Massaging the tensions away

My father disowned me once. It was worse than the beating he gave me with his fists and a belt. I’ve never forgotten that day. My mother told me the next day he didn’t mean it, but coming from her that meant nothing. My father was a hard, cold man who played favorites and he loved my younger brother more than anyone. The rest of us were just “labor”, there to do his bidding, and we did. The neighbors called our house “Auschwitz” because it was a miserable labor camp where we were not allowed to play with them until every single chore was done and done completely, every day, all the time. I was mowing the lawn by the time I was seven. My brother hauled rocks in a bucket. The favorite brother would ride by on his new bike and wave at us while we worked. When we complained, we got hit with a golf club my father always carried.

So what did I do? I took it out on my younger brother, the favorite. I was cruel and mean in heartless ways that I am filled with shame when I think of them now. It wasn’t his fault. But when he complained to my father one night, up the stairs he came like Frankenstein. He was a big man, with arms like steel from years of hard construction work, and when he swung he didn’t hold back and when he stopped there were holes in the wall from when he missed me and hit the wall instead. But he didn’t miss often. The entire family watched in silence as I laid there in a ball and crying like a baby. “Serves you right,” my mother said, “For treating your brother like that.” My only guess was that they thought by beating me they would make me love him more somehow, only it didn’t work that way.

I’ve always loved the joke, “The beatings will continue until morale improves”. It has special meaning to me. I moved to college when I was 17. I never went home again.

I was barely twenty-one and working the overnight shift alone in a convenience store. A boy about seventeen was a regular. We had talked quite a bit and I had learned a lot about him. It seems he had some pretty bad parents who had moved away and left him on his own. He had worked to buy his own car and was determined to graduate high school. A teacher at the school had taken him in because he was such a good kid.

One night while I was working, the boy was playing a video game in the corner. A man came in to buy beer. I was careful to request a picture ID because law enforcement in the area had been really cracking down and performing many sting operations. They could be very tricky. The man could not produce the ID and got an attitude, finally saying just give me a pack of cigarettes. I told him I still needed the ID for that too. He did look military and old enough but I had underage friends in ROTC that could pass that test as well so I wouldn’t give in. The man flew into a rage and began cursing and calling me names. He stormed out, got into his truck and gunned it. As he spun his truck around he smashed into the boy’s car who had been playing video games. I called the local police who also called the military police from the nearby base.

We had to go to court and I was called as a witness. I heard that he was reduced in rank because of the incident even before his court date but it got worse from there. I took the stand and his lawyer began questioning me. I will never know why but his lawyer asked if anyone was with him that night. I answered yes there was a woman waiting for him in his truck but it wasn’t the one he brought with him to court that day, who was apparently his wife. I felt really bad for her as the entire court room burst out in laughter, but she did need to know. Her face said it all. He was found guilty and faced several charges but that was the least of his problems at that point. That man had managed to destroy his career and his marriage all in one night.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has called for Ursula von der Leyen to be replaced as president of the European Commission (EC), describing the past five years as the worst in the EU’s history.

When asked why he was preventing von der Leyen from being appointed to a second term, Orban replied: “Due to her lack of efficiency. The green transformation has been a complete failure of management, and the migration package does not solve the problem.”

“Europe needs more effective leadership. There are plenty of talented politicians who can provide it,” the prime minister said in an interview with German media group Funke.

“The last five years have probably been the worst five years in the history of the EU. The achievements of the European Commission and the Brussels elite are weak,” Orban maintained.

The Hungarian Prime Minister also noted that the results of the European Parliament elections demonstrated a clear desire for change in Brussels.

On March 7, von der Leyen was nominated as a candidate to head the European Commission at the European People’s Party congress in Bucharest.

I had a friend. We were nearly inseparable. Any free time we had, we were doing things together. Hanging out, playing music, meeting new people, racing cars, you name it we did it. As life often facilitates, we lost touch after I moved a number of times and I hadn’t heard from him in years. The last I knew, he was a healthy guy working a good job got his own place and life seemed to be picking up for him. I heard he had a daughter, though that might well have been when things took a dramatic turn for the worse.

The woman he impregnated, turned out to admit she was actually a lesbian and had used him to have a child as she wanted it to have his striking physical features. He was half German, and half Peruvian – a handsome fellow. Through the lovely court system they required him to pay an exorbitant amount of child support to a woman that admitted she used him, and was going to do everything in her power to prevent him from being part of their life. He tried like heck. The guy worked double shifts to try and be an honorable man, despite that at the pinnacle of his existence, his life was being devastated by an evil woman.

