BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

by Judith Fein Eighteen years ago, Erv Hinds was a traditional anesthesiologist with an open-heart surgery team. Today he's gone from putting people to sleep with drugs to trying to wake them up with what he calls patient-centered pain treatment. In his practice at the Albuquerque Pain Center, pain at every level is taken seriously. "Patients need to develop a vertical relationship - to nature or Jesus or Buddha or God," says Hinds, "or something that gets them out of entrenchment, outside of themselves." The journey that brought him to this point began when an X-ray revealed that he needed a heart valve replacement. "I didn't know what to do," Hinds says. He prayed with his Presbyterian pastor and did research in the University of New Mexico library. There he found a journal article about a surgeon in France named Carpentier who was repairing valves instead of replacing them, something not done in America. "Carpentier had done most of hi...

By Yanki Tauber short/ cir/cuit (elect.): an abnormal, usually unintentional, condition of relatively low resistance between two points of different potential in a circuit, usually resulting in a flow of excess current. - Random House Dictionary of the English Language Do we love too much? Apparently we do. Many marriages fail for a dearth of love; an equal number are suffocated by an overabundance of the same. So desirous are we for connection, so hungry for communion with another human being, that we forget that for love to endure it must be complemented with an equal measure of restraint. So eager are we to give of ourselves to the one we love -- be it a spouse, a child, or a friend -- that we often give without consideration of the needs and desires of the recipient of our love. When passion is mitigated with a degree of inhibition, when intimacy is tempered with a modicum of reserve, love flourishes. But when all limits are betrayed, love burns out. A love relationshi...

Emotional rape can be defined as: Emotional abuse characterized by patterned and purposeful behavior which purpose is to undermine and control the victim. It is an attack on the victim's personality rather than their body. In sexual rape, the term "without consent" refer to the victim having not agreed to sex. Emotional rape is the abuse of someone's higher emotions -love, self-respect, compassion, admiration - without consent. That is, the 'rapist' doesn't tell the truth to the victim and coerces them into sharing these emotions with them while having a covert agenda. (i.e. - sex, money, etc) Emotional rape is the exploitation of a person's higher emotions through manipulation and/or deception. In her true story, two people began a romantic journey and ended up completely estranged because of his need to use her emotions to get what he wants. For this reason, it is important that people become more educated about issues of psychological and emo...

How to Help Others Relate to Your Chronic Illness by Ellinorianne One of the biggest challenges for those of us struggling with Chronic Illness is that we may not "look" sick and those around us may not get how we are forced to make compromise with our lives at every turn. For me, it has had a lot to do with work and trying to communicate to my coworkers how my Fibromyalgia affects my ability to deal with everyday tasks. The last few weeks have been rather difficult, just Tuesday I spent a good twenty minutes staring between my computer and my work trying to figure exactly what it was I needed to do. My brain fog was just kicking in, I hadn't been getting enough sleep and I was not fully functional. I probably LOOKED fine but I was not okay and had to leave early. I was almost in tears because I was so frustrated, tired and hurting. Symptoms of Fibro-fog The severity of Fibro-fog fluctuates from day to day, as well as from person to person. The following is ...

Any of my readers know I am against blanket forgiveness. Forgiveness without the repentance of the person who hurt you - or you repenting to those you've hurt - is nothing. It's a "get out of jail free" card that will do nothing to heal the emotional, spiritual and psychological rift. It's bullpocky that I reject completely. Though your anger at someone else - does start to eat at your very soul. When I am completely disgusted & disappointed in someone - eventually I feel nothing. They become dead to me. Or, like my ex, his abuse numbed me to the point of feeling nothing but cordiality towards him. And a desire to work with him as politely as I could for the welfare of our children. But nothing else. No desire for revenge. Not hate or anger... just indifference. I abhor any ahavah ha-t'luyah b'davar : "love that is conditional." This is love that treats the other person or you, as an object. True love is unconditional because the oth...

A Relationship in Numbers As some of you who have read previous posts may know, I have been thinking a lot about numbers and statistics lately — what they mean, how they define us, and, more importantly, how they fail to capture what cannot be so easily quantified. In digging through research for my book proposal, I unwittingly came across the following statistic: The divorce rate in marriages where chronic illness is present is over 75 percent. (see http://www.mychronicillness.com/invisibleillness/statistics.htm. ) Now, I am not here to debate the accuracy of these statistics or discuss the methodology behind them, but they did make me stop and think. I was told recently I had a 75 percent chance of not having children on my own, so I approached this statistic with the same question: How do you know if you’ll be in that lucky 25 percent? Seventy-five percent of marriages where chronic illness is present do not last. That is an overwhelming number to me, and it might be misleading. Peo...

By: Ronald Kessler With the election two weeks away, one thing has become clear: Barack Obama is not only the most liberal presidential candidate in recent memory, he lacks a moral compass. How else does one explain his sitting in the pews of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s church as Wright spews forth hateful fabrications about America, whites, and Israel? How else explain his being “friendly” with admitted domestic terrorist William Ayers, who told the New York Times he does not rule out engaging in bombings again? In a chilling video on YouTube, Larry Grathwohl, a former member of the Weather Underground which Ayers helped found, says the organization planned to take over the U.S. government and give parts of the country to Russia, Cuba, North Vietnam, and China. The plans included “re-educating” Americans as Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries. In the video, Grathwohl says he asked 25 leaders of the Weather Underground who were discussing the plans, “Well, what is going to happen to those ...

Two pieces of religious literature indicate with special clarity the essential connectedness of spiritual maturity and cultural consciousness. The first call comes from Exodus 3:18, “On Horeb,” the scripture tells, “the angel of YHVH appeared to Moses in the shape of a flame of fire, coming from the middle of a bush.” There was the bush, blazing, but it was not being burnt up. “I must go and look at this strange sight,” Moses said, “And see why the bush is not burnt.” Now YHVH saw him go forward to look and God called to him from the middle of the bush. "Moses," he said. "Come no nearer. Take off your shoes, for the place where you are is holy ground." And then YHVH said, “I have seen the miserable state of my people in Egypt. I have heard their appeal to be free. I am well aware of their sufferings. I mean to deliver them. So, I’m sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people out.” The message is a dramatic one: Just at what would seem to be the moment of Moses’ total ...