't have it in his country of origin.

It's not 3:30 AM, but even in the daylight, I'm still worrying about my kid-- nothing awful, he had an issue at school and we feel he's gotten a bum rap at a time in his life when having a bum rap is hard, trying to rescue him from the unjust, and Roy is quick to tell me that life is unfair and it's a good lesson to learn early. I suppose. ClinkShrink and Roy both have things going on in their lives, Roy's working hard, I keep hoping he'll do the things I want him to do, but he's a guy who gets pulled in a lot of directions and judging by the long hours he tells me he's working, his hospital could use a few good shrinks. The blog is suffering a little, I hope not a lot. I haven't been visiting my usual blog friends and I hope everyone is well. I do peek at the results on our anti-psychotic poll and Seroquel is winning by a lot. If you haven't voted, please do.

Okay, so Roy did some Leopard thing this weekend. Yeah Leopard. Someday I'll be a Mac person, too. I'd kind of like an iTouch, but will I be able to get the information from my Palm Pilot over to it?? This story is for Roy: the psychiatrist across the hall from me also did tht iMac Leopard thing last week. Before he did, he backed stuff up, but still lost everything in his organizer-- he had to call 50 patients and ask them when their appointments were. Oh, and he did it twice.

With that thought, the judge in hair curlers sent me so cartoons that made me smile. I can share them with you?And finally, we three shrink rappers have been talking about distilling some stuff from the blog into a book. I suppose it would be for a different audience, one less likely to visit a blog, but perhaps a glimpse into How Shrinks Think? What do you think?

10 comments:

Dragonfly said...

Awesome idea. Might help dispell some myths. Also, breaking down stereotypes might encourage people to seek help they are otherwise to afraid to seek.
I would buy it (and my visa flinches in pain at the idea of Amazon yet again).

HP said...

Loved those cartoons.

I think the book is a great idea, particularly if interspersed with some of the good humour often seen on this blog. Humanises and demystifies psychiatry a little.
HP

Rach said...

Hi D,C & R...

Yes, it's that time of the year, when the shrinks and the religious programmers are hard at work (it's 6:15 and I'm gluegunning hex nuts... weird).

Write a book and I'd certainly buy it and read it! I must admit though, i think there's a certain charm in the interaction between you as the writers of the blog, and the commenters (along with the people who write in questions for the podcasts, and your guest bloggers, and guest podcasters...). There's something very spontaneous and whimsical about the whole medium - which is very unlike psychiatry - which is often seen as paternalistic, slow and unopen to change.

Sigh. Call me oldfashioned, but I kinda like you guys the way you are now.

:)

PS. Dinah, as long as the kid's not an axe-murderer (and I'm sure he's not)... I'm sure everything will eventually be just fine.

Zoe Brain said...

Dinah : Re your child: Life is indeed unjust, but when it's a trusted authority figure who's guilty of injustice, it makes it far, far worse. Support from other authority figures can take the sting out of it though.

Example: When I was 8, 3 guys, all aged 10-11 and rather bigger than I was, had just worn me down and were getting to work on beating the fertiliser out of me. Two held me against a wall, off the ground, while the biggest used me as a punching bag. With no "give", as my back was to the wall (literally) so I couldn't lessen the blows, I was starting to get seriously hurt. Then Rescue! A Teacher came round the corner.

They got 5 strokes of the cane. I got 6 for "starting it". You see, it was in a school building, there could have been liability issues. Kids who got regularly beaten up were not supposed to take refuge in school buildings.

Later, the same Headmaster summoned me from class and gave me another caning, for some infraction that the same three guys had said they'd seen me do at lunchtime. When I came back to the class, and told my teacher what had happened, she left and tore a strip off him. You see, I was so advanced in reading, I'd spent that lunchtime under her (unpaid) tutelage doing an advanced reading exam to earn the school some sort of national achievement award.

I was summoned yet again to the Headmaster's office, but this time he offered an apology.

I told him I respected the position of headmaster, but not the man who held the position. Whether he offered an apology or another beating was a matter of supreme indifference to me. I just didn't care.

My contempt for him - something very different from insolence - was obvious.

Now that was 41 years ago, long past the time when those memory cells should have been recycled. There Are Limits, after all.

So yes, even minor matters, trivial injustices at that age can rankle. Please offer him your support, he needs it.

On another note, a Christmas (or whatever, pick the holiday of choice) present: The Psychiatric Clinic for Abused Cuddly Toys. If only things were that simple, though as a layperson, I found some of the cases to be nearly intractable. I hope you enjoy the challenge, and especially the feeling when a patient walks out cured. Even if it's a stuffed crocodile.

p.s. Please write the book.

jcat said...

(((hug)))

Your son is lucky to have you as a parent.

