I See Invisible People

Denmark is generally more progressive than the US, particularly on health issues. But a current program makes that startling clear. They are selling gift certificates for HPV vaccinations, and grandparents are buying them as gifts for their grandchildren.

While the Religious Wrong carries on its campaign to make sure that women who have sex face the consequences, Denmark inoculated 21,000 girls the first month the vaccine was available. They attacked the problem aggressively, even though their cervical cancer rate is low at 400 diagnoses a year. They rightly see it as a health issue, not a moral issue.

I think such a gifting program would do well here. Grandparents tend to be less judgmental and more practical about almost all aspects of childrearing. Perhaps that’s where the pressure to protect the health of our children needs to come from.

Via The Copenhagen Post

My visit with the doctor yesterday went ok. Hard as it was, I was honest and leveled with her about the symptoms I’m still having, and even showed her my arms. That was really tough - I have a lot of shame issues surrounding the scratching, and while my old doctor knew, this is the first time I’ve told this doc about it. Even as I struggle with it, I’ve always bought into the idea that self-harm is just a selfish bid for attention, a childish acting out, and I’m ashamed of it, ashamed of myself for doing it, feeling like I should be able to just decide to not do it anymore and have it go away. If only it were that easy.

I just wish the dr hadn’t looked so shocked and disturbed. I wanted to hide, not talk about it after that.

So the new plan of attack - increase the Prozac to 40 mg and hope that takes away the general nervousness that makes me scratch. If it hasn’t gone away by next Monday I’m to increase the dosage of my Geodon, the drug I worked so hard to cut back on, up to my previous level. If all that fails, we try a different drug. I go in to see her again in 3 weeks.

I get the feeling she’s running out of ideas of what to do with me. I feel a lot of pressure to say I’m doing better when I’m really not because of that. I have a real terror of being hospitalized against my will, and not responding to treatment scares me for that reason, enough to make me lie about it. So I walk a tightrope of what I can say.

It’s ironic that I spill it all here, huh.

I honestly don’t know what I’d do without this outlet. With a thin veil of anonymity I can talk about the things that are forbidden. In a way, I think that helps me cope.

Thank you all for listening, and caring.

I wanted the Prozac to work. I really really really wanted it to take care of my symptoms and fade into the background so I didn’t have to think about meds anymore. But that’s not happening.

3 weeks on it and I’m scratching again. It’s 10:30 am and I’ve brushed my teeth 5 times already, and I’ve only been up since 7. My brain is spinning and I’m having trouble focusing on my school work, so I obsess over it and spend twice as long doing every single example instead of the handful assigned. Worst of all I’m having fibro symptoms again, like I did on Serzone. My muscles ache and feel heavy, and I’ve got little electrical sparks running under my skin for hours at a time. The only upsides are that I’m sleeping 4 or 5 hours a night, no small accomplishment, and after the first homework and test, I have an A in stats. It’s nice to know that obsessions are good for something.

I see the dr. tomorrow, so I’ve got a big decision to make. Do I tell her about the symptoms that have come back and take the chance she’ll put me on something else, something that will make me gain weight? Or do I just relate the positive stuff and hope that the next dosage increase fixes things?

What I really want is my Zoloft back. Zoloft and diet pills. Ain’t going to happen, obviously.

So is this as good as it gets? If so, I’ll live with it. But I keep hoping for more.

There are no magic bullets, no matter how much I want one.

I made my choice and voted at caucus, but I’ve tried to stay out of the advocacy business since I’ve got friends on both sides of the Democratic Party contest. So make of this what you will.

From USA Today:

“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article “that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

Freudian slip? I wonder.

This just struck me as funny.

From CNN:

(CNN) — Sen. John McCain vowed Wednesday to fight religious prosecution, human trafficking, child pornography and other “evil” if he becomes president.

I suspect they meant persecution. But I’d like to see an end to religious prosecution, too. Blue laws, anyone?

Most of the time, when students disagree with their professors, healthy debate ensues. Generally instructors consider that a success, for even if the majority don’t come around to her point of view, minds have been stretched and all have been exposed to new ideas.

However, in Priya Venkatesan’s English class at Dartmouth, she considered it “subversiveness” when some students in her class expressed skepticism of her literary theory. She claimed that such disbelief was “intolerant of ideas” and it “questioned her knowledge in very inappropriate ways.”

So she sued her class for creating a hostile work environment.

I know we’ve got several academic folks here — how do you handle disagreement in the classroom? Where do you draw the line and table a discussion? What follow-up do you do? Are limits different in English than history? Is history different than science?

Have you ever felt your classroom was a hostile space?

As a strong supporter of public schools, I have grave reservations about charter schools in general, whether they be for math/science, fine arts, or tech trades. But for the citizens of Wilmington, Delaware, there’s another, to me, horrifying option in the works.

