My stepson has decided we are going to a resort next week...it seems that his wife's relative is opening a place, and they "invited" us to stay for the opening ceremony/blessing for a few days...I was told three different stories about this, so don't know the truth.
To get there, we can either take an overnight ferry or fly and take a short ferry...since I get seasick, I chose the plane...I am so full of fears since moving here I prefer a short fear of crashing to a long fear of drowning...

I don't know what's wrong... I guess my agorophobia, which I had conquered by pushing myself in the past, has come back...guess I need to start prozac...but I don't like drugs any more than my stepson...

Oh well...

I am happy here doing nothing...it seems that everytime I think of the past, I think of terrible horrible things that happened...undoubtably good things happened and I did good things, but that is not what comes up...since these things ususally come up when I try to pray, I assume it is either diabolic attack, or because that is when I actually quiet my heart for the subconscious to come out.
So I bundle up the terrible memory, and give it to God...figuring he will cleanse the hurt. And if it is about a patient or someone I know that comes to mind, I lift them up to him in prayer.
Works for me...although most of the time I prefer the internet, because it keeps one busy busy...

Well, I've updated my two blogs to include counters, and delinked this one from my profile. If you are reading it, I don't care, it's just that this is my rantblog.
My stepson is in Manila, so the place is quiet.
Lolo is reading. It is not as warm as yesterday. Friends emailed and said it was 105 in Oklahoma, so we are probably better off here, except for brownouts....and no tornadoes. However, Next week is an earthquake drill for the entire country.

And how is YOUR day?

My Stepson has decided he wants to go to the USA, sell all our land and investments here, take all my husband's money, build a nursing home, have me as the doctor and his wife as adminstrator, import Filippinos to be nurses and nurses aids, and sit back and make money.

What do I do with such thinking?

He is "depressed" but my "countertransferance" isn't depression but that I feel angry at him. I act out myself, so recognize it in others. I suggested prozac, but I suspect he would become "violent" and blame the prozac...not because prozac doesn't help but because he is determined to sit like a child in the corner until we go along with what he wants...

No way, Jose.

But I worry if my husband dies...he'll have control of all the money and blow it, and I'll be left with nothing...oh well...

Live one day at a time.

I'd probably go back to being a missionary, either with the IHS or in Africa.

But right now, I'm happy doing nothing...must be something wrong with me...I've worked since age 16, and as a doctor for 34 years, and I'm just tired...tired of seeing terrible tradgedies. Tired of worrying I'm making mistakes, or I"ve made mistakes.
Tired of backbiting from jealous nurses.
Tired of overwork.

One day at a time...

I found out I can watch Filippine CD movies on my new computer (my laptop is adjusted to play US DVD's).
So we watched Barbie Princess and the Pauper. It was a "PIXAR" type movie. Very sentimental.
And Barbie, and the scenery, was beautiful, although the "acting" a bit wooden.
Now, Most of the "modern" cartoons on Nicolodian are...UGLY.
I don't see "problems" with them, merely that they are ugly. I take that back: I have BIG problems with the white man bwana superiority of the "wild Thornberries" where the ugly girl talks to animals...
You see, she saves animals from poachers...

Last week, in an area that they are making a resort, had a dolphin die off....the authorities tried desperatly to save the beached dolphins. But when they came back, they found many had been "mutilated"...but reading furthur, what had happened is that the local people came up and butchered them for meat.

Here, poor people have trouble affording medicine for infection, but we have money for saving dolphins? Every day, NG or discovery has a "special" on African animals, but little on the news about the many massacres there, and even major democides like Dafur and Zimbabwe are only touched briefly...

Nope. Got to save the animals, black people don't count.

Letter to the BMJ about dutch infanticide...

I would have written one to the NYTimes but they would never publish it, and their forum is full of profanities...


One great step for....whom?
NANCY K REYES,
retired physician
Gapan City Philippines 3105

Send response to journal:
Re: One great step for....whom?



The protocols are described as being a great step forward...because... "The protocol, which the Groningen doctors agreed with the public prosecution service, enables doctors to report their actions without being prosecuted."

Translation: It permits doctors to kill and not worry about being prosecuted.

"Its requirements include a clear diagnosis and prognosis; that the newborn baby must be suffering hopelessly and unbearably with no prospect for future treatment; that both parents must give their informed consent; that the decision must be confirmed by a second independent doctor; and that the death and treatment must be reported to the local coroner."

Translation: Well, we can treat Spina bifida patients, but we will ignore the fact. The prognosis of Spina bifida does not depend on the size or the height of the meningomyelocoel, but we will ignore that. And the presence of hydrocephalus does not correlate with IQ, but we will ignore that...the "second indpendent doctor" will not be independent, but a physician friendly to killing, so we will ignore that part, and "the treatment" will be reported to the local coroner...but since less than 30 percent of adult euthanasia is being reported, we will ignore that also.

Indeed, there are many adults who had such disabilities treated, and are alive today thanks to treatment. Were their opinions sought on whether they thought they should be dead instead of alive? Or are these decisions based not on the idea of suffering of the child, but on the idea that caring for such a child would inconvenience the parents? Inquiring minds want to know...

