I'm so sorry when I see couple where one is making so much effort and the other one is not making a single effort to please the other one, to make their relationship better. I've come to a point that I've been asking myself whether I'm aware about the effort that Dey is making (Perhaps that what Dey wanted to tell me, lol).
The answer why people doesn't see the effort they other one is making because it is not what they are expecting the one to do. Let's take an example: I want Dey to prepare tea for me when I come back home late. Some days later, I come back home and Dey, as my beautiful and caring (and a chef) prepared a good meal. I'm sure of not seeing the effort she's made for me because I was not expecting it. People are made in such a way that they sees what effort they are making and not what the other is making. Why it is such? I don't know but it is as such.

In this case, it was obvious that Dey made an effort but I didn't notice it because I wasn't expecting it: who is right and who is wrong. Both are right and both will be wrong if this situation ends in a fight. But if the I say :" That's good Dey, you are so caring girl. But before, let me have some tea and then I'll take care of that delicious meal...take care of you too baby" the situation will be ok.

So, this is a kind of situation when there was two options, fight or calm down and we can see that the fight could have easily be started but that with some appropriate words, everything was ok.

So girls and guys (not always guys and girls) just take a better look around you and you'll notice all these effort your mate are doing for you...

Cheerio to everyone...

My initial post for today was "Boys are mean and girls too" (maybe later I'll post it) but somehow, I wanted to share some advices on how to stop a fight between two persons (when you are one of the two persons).
We'll take the situation where the fight is already turned on. The guy and girl are arguing and arguing and ... arguing not allowing to calm down.
In this particular case, what I'll do in your case, I'll stop arguing and try to calm down. IT-IS-NOT-EASY. It is really not easy but I'll try. And I'll say something that is very very very difficult to say, I'll say "sorry". Oh yes ladies and gentleman, that's what you must say in this case. Saying sorry is not admitting you're wrong or whatever but only admitting that fighting back was not the way you should have behave (in the case you started the fight, saying you're sorry is a way to say that you shouldn't have started the fight).
Then try to see the problem on two aspect; your's and hers. Perhaps you're wrong but didn't realise it because you are too stubborn to admit it or if she is is wrong, talking calmly will give you more power to try to make her understand what went wrong. In every case, talking calmly is better than crying out loud.

This is two easy steps on how to calm down a fight between you and another persons (mainly your girlfriend, fiancée or wife). I normally try to calm down things using these two steps. It don't work every time but when it works, just believe me, there's nothing better than this.

So friend, two easy steps and one cheerio...

I love my medallion; it has brought me a lot of comfort and confidence. I go no where without it. I trully believe it is working for me and thank you for introducing me to the powers of Archangel Michael.

Thank you, Remel"

As my flat-hunting is slowly and surely coming to a close, I'm trying to decide who to room with for the next 6 months or so. As I weigh the pros and cons of the situation I'm left with one very relevant question at hand. Should I, or anyone else for that matter, live platonic-ally with someone I've become terribly attracted to overnight?

Last night I went to visit a guy, Seth, who I'd been referred to by current rent-free friend  extraordinaire, Carla. She had brought to my attention last week that her friend had just rented a house on the east end of London that was fully furnished and in a nice area. The rent was questionably affordable, but I thought since I was so tired of speaking with loonies on the phone that I couldn't even touch 1st base with, I'd give this guy a try.

I arrived early outside Tower Hill station and luckily caught a few free minutes of the Jack the Ripper tour guides' speech. (Which is something, by the way, I've always wanted to do but no one will ever go with me)

Seth, a Kiwi from Wellington, who's lived here around 2 years now, is a very neurotic character, currently living on scholarship working on his PhD in Politics. He also has Asperger's Syndrome (a very mild case of autism) which makes him even more neurotic. He's clearly too intelligent for his own good and due to his 'disability' not very personable.

He's the kind of person who would never give you a direct compliment, but hidden ones you can only decipher by knowing how to properly analyze him. And though Seth has an odd, sort of fun appeal about him,  this isn't the guy I was attracted to.

No, no, not even close. After viewing the house from the outside, we walked through a beautiful port and dock where rich yuppies of London keep their yachts, a fancy grocery store where the rich yuppies shop and oh yes, did I mention the 'Island of Starbucks?' It's actually a small dome shaped gazebo holding mocha-chinos, chai lattes and biscottis in the middle of the Thames river that you can only access by boat.

We traveled past parks, cemeteries and the Tower Bridge (which Seth promptly pointed out Americans like to call the 'London Bridge.' When we finally reached our destination, which was a pub (typical) it turned out to be a rather peaceful one with a view of the Thames and a calm breeze.

We were there to discuss the house's floor plan and to meet his other flat mate, James from Scotland. He walked in a bit late, which Seth excused earlier for him wanting to 'get all prettied up before he met someone new.' But once I met him, I highly doubted this.

James was laid back and friendly with a nice disposition and very little physical grooming. He was dressed both sensibly and fashionably, as he might have been able to either go to a sporting event or business casual party in the same evening simeltaneously.

His looks weren't entirely appealing altogether but after about 2 minutes into the conversation I realized I was attracted to him. It just goes to show, once again, that it's never all about looks, is it? I've never been one for the pretty boys anyways. If I wanted a pretty boy, I would just date a girl. 

His accent, I must admit was a complete turn on, as I've always had a thing for the Scots. (Don't ask me why) He didn't have one of those extremely harsh accents either that doesn't even sound like English, since he was from Glasgow. He had just moved to London not too long ago from Edinburgh (my favorite all time city thus far, sorry London) after leaving a staff position at The Scotsman.

He then mentioned he'd left his job to work in publishing, which led him to London. I asked him why, and he replied with both wit and decorum, "Well, my boss said if I wanted to steal his job, he'd have to die somehow, so he suggested going somewhere with more opportunity." Seth then made some snide comment about killing his boss. Yeah....moving on.

