Headline of the YEAR
From Blogcritics.org:
The Democratic Party is the Mental Illness Party
Yes! I knew there was a reason I was a Democrat.
Liz | 6:09 PM | Uncategorized
True confession: Friday, June 30, 2006
Yesterday I didn’t go to get my CT scan because, um, I chickened out. Yes, you heard that right: I am the only person ever to be terrified to get a CT scan. So I’m going today, and thus won’t be blogging this afternoon. But I leave you with this clip, which made me laugh out loud, and thus improved my mental health tenfold.
Liz | 2:20 PM | Uncategorized
If you have to call me a larva, can’t I at least be a mealworm?
Okay, it’s embarrassing to admit, but at least twice a year I spend a half-hour Googling myself. Everyone does it, right? You want to know who’s talking about you. It’s like hiding in the cubbie hole in grade school while the popular kids whisper nearby.
Now and then I find a reference to myself that really delights me, as I did today. From last year comes this mention from Think-Israel
by Judah Tzoref, who writes:
Why talk about non-Jewish anti-Semites while the world is plagued with Jewish maggots that practice the most virulent type of anti-Semitism, to name a few:
ALEC DUBRO mediaguide@igc.org
GERALD KAUFMAN cootesn@parliament.uk British Parliament Member
CLEMENT LEIBOVITZ cleibovi@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca
MICHAEL LERNER community@tikkun.org
GIDEON LEVY levy@haaretz.co.il
TANYA REINHART reinhart@post.tau.ac.il
ISRAEL SHAMIR ContactUs@MediaMonitors.net
HENRY SIEGMAN hsiegman@cfr.org
NORMAN SOLOMON mediabeat@igc.apc.org
LIZ SPIKOL lspikol@philadelphiaweekly.comSuch colourful assortment of fringe ideologues has been pestering the Jewish nation from the dawn of its existence. They must have some esoteric function, they can be harmful at times, but eventually they drop behind and dissolve into the limbo of the insignificant.
This is the result of one article I wrote many years ago about the situation in the Middle East. I was critical of Israel, and as a result, half the Jewish world completely hates me. But I don’t care. Judaism is greatly important to me, as is the fate of Israel. As an American Jew, I’ll speak out when I feel it’s necessary and I won’t mince words. Go on and call me a maggot if you like, Judah. It only makes you look small.
[Image by a student in a class of second graders at Clow Elementary School in Napersville, Ill.]
Liz | 12:43 PM | Uncategorized
Going against the migraine
Below is this week’s Trouble With Spikol column that ran in PW. The illustration is by Alex Fine. Someone came to the office yesterday to drop a copy of the column off with the letters “TMI” writ large on it. I suspect that once you get reading, you’ll see which sentence that refers to. And yeah, I should’ve taken it out. It’s just that my writing career has been so much about TMI that I don’t know when to hide things. Oh, well. You can’t please everyone.
Head Flames
Fire shooting from skull. Game over.
BY LIZ SPIKOL
Last weekend I went to Long Beach Island. It wasn’t my first time. When I was about 9 my parents rented an apartment in Loveladies. My 15-year-old sister had her boyfriend, a Southerner of some kind, drive up from whatever kudzu swampland he inhabited to join us.
Because I’d never heard an accent like his—thick as molasses, as they say—I was fascinated. He could’ve come from another planet. (Later, after I spent some time in the South, I realized he did come from another planet.)
He, in turn, was fascinated by my sister—in particular her blond hair and her tight pink-and-white tube top. They wouldn’t kiss in front of my parents, but they went for lots of “walks.” At one point I cracked the door open and spied them making out on the porch.
The Southern boyfriend, between awkward adolescent thrusts of his tongue, opened his eyes and saw me. Laughing, he said, “Whatchoo lookin’ at, snoopy?”
I briefly thought he was referring to the Peanuts character. A split second later I realized he’d called me a snoop, and I slammed the door shut. From that moment on I hated him.
That being my only association with Loveladies, I wanted to give it another try. I imagined LBI sort of like Cape Cod: a peninsula with charming towns, each with a distinct personality but all marked by rich natural beauty.
I don’t know about all that. What I do know is that the dark wood paneling in the rooms at the Long Beach Inn can be quite soothing.
Things started benignly. Saturday morning my boyfriend Vince and I took a drive through the different towns. I like to gauge how wealthy places are by the cars I see: When you go from American to German, you know things have changed.
One house had a sign that said “Stein Shrine.” “Oy vey,” I said to myself, but didn’t mention it to Vince. I didn’t want to seem like a self-hater.
