Report of 22 Nov '10

Hello from the B -

And time is flying. I have not read any of my professional journals for the last 4 days and I feel the void. Family responsibilities and health issues have superseded much else.

I just finished a training session for the employees of our Day Care center. There is an urban center where family members of mentally ill folks drop off mentally ill patients. The employees wanted to know about first aid - very responsible, I thought. We did not stop with first aid; we went through the causes of why the heart would stop, prevention being better than cure, etc. It was nice; well-informed folks make our jobs easier.

The B is good. We have a patient, Ms. S, who greeted me with a big hug the other day. As I wondered about the sudden affection, I was informed that Ms. S had gone back to her family up North and then had apparently refused to take her meds, so relapsed and was brought back. She is much thinner, and while I think appropriate size is a fine thing, I am also reminded that many of our patients cannot afford food. When I give patients advice such as, "Try and give your kids an egg a day," I realise that it is not within many folks' budgets. And if I say, "At night, I need you to give hot water fomentation to your aching muscles," I often see that hot water is not within a lot of people's budgets, either. We must do what we can with what we have.

Ms. S waxed eloquent with what appeared to be a litany of complaints. I don't speak Oriya, our security guard does, so I took her over to him and asked him to translate. He said, "This is not Oriya," and then translated. I was puzzled and asked what was going on: he said that Ms. S was interspersing Oriya with something else, and then said, "See, since she is sick up here (pointing to his head), she says things I don't completely understand." However, he had done a fair job of communicating her message, and I told him to tell her that she would get her slippers and earrings back (the staff had put aside her gold earrings for safekeeping, as many things can happen with precious gold in crowded living situations).

One sick young son trotted back from the dorm with an abscess on his elbow. I became useful, suddenly :). We started an antibiotic, and I had him soak his elbow in hot water, and it was healing, then he went off and ostensibly waved the arm around, so it swelled up again. The following morning, I told him tentatively of the need to rest it in order for it to complete its healing, and then sat back and waited for the barrage of, "What do you mean, rest it? Do you know my play is only days away? How can I give up rehearsal?" Instead, there was, "Yeah, that was what my director said, too. I'll rest it today." The family picked me up off the floor, and I had to thank the director for his message. We are trying to negotiate similarly reasonably on another young man's academics, and that is a big challenge, also. He is capable of more, but the adolescent wiring simply prevents harder effort - boggles my mind. I asked the boys once why they fought with me, and not their Dad, nonstop, and one of them said, "It's hard to fight with someone who does not say anything." I should really learn from Scott, shouldn't I.

We attended a couple of concerts and enjoyed them, and took both boys out for lunch, since we had their rare presence on a weekend. The menu was Indo-Chinese food, the boys said it was too spicy for them, and I loved it. Conversation was involved and stimulating; the boys talked of how they declined offers to drink or smoke dope, and were left alone after it. When I expressed surprise, they said, "Come on, a billion people, they can find someone else to smoke dope with." They advocated legalisation of alcohol and marijuana, so that the temptation of forbidden fruit is removed, and we discussed that at length. I have to admit that there are very few young people hooked on prescription meds here, where they are plentifully available without a prescription, than in the U.S., where they are so tightly regulated. We also saw "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," with a very rambunctious theater crowd, and enjoyed it in spite of the side bar chatter.

I talked to my Dad last week, and he spoke of having to officiate at some endowment lecture where the speaker droned on. My Dad and I are not fans of lengthy speeches, and we chuckled about this. Scott and I managed to get away on Bakrid by ourselves, and had a very nice day - lunch and chit chat, very nice away from parental pressures.

Unw -

R