So James started asking questions about where I was from and what I did. I always reply, "I'm a writer" just to sound pretentious and annoying. I rather get a kick out of it actually. I told them about my job as a sort-of journalist and Seth recommended I interview their friend who currently lives in a field to protest the expansion of Heathrow airport. I delightful expressed interest.

James and I soon discovered many commonalities thanks to Seth constantly repeating that we were "twins." We'd both gone to film school, we were both sort of 'writers' and we both had a shared love for Scotland. Not to mention, I believe, a shared attraction for each other that was practically instant. Don't you love that?

James told me he'd met Seth during college when he was a young lad and Seth was the resident hall leader, which is something I can't honestly picture Seth doing, but it must mean he's responsible on some level, which is a good thing.

When I told James I was from America he told me a funny story about his first brush with US customs and how part of the entrance form's questionairee included 'Are you intending to commit violations against humanity?' That's a good one, America. A great way to weed out terrorists.

Anyway, I digress. His brush with tourist deportation in America was quite amusing as it involved his accent. He said during his oral questioning, an American woman asked him what he was planning to do there during his stay. He didn't really have any set plans so he just said he was planning to "poke about and see what he could find." The woman, not understanding him, thought he'd said he was there for 'poaching.'

So he was made to stand in the 'bad' line until time for interrogation, aka, doom. They asked where he was staying, he didn't know. They asked if he had a contact there, he said no. They asked if he knew the pledge of allegiance, he said no. Okay, so the last one isn't true. But nonetheless, it wasn't exactly looking good for James. Eventually though, he apparently made his way in, most likely with his Scottish wit and charm.

So I'm now trying to decide if I should decline their good offer as potential flat mate because of my initially strong pharamonal reaction to James. A part of me thinks I could just be friends  with him and have a good old time, but another part feels it may be difficult.

Does anyone have an opinion on the matter? If so, feel free to share.

Aqua Glow

Fast moving waters

Like fast moving life

Is direction without control

Emotion without a clue about why

Frantic rivers fearing stagnant sloughs

They catch the sun and in a filtered light

At times they find an equally filtered glow

My pulse quickens at the pace and foam

Yet like a river I yearn for the lake

The placid effortless peace

When white water gives

Way to the glassy calm

Mirrored grace

I always see

In you

]]> http://christinasponias.wordpress.com/?p=61 Mon, 21 Jul 2008 23:49:11 +0000 sponias http://christinasponias.wordpress.com/?p=61 Yesterday I remembered the case of a dentist who committed suicide when her baby was only 4 months old, and I mentioned this case in my article.

While common psychiatrists and psychologists examine many cases superficially, I examine only a few cases, but very well. I follow each drama, for years, being near each patient like a friend. I am, in fact, like a nun. Religiosity is indispensable when we deal with terror. And of course, a tragic suicide of a young mother means terror and despair for her husband’s and her child’s life…

Terror also for her brother and her nephew’s life, besides her mother’s life and so on… Such an unexpected fact means terror for everyone. Their lives ended with her suicide.

It was unexpected. She was working as a dentist and had normally marked consults with her clients on Monday, but on Saturday she committed suicide, jumping from the terrace of her building, while she seemed to be happy with her husband.

This fact was more than shocking for everyone that knew her… I knew her brother very well, who was my patient, because his wife abandoned him and his son. This was a problematic family… But they seemed to be common people, polite, with social prestige, money, a good appearance, good reputation, etc. Nobody could ever imagine that this family would have these problems… They seemed to be balanced and happy people, at the beginning of their lives.

I also had a neighbour who committed suicide jumping from his terrace, which was on the top floor. He was a lawyer, also working, with many appointments for the next day. He didn't have financial problems, but he had had an affair and before jumping he had hurt (superficially) a woman’s face with a knife.

Another neighbour knew his story and told me everything…
He lived in the building, to the left of mine. When I went to the terrace of my apartment after hearing all the noise of the ambulances, I saw the police carrying a woman in a stretcher. I didn't see the lawyer, because he didn't jump in sight of the street – he jumped on the back side of the building, falling in the building’s garden.

I saw the marks of the dentist, who fell in the front part of her building, while her husband went to the car in order to bring the fresh milk he had forgotten there.

She passed near the baby and his toys, before jumping, but she had the courage to go to the terrace and abandon the kid, who was a very sweet and quiet boy. He was a beautiful angel with brown hair and blue eyes, who was always smiling.

His father said that he was a rare child, that slept well, would eat and stay quietly without complaining. He was a baby that almost never cried.

This was her second marriage, after a first marriage without children because her first husband could not have kids. So, the baby she had with her second husband, who loved her very much, was the realisation of a dream, a fulfilment that should only make her very happy.

She seemed to be happy… however, craziness dominated her mind gradually, as I could understand examining her life in detail and examining her husband’s dreams, which were giving us information about her character.

I saw my Uncle Leonid shouting in the streets, drunk and crazy, whereas before he had been a consul, with a very important social position, respected by everyone. He had a very good heart, but his personality was very strange.

He was extremely generous, and he wanted very much to be good to everyone, but he made many mistakes because he followed his psychological type. His type was the introverted psychological type based on intuitions, the most complicated psychological type that exists. It is very hard for anyone to define this type’s ideals, because it is too complex.

The introverted psychological type based on intuitions cannot get adapted to the reality in which he lives. He can only keep his mental health for life if he becomes an artist, otherwise he will certainly become a victim of neurosis or worse.

My adored uncle became hysterical. He had panic attacks and various other problems with his health.

He somehow recuperated his conscious mind however, and we had many discussions, after the shock.

He suffered very much… His failure was due to craziness, because he became too absurd. He seemed to be absurd from the beginning to my eyes, when I first met him. I was only 15 years old (I first met him after the accident I suffered at this age, when I was almost 16 years old). He lived in Sweden and I lived in Brazil, but I travelled with my mother to Europe six months after the accident, and after visiting Greece we went to Calmar, in Sweden, where Uncle Leonid lived with his family.

