Excerpted from Ting and I
It is said about Washington, DC, that if you want a friend there, get a dog.
Tina had not had pets while growing up, at least not the conventional dog or cat or bird. My childhood was the opposite, with dogs, cats, birds at various times. As noted above, my childhood favorite dog was Duke, a Retriever/Husky mix, handsome, intelligent, affectionate and protective. He was Husky-tough and Retriever-gentle. Tina and I decided, when Phil was ten or so, to get a dog, preferably a Golden Retriever.
When we were at Ledgewood Commons in Millwood, Tina and I saw an ad asking for someone to adopt both a German Shepherd and a Golden Retriever from a boarding operation, because their owner had died many months before. We got Muffin, an eight-year-old blond Golden Retriever, separating her from her companion, as we could not handle both. Tina fell in love with Muffin, who became a valuable member of our small household. Muffin could be protective, too, as a Shepherd-mix dog found one afternoon when he got too close to Tina and me. Muffin bit him and sent him off. Muffin usually spent much of the day in the kitchen with Tina. They had bonded.
Muffin was a good sport. Once, when Ted visited us, he and Phil arranged to put a disposable diaper (hole cut out for tail) on Muffin, who took it good-naturedly, without enthusiasm.
Muffin died in 1995 and we waited about five years to get another dog, A few months before retiring and moving to Lake Osiris, I told colleagues that we were moving to a country location and would like to have a dog there, preferably a Golden Retriever. Like being rewarded for casting one’s bread upon the waters, I soon was contacted by a co-worker whose year-old Golden that had turned out to be too much for her six- and eight-year-old children to handle, an unsolvable problem because both parents worked. The dog had “failed” obedience school. Brandy, having a coat as deep red as her name suggests, was indeed a headstrong alpha female; but she has grudgingly allowed me to be boss, at least sometimes.
Tina was using a wheelchair by then, and Brandy somehow knew she needed Brandy’s protection. Brandy liked to play tug of war with Phil or with me, but would not pull anything from Tina’s hand. She got between Tina and a physical therapist when Tina cried, “Ouch!” She preferred to sleep on the porch in cold weather, but many nights would find her indoors, asleep outside Tina’s bedroom door.
Brandy was Phil’s buddy but acted more like my partner. After only a few months in the new house, she came upstairs to alert me to something amiss: the propane heater was sputtering, as the tank was running out, and Brandy thought it might be dangerous. Smart. She is not allowed in the living room. I put a sign where she could read it: “No Brandy.”
She is my personal trainer and I am hers. In good weather, we “circum-ambulate” Lake Osiris, a scenic mile-long walk that once took twenty minutes, but now takes twenty-five. After our neighbor’s fierce Akita, a Japanese police dog, died, Brandy named herself boss dog of Lake Osiris, a position she has enforced since then with all the other dogs nearby. Recently, at age 11, Brandy put an obnoxious visiting pit bull terrier in his place, when the dog, running loose, came too close to us.
When Brandy wants something or when a change of nursing shift occurs, she finds me to let me know. Different looks and different motions convey different messages. She has a variety of barks, ranging from “I want to be on the porch” to “if this strange man [UPS delivery] tries to come in, I’ll tear him limb from limb.” Once, when she heard the MGM lion’s roar on the TV, she ran to the TV set to confront it. Even those nurses who are not generally comfortable with dogs have gotten to like Brandy and are reassured by her protective presence. The dog-lovers love her, too.
Brandy knows how to please. Some mornings, when she wants to get fed or go out before I am up, she stands ten feet from my bed and stares silently at me. If I wake up, I call her to me and then either get up and do as she wants, or tell her to go lie down, let me rest, which she does. If staring doesn’t wake me, she lies down and waits quietly for me to wake up. Such a good dog.
Tina also became very fond of the parakeets we had. Perry was first, while we were in Ramsey. He only lived three years, a bit short for a ’keet. We tried again, several years later, with Amy, whose cage was in Tina’s bedroom. Another delightful companion, who also lived only about three years. Too sad to try a third.
The dog my mother and sister have now is a Beagle, Russell. Rescued from a pound, he seems perpetually happy and grateful. My sister dotes on him, taking her marching orders from him. I, on the other hand, explained to the little person in a fur coat, as my sister sees him, that I am the Alpha Doug and he is the Beta Beagle. When he visits us, Brandy imparts much the same lesson. She lets him share our living space: Russell can be under the tables; Brandy has the rest.
