Inconvenient Truth

The truth is surgery has a terrible time clock, and doesn't respect time in any way. Things happen good and bad that alter the "clock" and have things start and end when they weren't supposed to, or expected. It's just the way it is, and everyone around us is supposed to know that, honor that and just bear with it. But still, it never feels quite right.

And so it begins again.  My absolute and complete love-hate relationship with the discipline, or lack thereof, of surgery. We cannot escape the barber-istic past. So let the anesthesia begin.

Sanity Defined

Sanity is being judged "of health & sound mind" and being to make well judged choices. The appearance of sanity seems to be the one thing everyone wants but really can never get when we finally understand the real truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth...We are all a bit crazy. To the extent that that crazy affects your home, work, professional or other (activities of daily living) life is the extent that you are judged insane by professionals as guided by criteria set up in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).

And now changes are coming to the DSM and the 5th edition is to be published for use in 2013.  Seems that the science (practiced now mostly as a subjective art in community practice) has been propagated by researchers who have generated a wealth of knowledge about mental disorders, biochemistry of behavior, the influence of genes and heredity on mental health, and other factors begging to be described and included in the new book.

It's been 18 years since the last revision (the one currently in place) and begs the question. Will what is now sane become insanity or will what is now insane become sanity with this revision? It is theoretically possible that patients deemed "normal" now will suddenly find themselves not so normal after the publication of a book. Fascinating!

And then, the psychiatry rotation was over. And God said it was good. And before he created the next rotation, he contemplated the sanity of man and deemed woman a pre-existing condition. Man seeking his sanity discovered electricity and ECT was born. Man chose electric shocks over woman. And all was good again.