It was our destiny to meet each other again in Greece, where we lived near one another for certain period of time, since our family is Greek.

I decide to live in Greece after going back to Brazil, but he decided to go back to Sweden, where he lived and died, near my aunt and cousins.

Craziness was always something I was afraid of, because my father was schizophrenic. Only with me, that had his facial features, was he very kind. With my mother and everyone else he was a monster. He pretended to be very kind however, and nobody could imagine that he was a true demon if they didn't know him very well, because he was very gentle.

He had a lot of money and people obeyed him, even though he was absurd.

His implications and demands were very strange. He was always suspicious of everyone. He didn't let us open the door to anyone at night, no matter if it was our neighbour and we knew him very well.

Craziness is very strange. It can attack anyone, at any time.

My other very tragic example is the suicide of my adored friend Arnold, who was like a brother to me. We belonged to the same gang of friends when we were teens.

He suddenly became psychotic when he was 20 years old, and committed suicide when he turned 26, after psychiatric psychotherapy with “heavy medicine” as he described it to me in his letters. I was living in Athens, while he remained in Sao Paulo, our home town. My mother helped his family, because she stayed longer in Sao Paulo, while I went back to Greece.

These are only a few examples… The truth is that more than too many people in this world become victims of craziness everyday, because the human being inherits a wild conscience that tries to destroy his human conscience through craziness, because it is schizophrenic.

Craziness exists “a priori” in the human brain. We are already born with a schizophrenic content in our psyche and if we don’t transform it into a positive part of our human conscience through psychotherapy, we become victims for this absurd content that exists in the anti-conscience, our primitive and evil conscience, which can easily destroy our humanity through craziness.

The crazy person becomes a cruel monster, because they lose their human sensitivity. This is not their fault, however, because they inherit this absurd content in their psyche.

Some people have more tendency towards craziness than others. Everything depends on the person’s psychological type and conditions of life.

If you want to be prudent and stay far from craziness, despair and terror, start caring about your dreams and learn how to translate them according to the scientific method.

If you don’t have time to learn, send me your dreams for professional translation. You may even take advantage of my summer offer – I’m offering free professional translation for this summer only. Learn more about it at my site.

You have to care about your mental health and protect it while you can, because you don’t know how much power the wild anti-conscience has on your psyche.

If all the people I mentioned had translated their dreams, they would have been guided by the unconscious mind and cured for sure, before they had arrived to the point of completely losing their human conscience.

Our dreams can save our mental health, but there is only one method that can help us achieve this aim: the scientific method of dream interpretation discovered by Carl Jung and simplified by me, who continued his research in the unknown region of the psyche.

You can prevent depression, craziness and suicidal thoughts only by translating the meaning of your dreams and following the guidance you receive from the unconscious mind, which produces your dreams exactly in order to give you precious information about you, your life, other people and the world where you are, so that your mental health will be protected and your personality will be completely developed.

This way you’ll become more intelligent, your balance and mental health will be guaranteed, and you’ll be able to live peacefully and happily for life.

Prevent Depression and Craziness through the scientific method of Dream Interpretation discovered by Carl Jung and simplified by Christina Sponias, a writer who continued Jung's research in the unknown region of the human psychic sphere.
Learn more at: http://www.scientificdreaminterpretation.com and http://www.booksirecommend.com
Click below to download your copy of the Free ebook
Beating Depression and Craziness
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Christina_Sponias

It's notyour typical blazing-orange-sky sunset, but I like it nonetheless. More quiet and calm light pinks and blues instead of intense orange and reds.

Miniloc Island Resort pier, Miniloc Island, El Nido, Palawan, Philippines

But not today. I don't know why, but I'll take it. She mentioned yesterday that she wanted to go to Texas Roadhouse. (Every Sunday my parents take my two remaining grandparents to lunch. It gets them out of the house and gives them time together. It's been tradition for my entire life, and possibly longer. I've threatened to quit jobs that insisted on scheduling me for Sunday afternoon. I miss those Sunday lunches so much.)

My grandmother had clipped a coupon for a different restaurant and wanted to go there. My grandmother is into extreme saving. She'll go to three stores and spend four hours shopping and $10 on gas to save 50 cents on a can of corn. And here she had an opportunity to save a couple of bucks on dinner somewhere else.

Mom's weight is still down, and if she wants to go to a specific restaurant, damn it, she should go there. So yesterday I told her: you're driving, you're paying for gas, you're paying for dinner, you get to pick where you want to go. Get everybody into the car and go to Texas Roadhouse. If they don't like it, slow down to 30 in front of the other restaurant and tell them to get out.

I scheduled an email to go out at four in the morning, reminding her that she was taking them to Texas Roadhouse and too bad if they don't like it.

I called dad tonight. "Your mother ate like a fiend," he said. The fiends I know eat very well, so I'll take that to be a good sign. He described what she ate, and it sounded like a whole meal to me.

I don't know if she's eaten anything since lunchtime, but I'm too tired to fight that battle. I'm going to assume that she ate normally today. I can have one day of blissful ignorance, can't I?

Tomorrow is the CT scan, the day after is her birthday. And I forgot to mail her cards. Guess I've got some stuff on my mind.

Continued photographs from yesterday's post. This is in Keystone of a still part of Snake River.

Shallow depth-of-field shot of flowers in front of Gray's Peak and Torrey's Peak.

Telephoto shot of mountains in the basin of the area we were hiking in on last Sunday.

The relative calm is apparent in Baghdad's Ghazaliyah neighborhood, patrolled by troops stationed at Maverick from the 1st Squadron, 75th Cavalry Regiment of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division.

Instead of facing gunfire and roadside bombs, the soldiers' armored Humvees are chased by waving children as they weave through streets crowded with pedestrians out to shop or just to stroll.