The emotional turmoil was too much for him to bear. Though this isn’t how I handle myself when I am experiencing stress, I can understand why he chose to do what he did. He needed an escape, his reality was just too tough to cope with any longer. For a man that wanted nothing more than to love a woman, and raise his daughter – never seeing her and being extorted for money was like a death sentence. He went from alcoholism to drug use. A couple of drinks turned into losing most of his body mass and becoming emaciated and on the brink of dying.

I called him one day after contacting his brother who said he could use a friend and that he thought he would be happy to hear from me. We talked, we reminisced about the days of old. I told him how my life was going and asked how his was. He didn’t say much, just sort of avoided the question. I said hey you know what, let’s hang out. He says oh I can’t I have to get some money. I said money for what? He says I owe somebody money, I have to come up with $2,000 by tomorrow or they are coming for me. I said I’ll give you $2,000 and I will come pick you up if you need a ride. I just want to hang out – money means nothing, what time is good? He says you don’t understand, I owe a lot of money. I owe more than $2,000. My cars gone, I lost my job, and now I’m royally screwed.

I wanted to think it was the child support that had him jammed up, but it wasn’t. He said oh by the way, I got injured at a concert, I hit my head. The doctors don’t know why but I lost all this weight, I look like I’m sick. I said that doesn’t sound right man. Be straight with me.. he says I am, I just can’t see you, you’ll never understand. Just get on with your good life, it sounds like you’re doing great, I don’t want you to get involved.

My friend would never be heard from again.

I can’t tell you where he went, or what happened. I don’t know if he moved, or passed away, there was no closure. His family went silent as they knew the truth but weren’t going to tell anybody. I would find out later that he was heavy into drugs that he would take intravenously, and that he owed a drug dealer so much money that it’s possible foul play was involved in his disappearance. To this day I still don’t know, which is very sobering to think about.

It wasn’t the drugs, or the alcohol that I find to be the biggest mistake.

It was him not reaching out for help, or accepting help when plenty of people around him cared enough and had the means to get him out of what ever he was into, and make it go away permanently. He was stubborn to a fault, and it might have cost him his life.

So if you or somebody you know is experiencing distress, please, don’t be too proud to ask for, or to accept help. If somebody reaches out to you, put your hand out and allow them to help you up.

Stay well my friends.

I had a patient come in for a consultation. She was accompanied by her husband, who was very concerned.

His wife was in agonizing pain following an ablation procedure by a local orthopedic surgeon. She had radiating sciatic pain prior to the ablation, but afterwards she developed extremely severe pain in the area of the injection and was unable to sit or stand in a normal upright position. She’d developed all types of compensatory problems due to the limited and contorted positions she had to assume to avoid pain. She was in tears describing it.

The patient had returned to the treating MD, who had told her he had no idea why she was in so much pain and implied that she was hysterical or faking. She had gotten a second opinion from another orthopedist. I happened to know that the second orthopedist was close friends with the first doctor. They got a third opinion from another orthopedist who was a member of the first one’s group practice, and they all shrugged and said they had no idea why she was in so much pain.

Some background: An ablation procedure is a pain-management technique. First, the patient will have a numbing injection, sort of like novocaine, injected into the nerve root that’s suspected of being the source of the patient’s pain. If that gives them relief, they are considered a good candidate for an ablation.

The day of the ablation, the patient is given general anesthetic or sedation. A radiology technician initiates a real-time X-ray video (fluoroscopy) to monitor the procedure, which continues the entire time. The physician then inserts a probe into the nerve root and applies something that destroys the nerve root from which the pain is coming. The real-time fluoroscopic monitoring is important because the probe has to be placed precisely in the anatomical spot where the nerve root is located. The ablation can be done using heat, electricity, or microwaves (radiofrequency or RF ablation). In this case, it was an RF ablation.

The patient brought post-treatment MRI and CT reports in which the radiologist described “ill-defined inflammatory changes” in the facet joint at the level of the ablation (the facet joints are the two little joints between each pair of vertebrae in the back of the spine). On the actual images the facet joint was not even visible, the area being full of fluid and calcification.

The whole thing sounded fishy to me. Instead of examining her, I did something I would ordinarily never have occasion to do as a chiropractor. I contacted the hospital and sent for the operative report of the procedure. I sent her home, telling her to return after I’d had a chance to review the report.

When I read the report, I was shocked.

The orthopedist had dictated the report as though the procedure had gone just as anticipated and no problems were encountered.

However, after the report was dictated, the radiologist had gone back into the record and dictated an addendum. The fluoroscopic equipment had failed just as the orthopedist was preparing to insert the probe. The radiologist advised the orthopedist of that fact, and that the procedure would have to be aborted.

The orthopedist had proceeded with the ablation anyway, blind!