We decided to walk out on the Barnegat Inlet jetty. I thought I’d skip over a couple rocks, and we’d be at the end. The jetty, it turns out, is roughly the size of Rhode Island. The rain came down in cold spatters, and it seemed like the space between each rock was a Grand Canyon-sized chasm.
Vince was hippity-hopping across the chasms like the tall person he is, while I had to stop and build momentum to get from one to the other. I told him it was because of my height, but then a 5-year-old zoomed past us.
“Screw you,” I said to the child under my breath. Then I took it back.
It must’ve been about halfway to Providence when I felt the familiar signs: a throbbing in the right side of my face, the nausea, the dizziness, the fatigue. Vince saw me wobble (more than I already was), and asked what was wrong.
“The time of the Evil One has approached,” I said in my best Lord of the Rings voice. “We must abort the cliffs and return to the Land of Beds and Silence. We will face this challenge later.”
Actually, I said, “I think I have a migraine.” But next time I’m going to put it more cinematically.
As weak as I felt, I was determined to finish our journey. We did reach the end of the jetty, but there was a horrible beeping noise there that felt like it was piercing my skin. I ran back, this time jumping the chasms like they were lines in a sidewalk.
“I’m going to beat you back there!” I yelled to Vince. Sometimes I think he wishes his girlfriend were less like a fifth-grader.
And this, sadly, is where my LBI experience essentially comes to an end. For the rest of the day I stayed in the wood-paneled solitude of our motel room, and did all that stuff that migraine sufferers do: pray, switch positions, read, not-read, washcloth on neck, pillow, not-pillow, water, iced tea, crackers and so on. I thought about how good it would feel to have someone shoot my head off.
I tried visualization, but I kept getting confused. Should the pain be red or white? And which color should the not-pain be? I tried all different hues, even a grassy field. I tried lying on the cool tiles of the bathroom floor. I got so sick I soiled my shorts and wept as I washed them in the tub.
Gruesome.
You might be wondering why I didn’t take any medicine. Ah, but there’s the rub. I had one pill left, and it was old and crusty. After frantic phone calls to my doctor’s office, I sat in the CVS, slumped on a chair, waiting for my prescription to be filled. John Legend’s “Ordinary People” came on the sound system, and Vince said, “This song sounds a lot like early Stevie Wonder.”
Through the pain, I mumbled, “John Legend’s from Philadelphia.”
Even in agony, I can’t resist an opportunity to promote my hometown.
In the end the medicine didn’t work. So I turned to the only remedy I had left: steak. After two different tries at two excruciatingly loud restaurants (does everyone in LBI have a screaming baby?), we found Fred’s Beach Haven Diner, and Fred’s T-bone steak. Within an hour of eating it, I felt well enough to watch Animal Planet. It seems like wildebeests really get the short end of the stick.
Vince fell asleep, but I was so happy to be pain-free, I kept poking him. “Don’t you want to talk? I feel better now!”
It was too late—both for Long Beach Island and my relationship.
Liz | 10:54 AM | Uncategorized
Book club clarification
Some people have suggested to me that they might have trouble getting the book under discussion. That’s okay. The book is really just a jumping-off point to get us talking. I’ll facilitate the talk with questions derived from my reading of the book, and those who have read it can speak to specifics. But the questions raised will be accessible enough for everyone to participate. A few days before the event I’ll post some talking points from the subjects we’ll likely cover. So if you can’t find the book, don’t worry. We’ll still have plenty of fun.
Liz | 10:02 AM | Uncategorized
Hero of the day: Lt. Bruce Herbst
Thanks to my colleague Dan McQuade for his suggestion for Hero of the Day, Lt. Bruce Herbst. From the Philadelphia Inquirer:
The Tacony-Palmyra Bridge was closed for two-and-a-half hours last night, as a 33-year-old Philadelphia man was talked out of jumping.
About 9 p.m. Burlington County Bridge Commission police noticed a man walking up the bridge from the Philadelphia side on a closed walkway, authorities said.
He made it halfway across and sat on the handrail. Lt. Bruce Herbst then talked with the individual for two-and-a-half hours.
Afterward, the man, distraught about family issues, was taken to an area hospital.
To protect the man’s privacy, police declined to identify him or the hospital.
Liz | 10:30 AM | Uncategorized
Trouble With Spikol book club!
As per Will’s suggestion, I’ve just purchased Robert Whitaker’s Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill. I’d like to invite other people to read it with me, over the next two weeks, and then meet both online and in person for a discussion group.