Some of Maverick's troops saw combat a few months ago when they helped the Iraqi army take over the Ghazaliyah office of anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in a battle complete with gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades.

But their days in Ghazaliyah have mostly been filled with routine patrols. The soldiers' job is to serve as a critical presence that helps keep violence down in the mixed Sunni and Shiite neighborhood.

"Ninety-five percent of the time it is perfectly quiet in Ghazaliyah now," said 1st Lt. Shane Smith, who leads one of the three platoons at Maverick.

Quiet can mean boredom, as Gebhart and a colleague turn in another four-hour shift in one of Maverick's guard towers, looking over a landscape of two-story concrete buildings and green fields dotted with a few cows and goats.

To while away the time, the young soldier from Omaha, Nebraska, talks of his brother, who is fighting the Taliban in the mountains outside Kandahar city in southern Afghanistan.

"He spends 20 days at a time camped out in the mountains, and the Taliban come engage them in serious firefights," said Gebhart. "At least it sounds exciting."

Whodathunkit?

The lull of violence here has encouraged people to appear in the street, which used to be one of hottest turf war battleground when Baghdad's sectarian conflicts were rampant.

Life seems to have gone back to normal here, where people jostle on the sidewalk; families spend good hours wandering in front of shops and stalls showcasing various goods; old men gather in cafes, smoking water pipes, drinking tea and socializing, while teenage girls stand giggling and gossiping in ice-cream shops.

The boost of U.S. troops, and uprising of Sunnis against al-Qaida and the ceasefire of a major Shiite militia are the major factors contributing to the security pickup.

The U.S. military says violence has dropped to a four-year low across Iraq. The Iraqi government is also calling for expediting the political reconciliation and the return of refugees.

However, doubt about whether it is a real and sustainable peace is still pervasive among Iraqis.

"I am not sure that we will have a real peace, because nothing tangible happened that may change the violent course of life in Baghdad. To me I think the reason behind the violence is that the country was not ready for the change the Americans and their allies want after the invasion, "said Nu'man Jabir, a 48-year-old electronic engineer.

The U.S.-led coalition forces handed over security control of the Diwaniyah province to Iraq on Wednesday, making it the tenth Iraqi province retrieved from the control among the 18 provinces in Iraq.

However, those ten provinces belong either to Kurdish or to Shiite Iraqis. In the mixed regions, like Baghdad, Nineveh and Diyala, the situation is still unstable and unpredictable.

In Baghdad, Sunnis and Shiites live in separate neighborhoods walled up by concrete. Checkpoints still strew the streets.

"I agree, the walls are effective in protecting the neighborhoods, but my district seems more like a prison or a military camp, because we can leave or enter the neighborhood only through one entrance where soldiers and local Awakening Council members search the cars and everything that get in or out the district," said Abbas.

The news that all get back in the USA, is from a perspective of that all is well and good in a war zone.  The media is selling the Ameriucan people a line of crap...and they are buying it!

We have heard so many times and in so many ways that each of us is unique.  There is no one else like us anywhere in the universe.

Well, think about it for a moment.  Our genes, how mom and dad raised us, the experiences we've lived through, and our reactions and actions in response to any stimuli we've encountered... soooooo many variables that just can't be duplicated - not in a quadrillion eons.  Each one of us is indeed unique, and therefore special.

Still, being convinced of this is difficult.  Peer pressure growing up created clones who hung out together, belonging.  We so desperately needed this as adolescents and teenagers.  Then it was keeping up with the Joneses in cookie cutter homes and white collar jobs.  Being cast out of any group or clique can be devastating, if our minds are not prepared.  Being totally different and against the 'norm' is a challenge like none other.   The potential for being alone is great.

Yet, the knowledge that you are you, not someone else, is highly rewarding.  Being free to think and act autonomously despite influences and passed judgments, is a natural high in perfection.  Reaching the place where this knowledge thrives is a hard-earned right of passage - a passage that much of this planet's population must find and walk down.  The greatest gifts one can receive?  Strength of mind and spirit, the latter most especially.  Again, if the body and mind are prepared.

This blog, my Ambit, is my contribution to that preparation, both for myself, and for all who enjoy it.  Thoughts for inspiration; images to produce calm and meditation.

Interspersed amongst these will be articles and stories to help with your preparation toward strength of mind and spirit.

I'd say about once a week a nurse comes up to me, either as soon as I walk in or at some point during my shift, shoves a clipboard in my hand and says "Please go see this patient next.  I'm really worried."  Usually it's because they have extremely high blood pressure (220/120) or they're bleeding from somewhere you shouldn't be.   Honestly, it's rarely ever serious or immediately life threatening.  As much fun as we poke at the triage notes, the nurses in triage do a good job of alerting the ER docs to the severely ill patients.   Most of the time I'll take the chart and get to it in the next 10 or 15 minutes which is all they really want.

The other day though I walked in for my night shift at 6pm and one of the nurses handed me a chart saying "She's having trouble breathing and her pressure is through the roof.  She's a young girl with no past history.  Could you go see her right now?"  If the nurse is giving me the chart, I'm rarely worried.  The really sick patients end up in the resuscitation/trauma room and this girl wasn't in one of those rooms.   She was in a normal room.  I grabbed her paper chart from the nurse, took a look at the triage note and went to talk to the patient.

She was a professional in her early 30s.   No past history to speak of.   She noticed about a month ago that she was having trouble walking up a flight or two of stairs without losing her breath.  Now this was no overweight, out of shape woman.  She was about 5'4 and 105 pounds sopping wet.  She went on to tell me that over the past week she'd had a lot of trouble sleeping because whenever she layed down she couldn't breathe.   "I only slept about an hour last night and that's when I figured I should come in."  Now I was a little worried.   First because she had a believable story (not always the case in the ER).   Secondly, I laid the head of the bed down and sure enough she wasn't breathing well.  Young, healthy people who suddenly have deteriorating health worry me because it usually means something unavoidably bad has happened.