Friday, October 14, 2011
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
REVIEWER RESUME: PATRICIA A. BURNS, PhD, RN, FAAN
Dr. Burns very favorably reviewed Ting and I: A Memoir... for CONNECT, the international, on-line journal for critical care nursing. See the review in a September blog here.
Dr. Burns is recognized inter-nationally as a leader in the nursing profession for excellence in clinical practice and educating students, developing innovative educational programs that are responsive to community needs, maintaining an international research focus while mentoring other professionals in their research programs, a lifetime body of scholarly achievement that has advanced nursing science, advocacy of the nursing profession nationally and abroad, and tirelessly providing service through national and international professional nursing organizations.
Dr. Patricia Burns served as Dean of the College of Nursing at the University of South Florida from 1997 to 2010. Under her leadership the College of Nursing rose in national stature for its innovative educational programs and the quality of its research. Prior to her move to Tampa in 1997, Dr. Burns was Chair of the Nurse Practitioner Program at the State University of New York at Buffalo (UB) School of Nursing. Dr. Burns received her Bachelor degree in Nursing from D’Youville College at Buffalo, and both her Masters degree in Adult Nurse Practitioner and PhD in Medical Sociology from the State University of New York at Buffalo (UB).
Dr. Burns has lead an outstanding career in clinical nursing. She practiced in general medical surgical nursing at the Edward J. Meyer Memorial hospital in Buffalo New York from 1960-1976. During which time she was recognized for her outstanding nursing with the Edward j. Meyer Memorial Hospital Nursing proficiency Award, the Edward J. Meyer Memorial Scholarship, and received the first of many Nurse Training Grants from the federal government. As a Nurse Practitioner in private practice from 1978 to her move to Tampa Florida in 1997, Dr. Patricia Burns developed a practice eventually specializing in female urinary incontinence.
Dean Burns is a nationally recognized researcher in female urinary incontinence. During her career she has been funded for over 50 research studies and nursing training grants totally over $11 million. Dr. Burns has served as a reviewer for national and international journals, participated in federal and private grant review panels, published extensively both nationally and internationally in her specialty, and was one of the team that developed a federally patented “Improved Perineometer” device.
Dr. Burns has and does hold leadership roles in national nursing organizations. She served as President of the National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculty, and the Southern Regional Education Board Nursing Council. She has served in leadership roles in both the American Association of College of Nursing and its national accrediting body the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education.
Dr. Burns has been recognized for her advocacy with many awards and achievements in her career including: Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition; the Outstanding Leadership Award presented to her by Sigma Theta Tau, Delta Beta Chapter, FONE Region II Leadership Award Overall, Tampa Bay Business Journal 2006 Health Care Heroes Special Recognition Award, and Fellowship in the American Academy of Nursing.
Monday, October 10, 2011
CHEATING ONESELF
Epublished in http://www.asiancemagazine.com/2011/10/09/cheating-oneself
I was sorry to read, in asiancemagazine.com, of which I am very fond, some college student commenters defending the practice of buying term papers and passing them off as their own. Not only does that cheat the institution they attend, it cheats the other students and cheats the cheater himself. Let me explain.
Colleges both teach and certify. Part of teaching is assigning and evaluating term papers, identifying the strengths and weaknesses thereof, so that the student is praised for good performance and criticized for bad performance. Evaluating a purchased term paper has little teaching benefit. The course grade and even the degree eventually obtained depend somewhat on these purchased papers. If the student is not worthy of the grades or the degree, then the college reputation suffers a loss, however small.
Your excellent grade helps you but slightly diminishes the value of another student’s grade. If there are relatively many top grades, they carry less weight than if such grades were rare. If virtually everyone passes the course, passing has less significance. Thus, cheating to get a better grade, or even merely to pass, slightly harms other students, as they are evaluated in comparison to you. Those you harm, if they become aware of what is happening, will resent you and what you are doing.
What is the impact on you, personally? You can find excuses for cheating, but you almost certainly cannot be proud of it. If you evade the hard work of writing the term paper, you have lost an opportunity to strengthen yourself through work. You may think you understand the topic of the purchased paper, but you would likely know it better if you had written the paper yourself. If you are cheating, you either think it is common, giving you a low opinion of your fellow students, or you think it is rare, giving you a low opinion of yourself.
