When Communication Is A Life Saver - Or A Killer ....

 

 

Sadly enough it may be the doctor's fault that his patient is deemed a "hypochondriac": He has heard what she has told him about her symptoms, maybe even for years, but he never listened and took her words in as the information they are. Why is that? Well, I would say that it's my impression that the communication is difficult right from the beginning, yes, even impaired by one fact: The patient uses words that are not part of the medical lingo. To talk of a symptom as "pointed and bluish" makes sense to her, but not to him. And what about something like e.g. "a pulsating as well as heavy feeling in the muscles"? To her that is a very precise description, but to him it's nonsense which makes it "impossible" (?????) for him to translate it into his vocabulary.

All kinds of language are interesting both as phenomenon and possibilities because that's all we have when it comes to communication. To tell someone something by using words or signs, colors or music, etc., etc. is only possible if they have some common frame of reference. That often is a choice: One allows oneself to be told something or one discharges the information that is offered, e.g. by a patient. Sadly enough doctors and patients often talk past each other. Also doctors often don't see eye to eye on medical problems ....

 

Stealing Baby From Womb

 

Clarisa Figueroa, 51

Here we go again and, although it's not an everyday-crime, it happens too often, almost as by a set script: Some woman who isn't pregnant decides to kill a pregnant woman, to snatch her unborn child, and to pretend that the infant - dead or alive - is her son or daughter whom she gave birth to at home without any witnesses. The reason for this gruesome crime is that she wants a firm hold on her lover or husband whom she tricks into believing that she is pregnant by him. 

In this specific case the killer, Clarisa Figueroa, lured the 19 year old, expectant-mother-to-be, Marlen Ochoa-Lipez, to visit her by promises of certain baby stuff for free. Then she and her 24 years old daughter, Desiree, killed Marlen and cut her baby out of her womb. The reason for this crime was that Clarisa wanted a hold on her then boyfriend, Piotr, whom she had told that she was pregnant by him. It was her intention to pretend that the child she had stolen from the pregnant Marlen was that child which she had given birth to without assistance. I suppose everything might have worked out had the murder been as she had planned it to be. However, when she went to the hospital with the baby and covered in Marlen's blood, it was found out that Clarisa wasn't the mother of the child. The many threads of the plot was unraveled, and Clarisa was sentenced to 50 years of prison while her daughter received a sentence of 20 years. As to the baby, he sadly died some weeks later. 

It's important to understand that many of these sad cases of murder and baby-snatchings in reality isn't about the child. The woman may have some maternal feelings, but the main cause for what they are doing most often is to get a hold on that much coveted prize, a man. A lover or a husband still counts for much in the world of the women. His worth as such is not only as a genuine love object or support, but as a social asset. The "Miss"/"Mrs"-distinction may not be of such an importance now when it's possible to use the title "Ms", but to me it's obvious that the former strict rules about female status in the world of the women haven't been eradicated, only loosened. I suppose that someone like Clarisa was brought up to believe that "without a man I'm nothing, i.e. nobody". The stolen child was to ferment her emotional and social relationship with Piotr and it's obvious that her machinations were detailed plans, not only a "whim" ....

Both Clarisa and Desiree were sentenced to jail, but e.g. Taylor Rene Parker from another recent case (i.e. 2022) was sentenced to death.

Taylor Rene Parker

She worked out an elaborate plan, pretending to be pregnant for 9-10 months, in order to "keep her boyfriend from leaving her", but her many schemes didn't get her what she wanted: The young mother, 21-year-old Reagan Simmons-Hancock, and her daughter died, and she, the murderer, ended up on death row. 

Amber Waterman 

In another case from 2022 a married couple, Amber and Jamie Waterman, kidnapped the 33-year-old, pregnant Ashley Bush. They lured her to their home by offers of free baby clothes, but shot her and cut out her unborn baby, Valkyrie Grace Willis. Sadly enough the little girl died after being cut out of her mother's womb. The case will be brought for the court later this year: October, 2024. 

It seems that the husband assisted his wife in the kidnapping and murder of Ashley and her daughter so both of them will end up in jail. I may be wrong, but I have a feeling that this case will prove to be different in many ways, but time will show ....

 

https://apnews.com/article/baby-cut-womb-chicago-guilty-plea-9e393b97beb92e5e8a7fd0f272b9a7aa 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/02/fetal-abduction-attacks-expectant-mothers 

 

https://people.com/crime/woman-sentenced-death-stabbing-pregnant-woman-100-times-stealing-baby/ 

 

https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdmo/pr/pineville-woman-indicted-killing-unborn-child-kidnapping-victim 

 

Wikipedia

 

A Parcel For Someone

 

 

 

 

A parcel, you said 

for you and nobody else

 wrapped in blue, tied with a pink ribbon

 

A piece of Heaven, you said 

blue as your eyes, pink for tenderness 

all of it for you

 

A decisive moment, one to remember

just as the gift itself

a shrivelled heart dressed as a gift

 

© Else Cederborg

Pondering the Illness and Doctor-Dilemma

 

 

 "Blood letting is life" - or so they said 

Death and illnesses have never been popular with humans: We want neither and fight it in a way animals don't, probably because they don't know that it's possible. In a way, neither do we, but we don't want to accept that fact so we keep fighting, sometimes even winning the illness-death-game, thus beating The Grim Reaper for a while. Not for all eternity as nobody, humans or animals, have succeeded in doing just that. However, some animals have come closer to this achievement than any humans ....  

Whatever possessed people to believe something like this? I suspect that the wish that it were true made them fall for the trick, but still .... Naaahhh, that's too stupid. However, that's the case with a lot of treatments and, in MY OPINION, with some important details in the patient-doctor-relationship.
  