We keep talking.  She doesn't see a doctor yearly, not even a gynecologist.  She had never seen her blood pressure this high and it was making her a bit anxious.  We chatted a bit more.  She didn't smoke or do any drugs.  She drank on rare occasion.  The only thing currently bothering her was her shortness of breath.  No headache, no nausea/vomiting, no visual problems, no neurological symptoms.  A bit odd.   Her physical exam was essentially normal except for her fast heart rate.  I was expecting that maybe she had new onset asthma, but she had none of the tell tale wheezing sound when I listened to her lungs.  I told her I wasn't sure what was going on but we were going to run a bunch of tests and get some X-rays and we'd certainly get to the bottom of it.  I also said "Don't worry about anything.  You really don't have any of the concerning signs that this high blood pressure has been around for a while and is doing damage to any of your organs.  Right now it's just high and your heart is beating fast and we need to figure out why so we can fix it."

It turned out the nurse was worried about a PE, which wasn't a bad though.  Pulmonary embolism, or PE, is a blood clot that lodges in one of the large pulmonary arteries that carries de-oxygenated blood from the right side of the heart to the lungs so that it can be re-oxygenated and returned to the body.  PEs are one of those things like a heart attack that can kill you cold in your tracks.  The clots often come from the deep veins of the legs.  The clot breaks off and travels through the venous system to the heart.  It doesn't get stopped anywhere because veins get larger the closer you get to the heart.  Once in the heart the clot gets pumped around until it gets stuck in the pulmonary arterial tree.   It can kill you could because if the clot is large enough it can entirely block blood flow to the lungs.  Which means no oxygenated blood to the body, which means no oxygen for the heart or the brain... you can take it from there.  Fortunately for her, PE doesn't present with a month or even a week of worsening shortness of breath.  It presents with a couple of hours of shortness of breath at most.  But something still didn't feel quite right.

We sent off the typical labs and as I was documenting my history and physical in her chart we got a call from our lab: hemoglobin of less than 5.  Which is good news and bad news.  The good news is that it entirely explains her symptoms.  A low hemoglobin means your blood can't carry enough oxygen so the heart starts beating faster to keep up with the demand.  It has to pump the blood around faster to make up for the lack of red blood cells or again your heart and brain are out of luck.  It doesn't entirely explain the high blood pressure which is part of the bad news.  The other part is that a hemoglobin of 5 is bad.  It means something is destroying her red blood cells.  She's either bleeding from somewhere internally or her body's immune system has gone haywire and started munching on the red blood cells as a snack.   It also means she gets to have a blood transfusion.   Time to have a talk...

I let her know that her hemoglobin is very low:  "It's okay though, it explains your high heart rate, and we can give you a blood transfusion to help the hemoglobin level go back up.  We still need to figure out why your blood pressure is high though.  And we need to figure out where all your blood is disappearing to."

She was worried that something truly terrible was about to happen.  She was still very anxious.

"I understand you're worried.  I'd be worried too if we switched places.  But right now?  I'm not worried about you.  You're awake and alert and talking.  We figured out half the problem, once the rest of the labs come back we'll figure out everything else.  Trust me: I'll tell you when to worry.  When you see me frantic and upset: that's when you worry.  But you'll never see me like that.  I only get that way when my patients pass out.  And if you're passed out, you won't see me all frazzled and frantic.  It's a win/win for you."

She laughed and thanked me for explaining everything.  I told her I'd come back once we knew more.

As the labs came back it was clear she wasn't bleeding from her GI track or her kidneys/urinary tract.  That made it pretty unlikely she was bleeding internally from anything else as she had no history of trauma and had no pain on abdominal exam.  I went to look at the chest x-ray.   More bad news.   Her heart was huge and you could see more of the pulmonary (lung) blood vessels that you normally should.  Her heart was in failure.  It had been beating so fast for so long that it couldn't keep up.  The heart re-modeled itself and recruited new muscle tissue.  We call that high output heart failure.  But it's okay, only one failing organ.  We can handle that and once we correct the hemoglobin everything will start going back to normal.

The chemistry panel came back not too much later: kidney failure.  She told me, almost in passing, about this kidney biopsy she had when she was around 6 or 7.  They diagnosed Berger's disease which didn't make sense to me or my attending.  Berger's disease is today defined as a kidney disease of older men who have a long history of smoking.   So we wrote it off and figured since she hadn't had any follow-up in the last 25 years it must not have been very serious.   But now her kidney's were failing.   Which surely was the cause of the high blood pressure.  Most people don't realize this, but the kidneys control the blood pressure in the body.  They dictate the amount of sodium, chloride, potassium and several other elements that either get excreted into the urine or are kept around in the body.  If more of something is kept in the body, more water is kept around to balance everything out.  More water means more fluid which means more pressure within the blood vessels.

But she now had two failing organs.   And a very low hemoglobin.   Back to the bedside I went.  I explained that I was going to call the ICU residents because she had two failing organs: her heart and her kidneys.  I explained the results of her tests that led us to those diagnoses.

"The upside is that you're still breathing fine and your heart rate is starting to come down.  You'll be the healthiest person in the ICU and you'll get the best care the hospital has to offer."

She looked at me like I was somewhat crazed and said "You're always so calm!  You're not even the least bit worried about me with a bad heart and bad kidneys?"

"Not really.  The heart will be fixed once we get your hemoglobin back up to normal.  The kidneys are a problem but we have to figure out what caused the kidney to fail.  It might be something that's reversible with medication, it might be something that requires dialysis.  You may even need a transplant.  But it's nothing that's going to kill you today or tomorrow, which makes you healthier than just about every patient in our ICU.  You're conscious, you have a good blood pressure (high is always better than low) and a good heart rate and your oxygen saturation is normal on room air.  Based on your vitals you look better than some of our 7 year old asthmatics in the pediatric ER right now."

