We're #37! - Paul Hipp

Yay team!!

Swine Flu Emergency - Or Not

The new swine flu: sounds scary. But what is the reality?

A few dozen people have died in Mexico, and there are some documented cases in other countries. What are we NOT seeing: rapid contagion; an exponentially growing number of fatalities; contagion affecting medical care professionals. SARS was frightening in its lethal spread. So far we are not seeing this with the new swine flu outbreak.

We need to keep on top of the fear mongering potential of this issue. There are real public health threats, which we can discuss as professionals/people interested in public policy; however they overlap with those who would take medium size threats and turn them into opportunities to make money and consolidate power.

Cui bono in each case. I followed the avian flu thing closely and was inside enough to see how that became a money making opportunity.

Whatever this new thing is, is real. It will kill some people. It deserves appropriate attention and resources.

But something like 36,000 people in the U.S. die from regular flu every year; I don't hear a lot of screaming about that, except the one year Rumsfeld's Tamiflu folks tried to manufacture a shortage of vaccine. And don't get me started about other preventable deaths, here and abroad....

So yeah, I am afraid, just not of what you might think:

I still don't know what I'm doing, but at a much higher level

Like an icebert calving, the political blog MyDD watching an important part of itself break away. Stoller and Bowers are leaving to start another progressive blog endeavor, and we wish them the best of luck.

They do have some ideas about where they are going, but I wonder if the more interesting part of their future is what is possible but unknown. The new group has some serious brainpower and experience, we are all just waiting to see what they are going to do. Perhaps they are wondering themselves.

When people ask me what I am going to do next in Russian medicine, I have a respectable answer. Train the next generation of congenital surgeons, bring the teaching and practice of cardiology and cardiac surgery into the correct century etc. But in fact, I don't really know yet.

A year ago on the occasion of our tenth anniversary at St. Petersburg Children's, they asked me to speak about the future. After the respectable answer came the real one:

[egregious:] When I first started, I didn't know what I was doing. Now I still don't know what I'm doing, but at a much higher level.

A toast to our future! Whatever it may be.

Gifts of encouragement

New messages from people out there, whom I have never met. Gifts in the mail and online that are sources of encouragement for me. I DEEPLY NEED THIS. Maybe everyone does. But certainly those of us who are mentally ill/extra sensitive need this especially.

I received a lovely gift, a blank journal with quotes from Anais Nin, from a young woman whose work I decided to support, sight unseen, in the Caribbean. And people here and at firedoglake seem to feel that my being very open about my mental struggles gives them some hope. Not sure how that works but hey go for it!

We are in a transitional generation in our understanding of mental illness.

Diagnoses are missing or wrong. Medicines---please don't get me started on their inadequacies, yet medicine is one of our powerful weapons for fighting this darkness.

There should be no shame in taking medicine for mental illness. Would you feel bad about taking insulin, if you had diabetes? We are struggling with something that has not only a psychological component, but a physiological one. If medicine helps you, please accept this great gift.

Doctors don't get it, or if they do, don't help us enough [insert another really long rant here...I'll do it in the future].

Our families and communities are baffled by our strange behavior. We can stifle all the time or we can freely be ourselves and have others declare us weird.

Quote from someone on a parallel journey, I don't know how much you wish to be public/private so won't give your nom de plume:

"I've purged myself of most of my epic self-destruction, but lost my drive and purpose in the process. I've just recently come to the conclusion that it is all me, the highs and the lows, I'm the same person and I need to integrate rather than hiding from the trail of spectacular failures that make me doubt my value in this world."

Thank you for sharing this very personal and sensitive view. Are you the person looking back at me in the mirror? Because this is how I feel.

We have much to offer the world. If we don't feel too humiliated and overwhelmed to participate.

At a time when normal thinking isn't working very well for us, maybe those of us who always think outside the envelope will have some answers.

Ozma of Oz

marksb---"egregious, I sang my daughter to sleep last night, for the first time in maybe seven weeks. My throat finally let me hit the notes, though the high ones still hurt. Anyway, as she settled into sleep and I capped off Donovan's 'Song Of The Naturalist's Wife' I found a few tears on my face. Music not only heals, it is a wonderful measure of our healing."

I dissolve in tears for the happiness of your being able to sing for her. So grateful for the small things!

When my oldest daughter was little I would read to her from various Oz books [clearly Ozma of Oz, where she is the beneficent ruler, was our favorite...plus the whole emerald thing, favorite color green. but i digress] would read to her but would have to stop in the middle of reading a sentence to take another breath, my asthma was at that level.

I am so grateful that I was able to read to her and that now I can breathe properly. Yay meds.