It was apparent to me that the orthopedist had inserted the probe into the patient’s facet joint and applied the destructive microwave radiation anyway. The joint was basically cooked and all the inflammation and calcification I saw was the patient’s body trying to heal the destruction. He’d covered up his mistake in dealing with the patient, and his colleagues had joined ranks and covered for him too.

There was nothing I could do to help this poor woman. As a chiropractor, I can’t adjust a joint that’s been completely destroyed. I did provide the couple with a copy of the operative report (which they hadn’t yet seen) and explained what it said in layman’s terms. I gave them some names of malpractice attorneys.

I never heard what the final outcome of the story was. I was never called to testify in a malpractice suit on the case, but that wasn’t surprising because I had never actually treated the patient and as a chiropractor, I legally couldn’t have an opinion regarding a surgical procedure outside my scope of practice.

That orthopedist was still practicing when I became disabled and left town several years later. He is probably still teaching, and still on the provider panel for all the local insurance plans and HMOs.

Let the patient beware.

The story behind this photo continues to shock anyone who recognizes it.

In 1968, two men kidnapped Kim Bird. They put her in a homemade coffin, took this photo and buried her in the woods. They hung the photo on a local bulletin board and signed on the back, “I am buried in the woods, you have no more than 5 days to find me.” For days, passersby looked at the photo and thought it was a joke. Until a former colleague of Kim’s saw the photo. She immediately went to the police, but they didn’t know what to do. After all, they only have the photo, but where it is buried is unknown. Then Kim’s classmate started looking at the photo and realized that some letters are written strangely, highlighted in bold, and if you look closely, you can read the girl’s secret message….

On the leaf was written Kim + Brad (classmate’s name). It was exactly the kind of inscription they had once left on a tree during a vacation in the woods as a token of their love for each other in high school. Brad immediately went with the police to the site and they found a fresh grave next to the tree. Kim was saved, but if she had been found a few hours later, she would not have survived. For many years afterward, neither Kim nor Brad could explain how it happened that she was buried there and how Brad saw that photo. After all, he had just happened to be in town for work, he hadn’t lived here for years.

Yes. In the early ‘90’s I worked as medical staff in a drug and alcohol treatment program. Our program was geared toward treating patients who were lower income.

One woman, a single mother of 5, was brought in by her social worker. Said social worker was insistent that we admit this woman immediately stating that she was in imminent danger of losing her children. The children’s ages ranged from 9 to 8 months.

This woman’s 5 and 3 year old children had been found outside at 3am by a neighbor going through the neighbor’s trash looking for something to eat. The 5 y/o was wearing a dirty tshirt and stained underwear. The 3 y/o was only wearing a filthy diaper. This was in the middle of December. Department of child services determined that the mother had been away from home using drugs with a friend for almost a week.

We admitted her. It was her 4th admission in less than 6 months.

During her admission process, she was hostile and uncooperative. It was obvious that she did not want to be there. My tech had asked me to help with this admission as she was having difficulty dealing with this woman and the social worker constantly arguing about this mother’s need for treatment. The social worker reminded her that she may lose her children because she had left them alone for days. At this point the mother turned to the social worker and said “well, you can’t expect me to take my kids with me everywhere I go, can you!”. My tech and I were horrified by this callous statement.

This “mother” stayed in the program 15 days, just long enough to have a letter send to court stating that she was receiving treatment for her addictions.

10 days after she checked herself out of the program, her 5 y/o found some matches and set their house on fire. The 4 children that were in the house at the time died in the fire. The 9 y/o died a few days later. He had been looking for the mother and was on his way back to his brothers and sisters when he saw flames coming through a downstairs window. He died from injuries sustained after entering the house while trying to rescue his siblings.

It took police 3 days to track down the mother. They found her at a local crack house.

I can still see the expression on her face when she said what she did to the social worker that day.

"Vietnam is a vibrant and unique ancient civilization adding to the tapestry of a multipolar world.

Hanoi pursues an independent foreign policy in the global arena and strongly advocates a just world order based on international law and principles of equality of all states and non-interference in their internal affairs.

We highly appreciate the fact that our countries have coinciding or similar approaches to pressing issues on the international agenda.

We work closely together within key international forums, first of all within the United Nations.

We have similar assessments of the situation in the Asia-Pacific region.

We see Vietnam as a like-minded partner in shaping a new architecture of equal and indivisible Eurasian security on an inclusive and non-discriminatory basis.

We are grateful to our Vietnamese friends for their balanced position on the Ukraine crisis and their desire to facilitate the search for practical ways to settle it peacefully.

All of this is fully in line with the spirit and nature of our relations."

Excerpt from the article by Russian President Vladimir Putin for publication in Nhân Dân, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee, ‘Russia and Vietnam: Friendship Tested by Time,’ June 19, 2024.