This means that on July 13 this site will be devoted exclusively to the discussion of that book. Also on July 13, we’ll hold an open discussion at the offices of Philadelphia Weekly. I can provide some cookies, and maybe Vince can stuff some peppers. (Woo hoo!) It’ll start at 7pm. I’ll send out reminders.
If you’re interested in participating for either discussion, please contact me ASAP so I know how many cookies to buy: lspikol@philadelphiaweekly.com.
Please pass this notice along to anyone who you think will be able to share an interesting perspective with us.
Liz | 4:46 PM | Uncategorized
Thursday morning
Tomorrow morning (today, for you) I’m going to get a CT scan. I’ll have to drink some horrible barium stuff, but I’m taking gum with me (secret weapon!) to chew while I drink. Maybe that’ll help? Anyhoo, then I have to go to lunch with the owner of the newspaper, with whom i once played lawn chess. (He won.) I’ll blog in the afternoon. Stay safe till then!
Liz | 10:19 PM | Uncategorized
Stop and Think With Dr. Fink
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Welcome to another episode of Stop and Think With Dr. Fink, wherein we examine the inner workings of the human mind. This exclusive look at the human brain (or at least this human brain) can only be found here. We go where no one (perhaps other than Geraldo Rivera) is willing to go. Delve! Delve!
Ahem.
Today’s session was marked by the following revelations:
1. Sometimes it pays to give one’s total attention to where one is walking so that one (say, Eliz. S.) doesn’t walk to Dr. Fink’s old office, now ihabited by someone not nearly so keen.
2. Eliz. S. is pleased to see the return of a working clock across the room from the patient in Dr. Fink’s office. The timepiece allows her to hew her comments and pathetic blather to the allotted time of 45 minutes.
3. When Dr. Fink lifts his arm in a strange horizontal way, he is experiencing shoulder pain from some kind of injury or sciatica or whatever, and Eliz. S. feels sorry for him and wishes to give him an Advil.
4. When Eliz. S. tells Dr. Fink a particularly scandalous bit of personal gossip, he is as catty as a schoolgirl on lemon pops, as deliciously shocked and shocking as one would want one’s friends to be, particularly when one doesn’t really have a lot of friends other than her shrink.
5. When happenstance causes Eliz. S. and Dr. Fink to find themselves going down in the elevator together, it is the only time Eliz. S. does not feel terrified to be riding in a metal box. Because, after all, if the box got stuck, one’s shrink would be there to talk one through it. Better than pills, bless their bitter hearts.
Liz | 5:41 PM | Uncategorized
Diabetes vs. mental illness
Sorry, I don’t mean to make that sound like a WWF smackdown. Actually, I’m very interested in what reader WmJm has to say about his experience as a person both with a mental illness and with diabetes. Diabetes is the illness that consumers (like me) often come back to for clarification to the layperson: Having X is like having diabetes. You take the medication, you manage it, it’s chronic, but it’s livable.
WmJm takes this one step further to talk about his life with both. My favorite line: “So in the psychiatry-pharmacology vs. anti-psychiatry debate this demonstrates a win for both, together, when stitched with humanity in between.”
This is long, but it’s worth reading. If you want to see the post this comment arose from, it’s pro-psychiatry vs. anti-psychiatry. The dialogue there is really interesting.
WmJm’s story
I’d like to share briefly the current, ongoing tale of a good support system provided by the often-maligned insurance industry. So: an abbreviated history of my physical illness, which in the whole person framework includes mental illness.- insulin dependent diabetes mellitus as a teenager, 4 decades ago (no family history known, but hey! everything has to start SOMEwhere, right?)
- about 35 years later I had become depressed but didn’t know it. I blamed it all on my longtime, increasingly ‘brittle’ (insulin-sensitive) diabetic metabolism.
A family friend, a psychologist-family therapist, spotted it in its rather advanced state & got me into some professional help right away. Although I’m certain that it saved me from suicide, that experience with a psychiatrist (introductory dose of SSRI and some talk appointments) was either wrong or just inadequate and things went rapidly downhill as I quit making appointments and ‘confidently’ quit the meds.
Part of our own failing was the inability or unwillingness of my spouse and me to learn about and critically assess this new condition in my health. We, or certainly I, didn’t know: was I acting strangely because I was slipping into another acute depressive episode or was my much more familiar insulin-dependent life? Until it became really disabling I kept chalking it up to diabetes.
[Because sometimes illnesses do fight like cats and dogs, photo by Jacob Dockendorff.]
Liz | 1:48 PM | Uncategorized
