Blogger down again

I had a bunch of links but Blogger was down....

There was an article about Belgium euthanasia cases doubling in the last year--- and 80 percent aren't reported anyway...

There was an article about the handicapped being worried they will be pressured into suicide if they change the law in California.

And then there was a report on the Anchoress, whose writing I usually enjoy, but she brings up a book about "medicine and prayer" and writes:
'I gave him my copy of Larry Dossey’s book, Healing Words : The Power of Prayer and the Practice of Medicine, and directed him to some stories within the book that explored the whole concept of illness not being able to claim you if it remains unacknowledged...."

What do all these articles have in common?

The idea we are in charge of our own destiny, the idea that if we are sick we are somehow "bad", and the idea that healthy and strong is the highest good in life....

As a doctor, I've treated many people...as a general practitioner, probably two thirds of what we see has a psychological aspect...

But in this, I am a materialist. One cannot simply turn illness off and on...

If you are stressed out, depressed, see no reason in life, then you will probably be sick...and if you are hard working and happy, you will probably be well....

But not necessarily....I know that my Asthma here is "worse" because I am not working...ditto for arthritis...partly because when I was working, I could blank out the symptoms...(ah, but at night the pain kept me up)...

So women in bad marriages often have functional illnesses, where the stress hormones mess up the function of various body parts...and the pain hurts worse...

But that is not the same as thinking we can stay well, or that if we are told we are sick and believe it, we will be sick, but if we refuse to believe it, we will be well...

It's like gravity...sickness is a reality...

But if you believe in your heart you can chose or not chose illness, the result is an innate hostility toward the chronically ill...

Hugh Gallagher has abook on the holocaust of the mentally handicapped, and has a chapter about how doctors treating him would become frustrated because they could never cure him...this is a dirty secret in medicine (you never cure some people, and some of them are whiners and drain your sympathy quickly)...

So if you work with the chronically ill, or eldelry, or mentally handicapped, you need to see things differently than the culture of cure...it turns into the culture of comfort...

But even that can lead to "comforting" death...

And we need to remember: We cannot see all ends...

So you need to stand back and see things in a different light...thru the eyes of God, who loves these people, and you are merely to give them a little comfort to help them bear their illness...

As a Christian doctor, I try to heal...but sometimes we can't heal...

Then it is well to remember the old prayer:

I asked God for strength, that I might achieve,
I was made weak, that I might learn humbly to obey;
I asked for health, that I might do greater things,
I was given infirmity, that I might do better things;

I asked for riches, that I might be happy,
I was given poverty, that I might be wise;
I asked for power, that I might have the praise of man,
I was given weakness, that I might feel the need of God;

I asked for all things, that I might enjoy life,
I was given life, that I might enjoy things;
I got nothing that I asked for - but everything I had hoped for,
Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered,
I am among all men, most richly blessed.