Perhaps it was only the short-hand of email, but I generally found the English language usage of the defenders of term paper buying to be deficient. Whoever hires them on the basis of their falsified college performance will soon be unpleasantly surprised, bad for both employer and employee.
Right after World War II, Japan accelerated industrial production rapidly, with an emphasis on low cost and high volume, with little regard to quality. This succeeded in the marketplace for years, but Japanese goods became tarnished with the reputation of poor quality. Subsequently, a revolution in Japanese quality control, aided by W. Edwards Deming’s works on statistical quality control, helped make Japanese goods renowned for high quality, to everyone’s benefit. The investments were major, but the rewards even greater.
“Virtue is its own reward,” in terms of how we feel about ourselves and how we treat each other. Cheating is corrosive to self-esteem and to trust and to fairness. Write your own term paper!
I was sorry to read, in asiancemagazine.com, of which I am very fond, some college student commenters defending the practice of buying term papers and passing them off as their own. Not only does that cheat the institution they attend, it cheats the other students and cheats the cheater himself. Let me explain.
Colleges both teach and certify. Part of teaching is assigning and evaluating term papers, identifying the strengths and weaknesses thereof, so that the student is praised for good performance and criticized for bad performance. Evaluating a purchased term paper has little teaching benefit. The course grade and even the degree eventually obtained depend somewhat on these purchased papers. If the student is not worthy of the grades or the degree, then the college reputation suffers a loss, however small.
Your excellent grade helps you but slightly diminishes the value of another student’s grade. If there are relatively many top grades, they carry less weight than if such grades were rare. If virtually everyone passes the course, passing has less significance. Thus, cheating to get a better grade, or even merely to pass, slightly harms other students, as they are evaluated in comparison to you. Those you harm, if they become aware of what is happening, will resent you and what you are doing.
What is the impact on you, personally? You can find excuses for cheating, but you almost certainly cannot be proud of it. If you evade the hard work of writing the term paper, you have lost an opportunity to strengthen yourself through work. You may think you understand the topic of the purchased paper, but you would likely know it better if you had written the paper yourself. If you are cheating, you either think it is common, giving you a low opinion of your fellow students, or you think it is rare, giving you a low opinion of yourself.
Perhaps it was only the short-hand of email, but I generally found the English language usage of the defenders of term paper buying to be deficient. Whoever hires them on the basis of their falsified college performance will soon be unpleasantly surprised, bad for both employer and employee.
Right after World War II, Japan accelerated industrial production rapidly, with an emphasis on low cost and high volume, with little regard to quality. This succeeded in the marketplace for years, but Japanese goods became tarnished with the reputation of poor quality. Subsequently, a revolution in Japanese quality control, aided by W. Edwards Deming’s works on statistical quality control, helped make Japanese goods renowned for high quality, to everyone’s benefit. The investments were major, but the rewards even greater.
“Virtue is its own reward,” in terms of how we feel about ourselves and how we treat each other. Cheating is corrosive to self-esteem and to trust and to fairness. Write your own term paper!
DAVID BRUDNOY, R.I.P.
Excerpted from Ting and I
Preparing to write this memoir, I had reserved a special section about my friendship with David Brudnoy, whom I would have described as my best male friend during the period from 1969 to 1983, my years in Cambridge and Boston.
David, famous in Boston and well-known in national conservative political circles, died in December 2004. I had long believed that we were very close friends. In a gift he once gave me of a leather-bound autobiographical volume, The Education of Henry Adams, Dave wrote, “One of the greatest books to one of the greatest friends.” As a gift to Tina and me, associated with his single visit to us (in Bedford Mews), he gave us another leather-bound volume, Milton’s Paradise Lost, with the inscription, “To Tina and Doug, who have regained Paradise. Love, Dave, Feb. ’85.” Seemed very friendly to me.
David was the very bright only son of a Midwestern Jewish dentist and his wife. He was talented, ambitious, hard-working, and homosexual. Let’s add charming, warm, always polite. We became strong political allies. When I first met him, he was leaving the left to join the right, or at least the libertarian, minimum-government faction of conservatism, where he remained.
A thing I admired about Dave was that he took rational argument seriously. Abortion was a main issue at the time. He favored its being legal. I did not. I did not argue from the perspective of religion. My argument was closer to Kant’s moral imperative. I showed him the consequences of not defining a human organism as one with the human genetic code, from fertilization on.