Last week, I was watching a Tellie show on evolution...there was a fossil of Homo erectus found that had evidence of an injury that had healed, implying that someone had to care and feed for the injured person...the narrator remarked that this showed a major indication of evolution, since it showed compassion...

Caring for the sick and crippled and retarded is not "logical". It costs money. It keeps people from doing more important things. But the retarded teach us the lessons of courage, compassion and faith.

And despite the claim of Eduard Verhagen, who told the BMJ at the time, "It is time to be honest; all over the world doctors end lives discreetly, out of compassion", the dirty little secret is that human beings, since the time of homo erectus, have NOT always ended lives, but much more often we see those "meaninless" people assisted in their daily living: helped, cared for, and loved....and that it is such compassion that make us fully human.

Competing interests: None declared

well, today is the "LOST" (tv show) marathon on tv.

Usually we watch National geographic and discovery channel asia, but I started watching the show on AXN and got hooked.

After all, there are only so many nature shows on lions in Africa that one can watch...although NG, like Discovery, is starting to show Construction type specials.

Lost is the anti "bridge of san luis rey" tv show. In the "bridge", the monk investigating the lives of those who died could not justify their deaths, and apostasized...(but even from an athiestic standpoint, one could say he did not have an adequate data base to make that decision...and a Christian would say that perhaps dying was not a "punishment" but a gift, to prevent sin...or that God allowed this evil, caused by human error , perhaps the sin of shoddy workmanship, because he permits things, and then uses the evil and changes it to good in the long run.)

But in Lost, everyone has baggage, usually sin, and the island is their chance to start anew. But Hurley merely won the lottery with "cursed' numbers, and Locke is given a chance for a second life after others harmed him.

Like Desperate housewives, it is a team effort, and like that highly maligned but highly watched show, there is an under currant of morality that is healthy...

LINK

NYTimes looooves infanticide...

Our sense of what constitutes moral progress is a matter partly of reason and partly of sentiment. On the reason side, the Groningen protocol may seem progressive because it refuses to countenance the prolonging of an infant's suffering merely to satisfy a dubious distinction between ''killing'' and ''letting nature take its course.'' It insists on unflinching honesty about a practice that is often shrouded in casuistry in the United States. Moral sentiments, though, have an inertia that sometimes resists the force of moral reasons. Just quote Verhagen's description of the medically induced infant deaths over which he has presided -- ''it's beautiful in a way. . . . It is after they die that you see them relaxed for the first time'' -- and even the most spirited dinner-table debate over moral progress will, for a moment, fall silent.

Most of the examples they use to support it are in countries where the alternative to infanticide was starvation...and in those countries, once the famines no longer threatened, it was abandoned.

In Africa, twins were killed...because they die (not enough milk). But it hardly happens now that milk is available...

And most of the Dutch cases can be treated: but inconveniently.
Maybe the NYTimes should ask an adult with Down's syndrome or with spina bifida if they would have preferred to be killed...but no, I doubt the author is even aware that such people exist...

I'm going over the books...a lot of the "overhead" is being listed as personal expenses...so no wonder it seems like we are always spending money.
The rains have come, and we went to the farm to see the plantings.
I got three emails from African friends, but no good news there.
Chano still in bed...same old same old...

No rants right now.

My stepson is still in bed "depressed"...
He is angry at everyone, so to destroy his wife's business success (and since the business is based on my husband's money, to make my husband lose much of his retirement savings) he wants to "go home" and get a "job" to be a real man...

Alas, he has only work experience in "counseling" based on a B.A. which means essentially he will get paid a pittance...so will end up living either with his mommy or costing my husband more hard earned money to live on...

Since my husband refused to "help" him go home, he is essentially on strike.
He makes me angry...

Now, as a doc I've treated many depressed people...and there is in psychiatry something called "countertransference"...if talking to a person makes you feel depressed, he is depressed...
The anger suggests one of two things: As a stepson, I have little sympathy
or
TWO: He is merely sulking (passive aggressive, maybe to the point of being delusional)...

I suspect the second...after all, what 47 year old man "asks" his father for "permission"?
Answer One who will then blame his father when everything goes wrong...

My husband bought prozac for him, but he won't take it...but I suspect prozac is not the answer, for he will quickly get "side effects" and stop it...

Game playing anyone?

Press bias....nahh...

LINK
In person Mr Bush is so far removed from the caricature of the dim, war-mongering Texas cowboy of global popular repute that it shakes one’s faith in the reliability of the modern media.

LINK

Recently a document came to me from a Jesuit priest who teaches in Rome . It was entitled Liberal Jesuits & the Late Pope. In speaking about hatred of the pope he writes, “Over the course of twenty-eight years in the Society of Jesus, I’ve watched Wojtyla-hatred turn into one of the principal sub-themes of Jesuit life…official documents have never departed from the language of deference to the pope. I’m talking about the informal expectation of day to day existence.” The author, Fr. Mankowski, makes it clear that of course there were many Jesuits very loyal to the pope, even outspokenly loyal, but on the other hand apparently there were many who were so deeply opposed to Pope John Paul II that they even openly wished for his death and said that they wished for his death. Some even expressed disappointment that the attempt of assassination of the pope had not succeeded.