I told her the ICU senior resident would be in to talk to her and I'd let her know what our decision was after that.  The ICU resident saw her quickly and decided she wasn't appropriate for intensive care: even with two failing organs and requiring 3 or 4 units of blood and dialysis in the next couple of days she wasn't sick enough for the ICU.  I went back to tell her the good news.

"The ICU decided you weren't sick enough to hang out with the really sick patients.  We'll have you go to the general medicine floor with one of our excellent medicine teams and the kidney doctors will be consulted to figure out what's going on with your kidneys."

She thanked me profusely for taking the time to explain everything that was going on and for not treating her like an idiot.  Which is our first lesson for the day: never treat people like they're idiots.  Unless you've been directly proven otherwise, start in the middle and shift your explanations up or down based on what the patient seems to understand.   Use diagrams: most people are visual learners.   You're doing yourself and them a huge service.  First, a well educated patient is more likely to take their health and disease seriously, which is good for them.  Secondly, it's good for you, because well educated patients take better care of themselves and are more compliant with treatment and medication which is good for you.   My job is easier when people do what I ask them to do.   And I think these lessons apply well beyond medicine.  Anyone who has a job dealing with customers can take this approach to improve their customer's understanding of the product or service that you offer.

The second lesson I learned is that even when you don't exactly know what's going on, a calm caring bedside manner trumps all.  I honestly was never worried about her.  I'm not well seasoned, but I've seen enough to know very sick when I see it and she wasn't it.  I let my body language convey that.  I was always relaxed around her and her family and I was never in a rush to do anything.  I meant what I said: if I was worried she wouldn't know it anyway, because she'd be unconscious by that point.   I guess I was surprised because I don't always feel so calm and confident internally, especially mentally.   I know this is only my first month on the job.  I know that there's more that I don't know than I do know.  Sometimes I get easliy frustrated when I realize that my senior colleagues and attendings expect me to have a skill set in my first month that they likely didn't.   But I try my best to never show my patients that.  They're already in pain or another discomfort... why give them any additional reasons to be concerned.

I went up to the floors to visit her the other day.  She was sitting comfortably in her bed.   The nephrology service (kidney specialists) had diagnosed her with "likely IgA nephropathy".  Apparently 20 years ago IgA nephropathy was known as Berger's disease along with the kidney disease that old men who smoke get.  Some where along the way, someone realized it was really two different diseases and they split IgA nephropathy off from Berger's disease.  I wish I could explain IgA nephropathy well to the blogosphere, but I can't.  But here goes anyway:  essentially your immune stystem deposits proteins into your kidney that make the kidney unhappy, so it stops working.  Unfortunately for her, there's no medication she can take to reverse the effects.  She's starting dialysis today and they're looking for a live kidney donor.  When I saw her a couple of days ago she already knew all of this.  She thanked me several times for my care in the ER and told me she was so happy to have me visit her on the floor.

"You're the best doctor in this whole hospital.  You explained things to me better than some of these specialists.  You took more time than they did and you always did a wonderful job of keeping me calm and in perspective.  Are you sure you can't take care of me up here?"

I thanked her and told her that the specialists are probably much busier than a lowly little intern in the ER and they were the true experts that would really end up helping her in the long run, especially now that she needed dialysis and a kidney transplant.   I reassured her that come Monday the hospital would be filled with medical students, residents, fellows, and attendings who hadn't been around on the weekend and would be dying to talk to her.   She made me give her a hug before I left and I promised to check in on her if she was around the hospital later in the week.

As I was walking back down the hall to the elevators her boyfriend came out of the room and caught up with me.  "I just wanted to let you know, that we're all really grateful for what you did.  We were actually talking about you right before you came into the room.  She really does think you're the best doctor she's ever had.  And I just wanted to say thank you for saving her life.  I know you kept saying she was never in any real danger, but I think that's because you made sure she wasn't.  I'd tell you you're going to be an excellent doctor someday, but you already are."

Sometimes it's not the obvious lives you save that are the most grateful or stick with you.  And I guess that's as good a reason as any for why I'll never stop loving this job.

As they do so, over these and other racial disagreements, these white people often say something like, "If you're going to get emotional, then I can't discuss this with you." For white people, anger is a dangerous force that blows out the light of reason. They may not realize it (middle-class ones, especially), but white people often insist that discussions be conducted in their way, and not in someone else's way. Their calm, rational way, that is, and not another group or culture's more emotionally engaged way. (And guess who's automatically at an advantage in calm, rational discussions?)

(From refuse to listen to black anger at Stuff White People Do)

You have to forgive yourself first of all, because you were dominated by the wild part of your conscience, which is very violent and cruel. You could not control your behavior—your thoughts were not really yours. It was not your fault. You are only an animal and you have no idea of how your mind works. You have no idea how much the anti-conscience (your primitive, wild conscience that didn’t pass through the process of consciousness and is totally absurd) influences your behavior and your decisions. You are too ignorant.

After forgiving yourself for your very serious mistakes, you will need to think about how you can correct them. Of course, most serious mistakes cannot be corrected. We wish we could go back in time and simply correct what happened, but often there is no possible correction.

However, you have to think that life goes on, that everything continues, and that you have to continue too, which can give miraculous solutions to what seemingly cannot be solved.

Think. What could you do for the person or the people that you hurt? How could you compensate them for all the damage you caused?

First of all, if there is money involved in the case, you have to pay for the damages without resistance and without delay.

If the problem is even worse because it cannot be solved with money, give money anyway. Even though it means nothing, it’s a sign that you recognize your fault. Give money, especially if you have a lot. Throw money on the table, saying that you know very well that you cannot pay for all the damages you caused even with all the money in the world, but that you are giving it because you know the people you hurt have many needs. You want to do something to somehow compensate them for what cannot be forgiven.