Definitions of humanness based on awareness, rationality, age in the womb, etc. led to allowing practices such as euthanasia or the harvesting of embryonic organs, practices that are repulsive and dangerous. I won’t go into the details here, but Dave was intellectually honest enough to concede and to maintain that new position as his thereafter. He understood that arguments that start, “I know it’s human, but ...” refute themselves.
During my Cambridge and Boston years, Dave and I would talk frequently on the phone or in person. We would breakfast together monthly, sometimes with C, at the elegant Park Plaza Hotel. We lived a few blocks apart in the Back Bay and had many mutual friends, in the media and in libertarian and conservative circles. For example, we both spoke at a “Tell It to Hanoi” rally on the Boston Common, December 7, 1969, before a few thousand supporters of the U.S. role in the Viet Nam War. When he wrote an article on the occasion for National Review, he noted “Harvard YAFer Doug Cooper gave the evening’s most thoughtful speech: ‘The war is not hurting us so much as are its critics, who clamor only for material things; we need more than a higher standard of living; we need a higher standard of character.” I had arrived at Harvard in September 1969, only three months earlier than he, so this would have been one of our earliest interactions.
In 1997, fourteen years after I moved from Boston, Dave finished a memoir, Life Is Not a Rehearsal, detailing his growing up, his ideological journey and professional success, his lovers, his homosexuality, his drug use, his AIDS, and his losses due to that lifestyle. He was at that time enmeshed in a very painful decline that ended seven years later.
The blurb on the book jacket summarized his professional history: “A graduate of Yale with a major in Japanese, David Brudnoy went to graduate school at Harvard (East Asian Studies) before getting his Ph.D. in American intellectual history at Brandeis. In 1976 he won a full-time talk radio slot at Boston’s WHDH, then moved to WRKO in 1981, finally going to the region’s powerhouse, WBZ, in 1986. In addition to his hugely successful radio show on WBZ, he is a TV commentator, film critic, newspaper essayist on politics and travel, and teacher of journalism at Boston University.” They could have added that he was a frequent contributor to conservative journals, especially National Review, but “conservative” might not have helped book sales.
By the time Dave’s book was published, 1997, I was sufficiently distracted with Tina’s and my life that I did not read it. Lately, writing this memoir, I’ve dipped into it, getting many a surprise. Dave had revealed to me toward the beginning of our friendship, in 1970, that he was homosexual, something he asked me to keep secret. I knew nothing of his frequent drug use (Mescaline and LSD), until now. I knew he had a drinking problem for a while, but I did not know the seriousness of it.
David, I hardly knew ye.
It seems that the friendship I thought we had was, in fact, of minimal significance to him. I was not gay, as so many of his closest pals were. Once, in reference to a media opportunity he could have opened up for me, he let slip that “my father told me never to promote a rival.” Rival? I thought we were buddies.
I left Boston in 1983, and I do not recall seeing him after that, other than his visit to us in 1985 and my trip to Boston with our son Phil in 2000, where we had a highly enjoyable fancy lunch together. Phil would be at Boston College starting that year. I was not eager for the two of them to become in any sense close.
Dave’s book reveals that for all his success in worldly terms, his was a sad life, especially toward the end. He was a talented, ambitious, industrious man. His uncle, Herbert Isbin, was a noted physicist/engineer. A cousin, Sharon Isbin, is a well-known professional guitarist. As I knew at that time, and as his book reveals even more clearly, his homosexuality was paramount in his life. There is a narcissism, coupled with insecurity, a reflexive anti-conventionality, a superficiality, and an obsession with sex that I came to associate with the homosexual lifestyle, where promiscuity is markedly more prevalent than among heterosexuals. You can look that up.
David memorialized one of his very close friends (someone I knew casually) under a pseudonym in his book: “Blitz” died of AIDS in November 1989, at about 40 years of age. An earlier tribute Dave had written, using Blitz’s real name, had gotten Dave excommunicated from that family’s inner circle, which deeply hurt him. Dave told me he himself was nearly killed by a one-night-stander. His book reveals his belief that his best friend probably died that way.
Dave died in December 2004, 64 years old, of a painful and prolonged illness likely caused by homosexual sex. Absent the gay sex and perhaps the drugs, his life expectancy would have been in the mid-eighties. He lost twenty years. He described himself in his book as not brave but a “thrill seeker.” Was it worth dying for, Dave? Blitz? R. I. P.