I'd buy the book too...multiple copies, as I could then give it to my non-blogreading pdoc, and other people I like. Even better - sell autographed copies through the blog...at a premium, of course!

Assrot said...

I'd be the first to buy a copy. I would sincerely like to know how shrinks think. I've only seen 3 in my life and all were bad experiences. I swore I'd never see another as long as I live. So far I have not needed one. It would be interesting to me as a patient of what I think was bad medicine to know how psychiatrists think.

The ones I have seen were surely as nuts as their patients. Two were old school and believed in making a zombie out of patients by over-medicating without any other form of treatment. The other one was just lawsuit happy. She kept wanting me to sue everybody and use her as an expert witness to the tune of $750 per hour.

Write the book. I'll damn sure buy one.

Mother Jones RN said...

The book is an excellent idea. Go for it!

NeoNurseChic said...

Hi Dinah,

First off, greetings from Florida! For the past 3 days, I was in Fort Lauderdale for a conference, and now I'm in Sarasota visiting my grandparents. Rented a car for the first time in my life today and drove across the state of Florida! Too bad it was dark, as I drove through a lot of places I'd never been: Alligator Alley in the Everglades, Naples, Fort Myers, etc. Anyway - I left the day it snowed - convenient for me, eh? hehe I'm spending the week here until Friday!

I sincerely hope that your son is okay... I can't remember if you've said his age, but growing up is tough.... It's a fine line for parents between wanting to reach in and fix things for them and letting them ride through it and come out stronger on the other side. Every situation is different, and there is no guidebook. I'll say an extra prayer for you guys that it works out alright! Sounds like you've got a lot of support on the issue at any rate!

Regarding the book - I think it would be a great idea! I'd be very interested to know what sort of topics you'd be distilling to put into it. I think on the informal blog, the banter and diversity between the 3 of you works very well. I wonder if a book would need to be more cohesive and tied together, but I don't suppose it would have to be, as plenty of books are a compilation of stories! No matter what, I would definitely buy it! (Would us frequent commenters get special mention for helping to support the cause? hehe....)

Exhaustion has set in as I haven't slept much or rested at all in the past 3 days, so I'm off to bed! Once again, I hope everything works out with your kid. Kids usually come out okay on the other side, and it sounds like he's quite lucky to have you as a mom!

Take care,
Carrie :)

Sarebear said...

I was younger than your son by a bit, but oldest two grades of elementary. Anyway, a boy shoved me (violently) down into the mud. A teacher saw it, did nothing, I walked up to her and she said, "He's probably just jealous you scored higher than he did on that math test."

One they could NOT ignore, was in 6th grade, at lunch, I was whipped with one of those jump ropes covered in the sliding plastic segments. Seriously, they ought to use THAT to interrogate spies or something . . . . but it'd be deemed cruel and unusual, as it hurt like HELL! and kept stinging excruciatingly and I couldn't keep the tears in (by sixth grade, I was an expert at that, so that again tells you how much it hurt). They took me to the principal's office, where I didn't say much.

Or then there's the time I was older, not so much younger than your son, and was walking around the neighborhood block with my little brother, in part to prove we had the right to do it (we were treated badly, us kids, in that neighborhood). And I'm talking there's a dairy farm over the hill type country, not mid-city.

Anyway, we were sort of kidnapped, taken into the middle of the block which was all woods, buried in leaves, and told we'd be killed if we tried to escape. Since we couldn't see anything, all we could do was hear . . . . my memories of it though are in silent movie form.

I don't know how long we stayed there, but eventually I got out, got my brother out, and we ran home as fast as we could. That was another we couldn't hide, I think it was dusk and my parents wanted to know where we'd been all that time . . . . I think they gave a talking to one of the parents of one of the teens (they were older teens) involved, but nowadays they'd be charged as criminals, juvies, I don't know what.

Rightfully so. My parents never said a word about it to me either, so that sure taught me to keep it to myself, too.

I keep saying "sort of" kidnapped, but I was young enough and scared enough and it sure felt like we were kidnapped to me. But I still say sort of, because it wasn't really.

The book thing makes me nervous.

Anonymous said...

Depends how badly you really need the money. If you really, really need it, go with a lemonade stand.
Between Groopman, Yalom, and others the field is getting a little crowded, even flooded.
The goofball duck "humor" isn't going to fly in a book.
The blog is schticky and intentionally so, it seems. Schticky books get remaindered on the schlock pile. You could do self publish and take pre-orders and print a run to fulfill the pre-orders and take it from there. Isn't the whole reason for setting up an elaborate blog/web site to get traffic who will click that buy button? Everybody is doing it. My grandmother is doing it and she doesn't have a computer and she doesn't speak English and wait... she died, (that's happening a lot latley) but she would be doing it if she could. She sends her best vishes.