Healthcanc

On a walk this afternoon I ran into my youngest son and his wife. They had the baby in the stroller, dressed well as always for such an event, a stroll. She is in a little pink dress with miniscule black kittens and a big pink bow in her hair (via the fashionable baby  headband, not shown) . She's almost five months old.  I bend over the stroller and we exchange goo goo eyes and coo softly at one another. Then, finally exhausted of that, I bring it up:  "Do you think you might want to get together tomorrow night for an Oscars party?"  They consider it and we try to figure out who in the family has the biggest TV. Baby Fashion Plate (K"H) Once I treated a patient with high functioning autism who told me that she watches television to learn social cues. Television increases her intellectual empathy. She knows that even though these are actors and have memorized their responses and lines, their inflections and body language are rich in teaching moments. I...

I feel like there's so much to say; like we haven't talked in ages.  (1) Parenting My six-year-old granddaughter draws a stick figure picture of herself running away from my son. In the picture he's counting down: Five, four, three, two, one. Bedtime . He posts that he has no recollection of doing this, counting down. I remember it. He and his brother are six, their sister, four. Me: Better be in bed at the count of one. There's a thrill to this intervention, despite the total lack of consequences. The magic of counting down to bedtime is that it is a competition. Can I beat the parent? Can I make it to bed before he says, One ? And a kid needs a good reason to run, not walk to bed, because running is fun and walking is not, and it is much more fun jumping into a bed, feeling the fluffy pillows and covers receive you. Probably the best reason for the countdown, however, at least from the kid's perspective, and maybe my son knows it, maybe he doesn't, is that ...

I admit to sometimes  Googling people , if not after they make an appointment, then before. It helps knowing the public profile, what people are trying to present to the world, as themselves. Nancy Slagg's profile on Yelp Working downtown, some prefer to go to therapy on their lunch hour, then go directly home. Because seriously: Can you simply change the channel, switch from sharing things so personal, to attending to what matters most to your boss? It is an art, switching channels, one honed with time and experience. Rabbis and other men and women of the cloth do it when they run from a funeral to a wedding. Therapists do it when they're seeing eight patients in a row to make some money. We get good at disengaging from the last patient to focus on the next. In a matter of minutes, maybe seconds. The story: A friend asked me for a recommendation, a therapist he could see downtown, maybe on his lunch hour. I remembered a short list buried in my email and forwarded him the name...

Love and Mercy We’re in Miami, FD has a cardiology conference.  Miami Beach is nice but it's  not  Bermuda, Jamaica, gee I wanna take ya’ to Key Largo, Montego, honey why don't we go.  .   .  to the Kokomo .  It gets in my head (you're it) and wanting to know where exactly Kokomo might be, a little research yields the following.   According to the band, the inspiration for the song (is) a pool-side bar at a hotel in Islamorada, one of the little island towns in the Florida Keys .   So we’re not that far away.  We saw the Brian Wilson- Beach Boys movie last week, Love and Mercy . If you haven't seen it, there will be spoilers. But most of today's story is from YouTube interviews and Rolling Stone . There was a time when a certain brand of music summoned up barefoot on the beach, surfing, fast cars, and a paycheck lost to buying records at K-Mart; 45's or the long-playing 33’s. Some of us bought albums by the Beatles , but there was ...

Translate that, Nittel Nacht, it would be . . .  well, I don't know.  I know that Kristallnacht is the night that the Nazi's broke every Jewish storefront in Germany.   But on Nittelnacht  Jews play cards and watch Elf .  Or maybe Titanic . Or Meet Me in St.Louis .  The rabbis forbid learning Torah on Christmas Eve. Except to learn about why it is forbidden to learn Torah on Christmas Eve. Learning is what observant Jews do, or wish they did, most nights, most days, in their discretionary time. It is one of those pastimes that keeps on giving. So you would think that learning is definitely something Jews should do on Xmas eve. But no. We'll get to the reasons. Last night FD finishes the last slice of pizza, 47th Street (New York) pizza , but   made in Iowa, sold in Chicago. He asks me if I want to join him, walk over to the synagogue to hear a shiur ( she-your , Hebrew for class ) about the origins of nittel nacht . Nittel Nacht 47th St P...

That's what everyone is saying, the world is not what we thought it would be, or could be, or should be. It is crazy. People are crazy. We're using the word crazy , even therapists are using the word crazy , which is a word that we frown upon. But to kick it up a notch, nobody is technically crazy in our world. If a description isn't in the DSM 5, and crazy is not, then it isn't a label. End of story. What we're seeing is sociopathic, certainly, signs that people we call human are lacking in empathy, kindness, compassion, and, well, humanity. The world feels unsafe. If a married couple take it upon themselves to kill the most vulnerable of our society, can't see that we're supposed to protect and find ways to care for the most vulnerable, those born with developmental disorders that make making it  hard, then the world is not a safe place. We have lost our innocence and our basic trust. It's gone. The world, the people in it, don't feel natural. What...

(1) LOSING PETS, BEING LIKE PETS Once in a while you'll see a sign on a tree, Have you seen  Fluffy ?  Somebody in my neighborhood keeps losing his iguana and posts pictures in the summer. I always wonder, if I found him, what would I do? But this isn't about that. Therapists hear many pet stories. People are crazy about their animals, marvel at their better qualities, worry when they are ill, and grieve their loss. When a favorite pet moves onto the next world, it is as if a person in the family has died. Because pets are family. They live with us, we feed them; they reciprocate with unconditional love. It is a fair deal. My brother and I have the same memory. You tell me how this happens. He tells the story exactly the same way: One chilly autumn morning, the dog scratched at the back door to go out to the yard. About to leave for school, I saw an accident on the kitchen floor, wiped it up quickly, then let him out. He'd been sick for months, but he was a very old dog. ...