Preparing to write this memoir, I had reserved a special section about my friendship with David Brudnoy, whom I would have described as my best male friend during the period from 1969 to 1983, my years in Cambridge and Boston.
David, famous in Boston and well-known in national conservative political circles, died in December 2004. I had long believed that we were very close friends. In a gift he once gave me of a leather-bound autobiographical volume, The Education of Henry Adams, Dave wrote, “One of the greatest books to one of the greatest friends.” As a gift to Tina and me, associated with his single visit to us (in Bedford Mews), he gave us another leather-bound volume, Milton’s Paradise Lost, with the inscription, “To Tina and Doug, who have regained Paradise. Love, Dave, Feb. ’85.” Seemed very friendly to me.
David was the very bright only son of a Midwestern Jewish dentist and his wife. He was talented, ambitious, hard-working, and homosexual. Let’s add charming, warm, always polite. We became strong political allies. When I first met him, he was leaving the left to join the right, or at least the libertarian, minimum-government faction of conservatism, where he remained.
A thing I admired about Dave was that he took rational argument seriously. Abortion was a main issue at the time. He favored its being legal. I did not. I did not argue from the perspective of religion. My argument was closer to Kant’s moral imperative. I showed him the consequences of not defining a human organism as one with the human genetic code, from fertilization on.
Definitions of humanness based on awareness, rationality, age in the womb, etc. led to allowing practices such as euthanasia or the harvesting of embryonic organs, practices that are repulsive and dangerous. I won’t go into the details here, but Dave was intellectually honest enough to concede and to maintain that new position as his thereafter. He understood that arguments that start, “I know it’s human, but ...” refute themselves.
During my Cambridge and Boston years, Dave and I would talk frequently on the phone or in person. We would breakfast together monthly, sometimes with C, at the elegant Park Plaza Hotel. We lived a few blocks apart in the Back Bay and had many mutual friends, in the media and in libertarian and conservative circles. For example, we both spoke at a “Tell It to Hanoi” rally on the Boston Common, December 7, 1969, before a few thousand supporters of the U.S. role in the Viet Nam War. When he wrote an article on the occasion for National Review, he noted “Harvard YAFer Doug Cooper gave the evening’s most thoughtful speech: ‘The war is not hurting us so much as are its critics, who clamor only for material things; we need more than a higher standard of living; we need a higher standard of character.” I had arrived at Harvard in September 1969, only three months earlier than he, so this would have been one of our earliest interactions.
In 1997, fourteen years after I moved from Boston, Dave finished a memoir, Life Is Not a Rehearsal, detailing his growing up, his ideological journey and professional success, his lovers, his homosexuality, his drug use, his AIDS, and his losses due to that lifestyle. He was at that time enmeshed in a very painful decline that ended seven years later.
The blurb on the book jacket summarized his professional history: “A graduate of Yale with a major in Japanese, David Brudnoy went to graduate school at Harvard (East Asian Studies) before getting his Ph.D. in American intellectual history at Brandeis. In 1976 he won a full-time talk radio slot at Boston’s WHDH, then moved to WRKO in 1981, finally going to the region’s powerhouse, WBZ, in 1986. In addition to his hugely successful radio show on WBZ, he is a TV commentator, film critic, newspaper essayist on politics and travel, and teacher of journalism at Boston University.” They could have added that he was a frequent contributor to conservative journals, especially National Review, but “conservative” might not have helped book sales.
By the time Dave’s book was published, 1997, I was sufficiently distracted with Tina’s and my life that I did not read it. Lately, writing this memoir, I’ve dipped into it, getting many a surprise. Dave had revealed to me toward the beginning of our friendship, in 1970, that he was homosexual, something he asked me to keep secret. I knew nothing of his frequent drug use (Mescaline and LSD), until now. I knew he had a drinking problem for a while, but I did not know the seriousness of it.
David, I hardly knew ye.
It seems that the friendship I thought we had was, in fact, of minimal significance to him. I was not gay, as so many of his closest pals were. Once, in reference to a media opportunity he could have opened up for me, he let slip that “my father told me never to promote a rival.” Rival? I thought we were buddies.
I left Boston in 1983, and I do not recall seeing him after that, other than his visit to us in 1985 and my trip to Boston with our son Phil in 2000, where we had a highly enjoyable fancy lunch together. Phil would be at Boston College starting that year. I was not eager for the two of them to become in any sense close.