The Homeland Security Charter School.

The planning committee is now searching for a parcel of land upon which to build, so as to educate 600 inner city students (called cadets) in the careers of SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics), prison guard, water rescue, paramedic, fireman, professional demolition and emergency response operator. In addition to class time, cadets will be required to attend an after school exercise program. I assume they must wedge English, science, and math in there somewhere to meet accreditation.

I find this scary on many levels, the first of which being the stratified social class structure they’re anticipating. Why is this targeted toward kids in minority and lower economic brackets? All these occupations, save perhaps emergency operator, are dangerous professions, and the presumption that poor African-American kids from the urban core are more fit for these jobs than white kids from the ‘burbs is disturbing. Just as the bulk of military recruits come from low-income homes, do we wish to shunt more economically disadvantaged kids into careers in which success means laying their lives on the line?

Another objection is, in the case of the SWAT and prison guard programs, training kids in the use of guns at an age where they’re not even considered adult enough to vote. This normalization of violence is particularly worrisome in a time in which mass murderers have walked the halls of both high schools and colleges. Do teenagers really need to be trained to believe that weapons are just the tools of a trade?

My final objection is funding. Money for education is a zero sum game. If dollars are pulled out to fund this homeland security academy, where is it coming from? What other programs will not be funded to free up resources to pay for this experiment? I’m willing to bet that the cost will not be paid by affluent schools; it’s going to come out of the communities which are already struggling the most. Parents may well be confronted with the choice to either enroll their children in this new charter, or keep them in the schools from which funding has been stolen to finance it. That’s no real choice at all.

I’m not opposed to technical training for high school students. But I draw the line at forcing a choice between funding traditional academics and supporting a student’s wish to learn a trade, and shifting that balance based on the economic status of a student’s neighborhood.

And I do not, under any circumstances, believe that publicly financed educators should be teaching children how to fire a gun. No matter where they live.

Via The Delaware Business Ledger

I was amusing myself on Yahoo by tabbing through all the photos of women in hats at the Kentucky Derby (what is with the hats, Poet?), enjoying all the different varieties, when I ran across the above photo. It names Hugh Hefner, but he might as well be there alone, because none of his companions are identified. One might say that this is because they’re not famous, but other non-celebrities are named in other photos. It’s almost as if they’re just accessories to Hefner, a part of his outfit for Derby Day, nothing more. Less that people.

I know others would say that they should not be rewarded with attention for selling themselves for fame, and maybe that’s true. But this really bothered me, to see them rendered invisible as anything other than bodies on the arm of a notorious man, interchangeable like different sets of cuff links. He may see them as trophies, but should we? I don’t think so.

They are human beings. If we’re going to leer and sneer at them, we should at least know their names.

“My friends, I will have an energy policy which will eliminate our dependence on oil from Middle East that will then prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East.” –John McCain, at a town hall meeting in Denver, Colorado.

Watch the video.

The corollary? Having an energy policy that is dependent on foreign oil results in us having to send our young men and women into conflict in the Middle East. The invasion of Iraq was not about WMDs, regime change, or spreading democracy at all. It all comes down to oil. Most of us already knew that, but it’s surprising, to say the least, to have a Republican admit it.

McCain has since come out with a statement claiming he didn’t mean THIS war with Iraq. He only meant the previous one. And his use of the word “again” was misconstrued. Sure.

Via Crooks and Liars

At the urging of a dear friend, I’m on campaign to make peace with my body. Quitting smoking and riding the med merry-go-round has made me gain weight, and that has crushed my self-esteem. I’m off the gain-inducing drug (hopefully the new one won’t have the same effect), but my metabolism is currently trashed. It’s going to take awhile for it to recover and for the weight to start coming off. Hating myself in the meantime only makes me depressed and doesn’t make me lose weight any faster. In fact, it’s counter-productive, since being depressed makes me want to eat. A healthy relationship with my body shouldn’t depend on the number on my scale.

Since committing to something here makes my motivation stronger, I’m laying out my plan.

I will only step on the scale once a day. I will stop saying horrible things to myself every time I walk past a mirror. I will eat 2 meals a day for a total of 1,200 calories instead of trying to fast — eating a sensible meal is not failure. I will walk on the treadmill 30 minutes every day to improve my health, rather than pushing on to exhaustion to punish myself for being ugly. I will make an effort to treat myself as kindly as I would a friend. Most importantly, I will somehow stop believing that being overweight makes me unworthy and unlovable.

Rebuilding my self-confidence is going to be a big job. Developing destructive patterns took decades, so they won’t go away over night, but one day at a time I can improve my image of myself. Accepting myself as I am isn’t giving up — it’s affirming that there’s more to me than my body. That confidence isn’t only for the young and slim. It should belong to everyone.

It can belong to me.