Also On Wellness
Posts by Estelle Toby
He was in his twenties and did not seem to know a great deal about crime when I met him on one of the yards of a California state prison. The general physician of the yard had correctly pegged him as a scared kid (age 24) who really did not even know how to get along in the prison. He looked pale and sad. He was in for drug charges. Not just possession; he had been trying to make some money by trafficking....
9/25/2009 9:17:54 AM
The young man was 25, with a bunch of tattoos. His face and body and even his shaved head had a strange quality I would call "pudding-y." He was missing the muscle tone one would expect in someone of that age; he laughed when I asked about exercise. He told me he had "experimented" with drugs in the past. I held myself back from telling him that in my world it was not experimentation unless somebody...
9/25/2009 9:16:06 AM
He was a pleasant young man. A bit angry, but I could understand that. His skin was dark and as much as it hurts me to admit, that can still, even in the 21st century, be a factor in how one is treated in some schools or jobs. So when he complained about that, I could not disagree. I really liked him and still do. He had been on a brand new, expensive and hard-to-get (in the public mental health system)...
9/9/2009 10:51:12 AM
The woman was worn, and looked about ten years older than her stated age of 29. She said she had been raped, about 7 years before, by a person trusted in her community. I saw her face, and believed everything that she said. This “trusted person” was her church choirmaster, a prominent and influential member of the church and the community. Often victims are afraid to report what has happened because...
9/9/2009 10:45:54 AM
She was pleasant and in her thirties. Plenty of patients are more than a little overweight after years of anti psychotic medication, and she was. She was dressed very nicely, though, and my conversation with her had a disarmingly œnormal feel to it. Enough doctors had told her about her weight that she was motivated to try a walking program. Any other kind of exercise just made her too tired. I asked...
8/31/2009 10:51:14 AM
July 15th, 2009 Because tobacco costs the Pentagon and the Veterans Affairs folks $846 million annually in lost productivity and health care, we are going to stop the troops from smoking. With classes and education and we are going to phase this in progressively. Yes, we must actually be that stupid. Telling people they cannot do something simply does not stop people from doing it. Period. Anybody...
8/14/2009 11:56:40 AM
August 8th, 2009 I am really happy that I do not belong to the AMA. Despite occasional efforts to fit in, I decided a while ago that professional associations, when they are trying to write something about the platforms they stand for, say something that never seems to even come close to what I think and feel. James Rohack, the president of the AMA, especially has nothing to say on my behalf. Of course...
8/14/2009 11:54:21 AM
August 3rd, 2009 I encountered her at a clinic in a different city that had asked me to consult on some tricky cases. She bonded with me, even though I told her I would not be her permanent doctor and somebody else would be attending her soon. Her diagnosis is bipolar. She may be schizoaffective, for she does have some eccentric ideas and may have had some delusions. But right now, I think she looks...
8/14/2009 11:52:32 AM
August 12th, 2009 Okay, so it is a craze. Maybe Stephanie Meyer is a brilliant writer, for some say she has moved them to depths of emotion they find unbelievable. Several have criticized her technically. Chances are she has grasped some basic aspects of storytelling and not exactly dominated some of the nuances of the language that would satisfy academics. It doesn't much matter, really. As far as...
8/14/2009 11:51:01 AM
Thursday, July 16th, 2009 "It is going to be a medicine that fixes me. You just have not found the medicine yet." I have heard this particular wailing invective from at least five patients this week. It is customarily followed by insult. I am told that I am not a good enough psychopharmacologist, or something like that. The first thing I do is review the psychiatric diagnosis. I do this from zero....
7/17/2009 10:10:12 AM
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