Dave’s book reveals that for all his success in worldly terms, his was a sad life, especially toward the end. He was a talented, ambitious, industrious man. His uncle, Herbert Isbin, was a noted physicist/engineer. A cousin, Sharon Isbin, is a well-known professional guitarist. As I knew at that time, and as his book reveals even more clearly, his homosexuality was paramount in his life. There is a narcissism, coupled with insecurity, a reflexive anti-conventionality, a superficiality, and an obsession with sex that I came to associate with the homosexual lifestyle, where promiscuity is markedly more prevalent than among heterosexuals. You can look that up.
David memorialized one of his very close friends (someone I knew casually) under a pseudonym in his book: “Blitz” died of AIDS in November 1989, at about 40 years of age. An earlier tribute Dave had written, using Blitz’s real name, had gotten Dave excommunicated from that family’s inner circle, which deeply hurt him. Dave told me he himself was nearly killed by a one-night-stander. His book reveals his belief that his best friend probably died that way.
Dave died in December 2004, 64 years old, of a painful and prolonged illness likely caused by homosexual sex. Absent the gay sex and perhaps the drugs, his life expectancy would have been in the mid-eighties. He lost twenty years. He described himself in his book as not brave but a “thrill seeker.” Was it worth dying for, Dave? Blitz? R. I. P.
Saturday, October 8, 2011
HELP - HOW DO I ENABLE COMMENTS?
I have not figured out how to enable my "comments" option. I have looked at the documentation and it tells me to go to Settings|Comments, which I cannot find. When I try to post a comment to test this out, it will not allow me to post it. You probably cannot post a comment here, either, but if you do, tell me how you did it. Otherwise, please write to me at douglas@tingandi.com At this point, perhaps naively, I'd be inclined to allow all comments to be
posted.
SORRY TO REPORT THAT THIS PROBLEM RECEIVED EXTENSIVE DISCUSSION IN THE HELP FORUM FOR BLOGGER, WITH NO GOOD RESOLUTION. IF YOU WANT TO COMMENT, YOU WILL HAVE TO EMAIL ME, USING douglas@tingandi.com .I expected better from Google.
posted.
SORRY TO REPORT THAT THIS PROBLEM RECEIVED EXTENSIVE DISCUSSION IN THE HELP FORUM FOR BLOGGER, WITH NO GOOD RESOLUTION. IF YOU WANT TO COMMENT, YOU WILL HAVE TO EMAIL ME, USING douglas@tingandi.com .I expected better from Google.
Friday, October 7, 2011
TINA'S AUTOMOBILE CRASH, circa 1992
Excerpted from Ting and I
During the first few years of our marriage, Tina’s gait was steady, though her steps were small. She drove our second car with care, but with decreasing ability. I tried to get her to cease. We first had the car adapted to hand controls for the gas pedal, but she had trouble learning their use and usually reverted to foot controls. Toward the end of the Ledgewood Commons phase (1986-93), she pushed the gas pedal rather than the brake pedal while backing up, shot past me and through the open area between the buildings, then smacked into a neighbor’s garage, causing $17,000 worth of damage to their garage. We love you, too, State Farm Insurance.
Fortunately, no children were playing where they often did, or the mishap could have been lethal. Reluctantly, Tina relinquished her car keys and never drove again. Thereafter, she felt, perhaps correctly, that the neighbors viewed her as a bit of a hazard. When I decided to accept a buyout offer from IBM soon afterward, she was not sad to leave, except for having to say goodbye to Ruth and Mal Goldberg, Zane and Wendy Garfein.
During the first few years of our marriage, Tina’s gait was steady, though her steps were small. She drove our second car with care, but with decreasing ability. I tried to get her to cease. We first had the car adapted to hand controls for the gas pedal, but she had trouble learning their use and usually reverted to foot controls. Toward the end of the Ledgewood Commons phase (1986-93), she pushed the gas pedal rather than the brake pedal while backing up, shot past me and through the open area between the buildings, then smacked into a neighbor’s garage, causing $17,000 worth of damage to their garage. We love you, too, State Farm Insurance.