If money would be considered an insult because your mistake was very serious, give a present to your enemies. Do something practical and give them something substantial, always with the same spirit of regret.

Recognize your faults. Admit you were an irrational animal and that you cannot understand how you could be so irresponsible. Blame yourself for everything, without defending yourself at any point.

When you apologize, you are not going to mention that your wild side or other people influenced you. You are not going to blame someone else for what happened. You are going to assume that you are the worse sinner on this planet, without excuses.

This way your enemies will abandon their weapons, because they won’t have to attack you and tell you how wrong you were—you are telling them that, before they can start complaining.

You must exaggerate. If you did only one thing wrong, start blaming yourself for other problems that happened because of your actions. Look for ways to blame yourself for all the horrors of this world, showing to your enemies that you are really devastated because you made this terrible mistake—so devastated that you feel like the worse murderer in human history.

You must be sincere. If you simply pretend you’re sorry, your enemies will notice it.

There is a special facial expression a human being takes when he or she is really sorry. You cannot be an actor.

So, when you talk about how horrible you feel, even if you cannot feel bad at that moment, think about how horrible the situation is and how bad it will be if you fail again and ask for forgiveness. Think about sad things that will make you feel very sad when you show your regret.

If your enemies won’t forgive you, they will be the monsters.

You will become a big hero who had the courage to recognize your mistakes and assume responsibility for them.

And your enemies will forgive you, even if they don’t do so immediately.

Prevent Depression and Craziness through the scientific method of Dream Interpretation discovered by Carl Jung and simplified by Christina Sponias, a writer who continued Jung's research in the unknown region of the human psychic sphere.

Learn more at: http://www.scientificdreaminterpretation.com and http://www.booksirecommend.com

Click below to download your copy of the Free ebook

Beating Depression and Craziness

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Christina_Sponias

Have you submitted Your own dreams for Free professional dream interpretation and psychotherapy?

Don’t waste time! This is a limited offer, only for this summer.

A single dream is not enough. We need a series of dreams in order to understand what is happening to the dreamer and to understand the guidance of the wise unconscious mind that produces our dreams.

So, write down your dreams every day if you want to see results for your efforts. Your dreams and their special messages should be really important to you!
You need to start right now so you will have enough time to submit many dreams. If you put off this opportunity, time will pass and you won’t be able to send me anything…

Go to http://www.scientificdreaminterpretation.com and learn more.

Christina Sponias

You only have to write down your dreams. Write them down and wait. When you have around 5 dreams in your notebook or PC file, you will start to understand how to interpret them because you can relate the messages you received. This will be the beginning. Continue writing your dreams every day, and after many dreams, you’ll see the complete picture of what is happening in your psyche and around you.

Of course, it is essential to have a glossary with the dream symbols, which have been elucidated according to the scientific method of dream interpretation discovered by the psychiatrist and psychologist Carl Jung. I am a writer and have improved this method and can provide you a relevant glossary in my ebook, while Jung was too ignorant to do so. I continued his research and discovered that craziness is actually caused by the anti-conscience, which is untamed and very violent.

Only someone who is not a psychologist or psychiatrist could discover the existence of this wild conscience (anti-conscience) because all scientists follow the same basis for their research. However, their foundation is wrong. The same thing happened when the human beings believed that Earth was flat, whereas it turned out to be actually spherical. They looked for solutions based on the wrong impression about the Earth and therefore, none of their conclusions were correct.

All psychiatrists and psychologists believe that our conscience is right and we have to do what it tells us, even if we accept advice from someone else. Most people in our world think exactly the same.

However, my discoveries obtained by interpreting dreams revealed that the human conscience is absurd, ignorant and idiotic whereas the unconscious that produces our dreams is wise and saintly. Jung had concluded that the human being should listen to the advice of the unconscious mind but always do what one’s own conscience decides.

He thought that the wise unconscious that produces dreams to cure us from depression and craziness would also cause craziness. This is because Jung could not find another explanation, and he was afraid to continue investigating this finding. He accepted ignorance and stopped his research at a certain point. He was guided by the unconscious as well because he was not ready to learn the entire truth.

My research was not based only on the previous notions of the scientific world but also on the facts that I observed as a poetess. In addition, I could observe the works of many scientists that were consistent with each other, and all these resources revealed the same reality. Therefore, I abandoned the rule of my own conscience and followed only the directions I received in my dreams and symbols of daily life (that can be interpreted like dreams) that were sent by the wise and saintly unconscious mind.

No scientist would ever agree to do so; however, I did this because I clearly saw how crazy the human conscience was and I understood that far more craziness could originate only from the conscience and not from the unconscious as Jung mistakenly believed. Only the conscience shows us several signs of craziness and not the perfect unconscious mind that works like a doctor.

This is why I discovered that the human being is basically a monster and that one has to tame this violent nature and learn how to live peacefully, respect others and help them, so that one is happy and everyone in this world is happy too.

The other factor that the scientists ignore is that happiness is impossible on Earth because of the terror and violence that exist here. Terror destroys everything. This is why schizophrenia and psychosis and all the terrible mental illnesses that torture our population exist. Everything starts in our own psyche, which worsens in the crazy world we live in.

Everything in our world pushes us towards the labyrinth of craziness, helping the anti-conscience destroy our conscience completely. It is completely impossible to cure schizophrenia, psychosis or any mental illness in a world governed by terrorism, violence, immorality, corruption, greed, hypocrisy and futility.

If everything in our world is absurd, how can our population be balanced, calm and happy?

On the other hand, if the human being is a monster that has to be tamed and taught wisdom, how could one create a world that would be different than one’s own nature? One could only create a hell characterized by poverty, prostitution, wars, cruelty and indifference to human pain.

The solution for humanity and especially for each individual is dream interpretation, which is synonymous with craziness prevention. Everyone must prevent craziness as soon as possible, since it already exists in our psyche and even characterizes our conscience. With the invasion of the anti-conscience into the conscience, one becomes crazier, until one gets lost in the labyrinth of craziness.