We hear about fraudsters who impose as doctors, and shudder at the thought at meeting such a dangerous criminal when we rely on the hospital services. As some of them are not disclosed at once all of us may have done just that, without knowing it, but not always because we were hurt. Ferdinand Waldo Demara Jr. had no medical background: He wasn't a doctor, but still, it seems that he wasn't all that bad when he pretended being one. 

On the contrary, the neurosurgeon Christopher Duntsch was a real doctor and I suppose that nobody suspected that he would harm patients wilfully. However, that's what he did, making havoc in the body and life of numerous patients who came to him for help. Instead of acclaim and praise he earned the well-deserved nickname "Doctor Death" ....

We have been led into believing that our symptoms are kind of "suspect" until they are being exchanged with a doctor's diagnose. Or put another way: Illness is not illness when they are known as symptoms as they only counts when diagnosed. The only reason for this must be that doctors live in the illusion that many symptoms are faked. Instead of accepting something discriminating like that we should demand that doctors are being taught how to communicate with people who are not of the medical world which goes for most of us.

https://www.verywellhealth.com/disease-vs-disorder-5092243

 
https://www.tfhd.com/sites/default/files/icd/April-21-2015-Signs-and-Symptoms.pdf

 
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5643213/ 

 

https://www.onekindplanet.org/top-10/top-10-worlds-longest-living-animals/  

 

Wikipedia

 

 

 

 

Else Cederborg: "With Sisyfos On Hillsides"

 

With Sisyfos on Hillsides

Never ending hillsides, steep death-traps

she climbs them, one by one, with Sisyfos as her guide

He preaches the importance of setting goals

She is set on her dreams of the end station, her true home

beautiful dreams of that end station lure her on

steeper and steeper hillsides beckon her

seemingly all of them dead ends

still, brave and resilient she climbs on

Should she have a medal for being brave?

That medal is hers no matter what

so are the gongs, measuring her progress in heavy heartbeats

Tainted and lethal instruments, resounding as she climbs

 

© Copyright by Else Cederborg

..................................................

 

Sisyphus (or Sisyphos) is a figure from Greek mythology. He was king of Corinth and became infamous for his general trickery when he twice cheated death. Sisyphus ultimately got his comeuppance when Zeus dealt him the eternal punishment of forever rolling a boulder up a hill in the depths of Hades.

Sisyphus was the founder of the Isthmian Games and grandfather of the hero Bellerophon. Sisyphus remains best remembered as a poignant symbol of the folly of those who seek to trifle with the natural order of things and avoid humanity's sad but inescapable lot of mortality. The adjective 'Sisyphean' denotes a task which can never be completed.

Sisyphus Cheats Death

In Greek mythology, the story of Sisyphus has multiple and often contradictory versions with embellishments added over time so that the only point of certainty is his terrible punishment. He was the son of Aeolus, described by Homer as a human who rules the winds. Sisyphus is credited with being the founder and first king of Corinth. He gained infamy for his trickery and wicked intelligence, but his greatest feat was to cheat death and Hades himself, not once but twice, thus living up to Homer's description of him as "the most cunning of men" (Iliad, 6:153). In the first episode the king, after dying and descending into Hades, audaciously managed to capture Thanatos, the personification of Death, and chain him up so that no humans died thereafter. Only the intervention of Ares resolved the crisis, and Death was freed to pursue his natural work.

 

https://www.worldhistory.org/sisyphus/ 

 

Wikipedia

 

 

Eternal "Life" of the Dead

 

When seeing this mummy of a former beauty, the more than 2,000 years old woman, Xin Zhui - also known as "Lady Dai" - from the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD) I feel relief at the thought that I've decided to get cremated and not have a grave site. Lady Dai still has her own hair, she is soft to the touch, and her ligaments are not stiff, but will still bend. The main point is that all of this is not for her to experience, it's for those scientists who have inspected her and deemed her dead body the best-preserved human mummy in history. Did the ones who turned her dead body into this mummy expect that it would end up like this? Hardly, as they loved and admired her for what she had been when alive. Humans always have wanted to keep the moment alive eternally if they feel that it's the peak of a life time. However, the ravages of time often turn that wish into mockery, and by now Lady Dai has become scary and abhorrent. The myths of her beauty would have lived for ages, based on her picture if it hadn't been for the mummy .... 

https://youtu.be/DxKRfLg5dbg?feature=shared 

Just A Little PingPong About GHOSTS and MONSTERS ....

 

 

Everythings considered ghosts are not bad, no, they are rather nice. They come to check our ability to sustain shocks, that's all they do, except maybe kissing us now and then. Also they may try to play ball with our heads and hearts. However, all in a very friendly manner.
Ghosts are good at saying "booh", but some cry and moan. Those poor, unhappy ones are just wet sheets, and they tumble down in puddles of misery, trailing the wet spot while wailing their agony. That kind of ghosts want to sit in your lap like babies, maybe they even try to suckle your breasts, milk or not.

As to monsters like e.g. vampires, they are driven by fear. They never use mirrors for fear, yes, for fear of themselves, for their two feet fangs or even more. A mirror in your hand will turn them into pudding, their fangs will fall out from their mouths with a rustle, the claws will shrivel into nothing to be concerned with. However, they do keep their bad, infected breath so beware if you meet a smelly, well-dressed and often exceedingly polite weirdo. Look out that may be the big, bad monster from your childhood, the one standing in the corner of your bedroom at night, just looking at you, the one who nearly killed you with surprise by not doing anything. That may be a younger brother of Count Dracula, lurking, smelling and looking stupid -
well, out you whip your mirror in a flash of the moment ....