Fortunately, no children were playing where they often did, or the mishap could have been lethal. Reluctantly, Tina relinquished her car keys and never drove again. Thereafter, she felt, perhaps correctly, that the neighbors viewed her as a bit of a hazard. When I decided to accept a buyout offer from IBM soon afterward, she was not sad to leave, except for having to say goodbye to Ruth and Mal Goldberg, Zane and Wendy Garfein.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS, STEROID PSYCHOSIS, NEAR DROWNING
Excerpted rom Ting and I
Multiple sclerosis—MS—is believed to be an autoimmune disease, in which the body’s immune system attacks the covering of nerve cells, the myelin sheath, leading to scarring of the sheath and a loss of its primary function, electrical insulation.
Nerves throughout the body, but principally in the spinal cord and brain, can be damaged this way. The damage can affect sensory, motor, or brain nerves, leading to a wide variety of symptoms, from tingling to paralysis to loss of coordination or cognitive skills and sometimes loss of sight and speech. Many cases remain relatively mild, producing annoying but not disabling losses, and not shortening the victims’ lives.
Four types of MS are usually described, but most patients, as did Tina, go from having relapsing-remitting episodes of MS to having a secondary progressive form, with a slow, sometimes very slow, continued loss of function. Our neurologist has speculated that Tina’s immune response may have “burned itself out,” so that the slow healing of the neurological system may lead to gradual improvement. We hope so.
For several weeks when Tina was near 10 years old, she had an episode of blindness, an optical neuritis that might have been a warning sign that she had MS, which is hard to diagnose, because of the wide spectrum of symptoms. MS is rare enough, one per thousand in the U.S., that it can easily be overlooked. It is a heritable vulnerability, with children of MS victims having a 1 percent chance of developing the disorder (about ten times the incidence in the population at large). The likelihood of an identical twin having it is 30 percent, if the other does. Environmental factors also play a role, with children born in sunny climes less likely to develop MS. There is evidence suggesting a connection with vitamin D, as well as sunlight. Tina is mildly allergic to vitamin D, developing an itchy rash from ingestion and even from exposure to sunlight, which generates vitamin D in the exposed skin.
The Epstein-Barr virus, the cause of mononucleosis, not uncommon in children, may trigger the mistaken immune response. Much is still to be discovered.
So far, there is no cure. Various methods of suppressing the immune system reduce the frequency and severity of the attacks, but only imperfectly and at the cost of leaving the patient more susceptible to infections. In 1994, Tina optimistically started one of these drugs, beta interferon; but after a few months the neurologist stopped it when her white blood cell count became dangerously low. Tina found the lump that was a breast cancer shortly thereafter and believes that the immunosuppressive drug caused it. While it is true that immune suppression can allow the development of some cancers, the process takes time, a decade or more, rather than weeks.
The on-again, off-again nature of MS leads to credence in “discoveries” of dubious “cures” that turn out to be just a matter of lucky timing. Special diets, bee venom shots, removal of dental amalgam, and, currently, the surgical enlargement of veins leading from the brain, are among the many remedies that have been proposed and have become fads, but none have proved effective after extensive testing.
When we married, June 1984, the signs of Tina’s MS were virtually invisible, although she did feel more tired than she thought she should. By 1990, she was still able to walk, but only in baby steps; her fatigue had worsened, and she showed some loss of mental clarity.
By 1993, she was using a cane, was barely able to climb stairs, and it was time to move from our duplex. Short-term memory and occasional reasoning losses were noticeable, as well.
STEROID PSYCHOSIS
During the Ledgewood Commons period, Tina had a severe MS exacerbation, bad enough that she was hospitalized, though I do not remember the symptoms. She was treated with ACTH, a powerful steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, intravenously. The second day of hospitalization, she told me a lurid tale of highly improper activity at the hospital by a neighbor who was a doctor on the staff. I was shocked. Before I lit into the hospital staff, I asked her some more questions, as the story made no sense. None of it made sense. None of it had happened. She was suffering from steroid psychosis, her brain’s overreaction to the drug. Many more strange ideas popped into her head that week. This persisted for a week, a very sad week, as I feared it would not be reversible. It was.
Twenty years later, a milder steroidal treatment (an inhaler) produced initial indications of steroid psychosis, so we discontinued it, and the symptoms faded away.
NEAR DEATH IN TUCSON
We visited my mother and sister in Tucson around the spring of 1990. They had a ranch house with a lovely pool. Tina had not been swimming since the previous summer, so she was eager to do so, and she had been an excellent swimmer in the past. I went into the pool with her and was shocked to see her starting to drown. She could no longer swim. True, her gait had gotten a bit worse, but neither of us expected this. What if I had been late in joining her?