We see dreams every time we sleep because the wise unconscious tries to save us when we sleep from the inherent craziness, so that the anti-conscience cannot invade our minds. The unconscious sends us mysterious messages that we have to learn how to decipher because if they could be easily understood by our conscience, the anti-conscience would understand them as well and distort them. We would then have no protection against craziness.

Depression is a warning that craziness is coming or that it has already arrived. You have to do something to change your life and behavior; otherwise, your depression can become a neurosis, which can easily worsen in a very short period of time if you do not treat yourself.

You need not go anywhere or pay any doctor. The wise unconscious is your doctor, the best that you could ever find. You only have to write down your dreams daily and relate them and study their meaning after translating dream symbols into words. You also have to follow its guidance to completely develop your conscience, forever eliminating the anti-conscience.

Prevent Depression and Craziness through the scientific method of Dream Interpretation discovered by Carl Jung and simplified by Christina Sponias, a writer who continued Jung's research in the unknown region of the human psychic sphere.
Learn more at: http://www.scientificdreaminterpretation.com and http://www.booksirecommend.com

Click below to download your copy of the Free ebook
Beating Depression and Craziness

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Christina_Sponias

Have you submitted Your own dreams for Free professional dream interpretation and psychotherapy?

Don’t waste time! This is a limited offer, only for this summer.

A single dream is not enough. We need a series of dreams in order to understand what is happening to the dreamer and to understand the guidance of the wise unconscious mind that produces our dreams.

So, write down your dreams every day if you want to see results for your efforts. Your dreams and their special messages should be really important to you!
You need to start right now so you will have enough time to submit many dreams. If you put off this opportunity, time will pass and you won’t be able to send me anything…

Go to  http://www.scientificdreaminterpretation.com and learn more.

Christina Sponias

There are many reasons why they may feel this way, especially if they don’t have emotional support from their parents.

On the other hand, the world where we all live is totally crazy, cruel and indifferent to human pain. Here, only those who have money, have power and are respected by others because they are afraid of them; and justice is only poetry, that doesn’t exist in reality.

Here, everyone is selfish and cares only for his or her own happiness… Here, nobody cares for anything that is not immediately connected to their personal lives. Nobody accepts sacrifice, nobody forgives anyone and nobody helps others when too much effort is needed. Here, nobody helps anyone first of all, unless it is for the good of their image, business and family.

Here, goodness is a fairy tale and happiness, an impossible dream to come true.

Why? Because the human being is cruel.

This is why we live in a world governed by terrorism, violence and immorality and we observe so much despair, craziness, misery, crimes and horror everywhere, while the hypocrisy of those who are not affected by the worst consequences of the human absurdity, insist on being indifferent to human pain and to the destruction of our societies, civilization and planet.

Everyone has various psychological problems only because everyone inherits a wild conscience; very violent, that won’t be tamed by the conscious mind that has human characteristics and can understand human problems and forgive them.

Having such an absurd conscience and living in such an absurd world, the human being can only suffer very much, lost in profound despair.

Now, if we examine the life of everyone in this crazy world, what are we going to see? We are going to find parents that don’t care for their kids because they have personal problems and their marriage was a very big mistake they made when they were too young; or that several nervous reactions of the human psyche cannot be controlled by the human conscience unless the person passes through a process of indispensable psychotherapy.

We are going to realise that most people live running, without any money to spend on what they want or even to pay for their bills, which transforms their survival into a heroic battle.

We are going to see also that those who have the money, don’t have inner peace and do have various other problems that arise from the existence of abundance without any wisdom or sensitivity.

Sensitivity is the base of psychical health, not reasoning, as most people believe. Sensitivity, piety, compassion and comprehension are the signs of psychical health and balance, not aggression and indifference. We might observe these traits in the human being who can think and work and do many fantastic things, have technological power and constant progress in many fields, but is totally absurd, because he is cruel and this is why nothing really helps him to live better and be happy.

This is why the human being created this absurd world, where he basically suffers, besides being eluded by various ephemeral pleasures.

In order to overcome depression, panic attacks, self-abuse and suicidal tendencies, one has to be a hero. If you enter into such a chain of events that predetermines your behavior and the unavoidable consequences of your mistakes, you have to be resistant and fight against the anti-conscience. This is the wild side of your conscience that causes panic attacks and the self-abusive tendency; which is in fact a suicidal tendency - not as well camouflaged as usual, because when you injure your body your absurdity is visible.

You may be the victim of other people’s absurdity, but you are being absurd too.

Unfortunately, craziness and despair can only generate terror and panic.

How can you escape from this chain and regain your life, build your personality and save the world with your heroic example of salvation?

You need psychotherapy. The wise unconscious mind that produces your dreams is the best doctor you could ever find and is going to help you fight against the absurd tendencies imposed by the anti-conscience. This way you might win the battle in the end, and live free from depression and despair, in order to save humanity with your work and your generosity, because there are many people here that need support and relief, as much as you need it while you are still weak.

Prevent Depression and Craziness through the scientific method of Dream Interpretation discovered by Carl Jung and simplified by Christina Sponias, a writer who continued Jung's research in the unknown region of the human psychic sphere.
Learn more at: http://www.scientificdreaminterpretation.com and http://www.booksirecommend.com

Click below to download your copy of the Free ebook

Beating Depression and Craziness

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Christina_Sponias

Well, let's stick to what we do. There are tons of pics from a bunch of shows this weekend up on our Flickr page.

• Cindy Wolfe
• Legion of Groove
• Acumen
• Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin
• Stark Raving Calm (Final Show)

and soon....
• Eddie Gumucio
• Brand of Freak
• Shotgun Brothers Band
and more!

Keep checking back today for the rest. We'll also have some video up from the final Stark Raving Calm show.