Multiple sclerosis—MS—is believed to be an autoimmune disease, in which the body’s immune system attacks the covering of nerve cells, the myelin sheath, leading to scarring of the sheath and a loss of its primary function, electrical insulation.
Nerves throughout the body, but principally in the spinal cord and brain, can be damaged this way. The damage can affect sensory, motor, or brain nerves, leading to a wide variety of symptoms, from tingling to paralysis to loss of coordination or cognitive skills and sometimes loss of sight and speech. Many cases remain relatively mild, producing annoying but not disabling losses, and not shortening the victims’ lives.
Four types of MS are usually described, but most patients, as did Tina, go from having relapsing-remitting episodes of MS to having a secondary progressive form, with a slow, sometimes very slow, continued loss of function. Our neurologist has speculated that Tina’s immune response may have “burned itself out,” so that the slow healing of the neurological system may lead to gradual improvement. We hope so.
For several weeks when Tina was near 10 years old, she had an episode of blindness, an optical neuritis that might have been a warning sign that she had MS, which is hard to diagnose, because of the wide spectrum of symptoms. MS is rare enough, one per thousand in the U.S., that it can easily be overlooked. It is a heritable vulnerability, with children of MS victims having a 1 percent chance of developing the disorder (about ten times the incidence in the population at large). The likelihood of an identical twin having it is 30 percent, if the other does. Environmental factors also play a role, with children born in sunny climes less likely to develop MS. There is evidence suggesting a connection with vitamin D, as well as sunlight. Tina is mildly allergic to vitamin D, developing an itchy rash from ingestion and even from exposure to sunlight, which generates vitamin D in the exposed skin.
The Epstein-Barr virus, the cause of mononucleosis, not uncommon in children, may trigger the mistaken immune response. Much is still to be discovered.
So far, there is no cure. Various methods of suppressing the immune system reduce the frequency and severity of the attacks, but only imperfectly and at the cost of leaving the patient more susceptible to infections. In 1994, Tina optimistically started one of these drugs, beta interferon; but after a few months the neurologist stopped it when her white blood cell count became dangerously low. Tina found the lump that was a breast cancer shortly thereafter and believes that the immunosuppressive drug caused it. While it is true that immune suppression can allow the development of some cancers, the process takes time, a decade or more, rather than weeks.
The on-again, off-again nature of MS leads to credence in “discoveries” of dubious “cures” that turn out to be just a matter of lucky timing. Special diets, bee venom shots, removal of dental amalgam, and, currently, the surgical enlargement of veins leading from the brain, are among the many remedies that have been proposed and have become fads, but none have proved effective after extensive testing.
When we married, June 1984, the signs of Tina’s MS were virtually invisible, although she did feel more tired than she thought she should. By 1990, she was still able to walk, but only in baby steps; her fatigue had worsened, and she showed some loss of mental clarity.
By 1993, she was using a cane, was barely able to climb stairs, and it was time to move from our duplex. Short-term memory and occasional reasoning losses were noticeable, as well.
STEROID PSYCHOSIS
During the Ledgewood Commons period, Tina had a severe MS exacerbation, bad enough that she was hospitalized, though I do not remember the symptoms. She was treated with ACTH, a powerful steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, intravenously. The second day of hospitalization, she told me a lurid tale of highly improper activity at the hospital by a neighbor who was a doctor on the staff. I was shocked. Before I lit into the hospital staff, I asked her some more questions, as the story made no sense. None of it made sense. None of it had happened. She was suffering from steroid psychosis, her brain’s overreaction to the drug. Many more strange ideas popped into her head that week. This persisted for a week, a very sad week, as I feared it would not be reversible. It was.
Twenty years later, a milder steroidal treatment (an inhaler) produced initial indications of steroid psychosis, so we discontinued it, and the symptoms faded away.
NEAR DEATH IN TUCSON
We visited my mother and sister in Tucson around the spring of 1990. They had a ranch house with a lovely pool. Tina had not been swimming since the previous summer, so she was eager to do so, and she had been an excellent swimmer in the past. I went into the pool with her and was shocked to see her starting to drown. She could no longer swim. True, her gait had gotten a bit worse, but neither of us expected this. What if I had been late in joining her?
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