Category Archives: mental health

communication, condescending twatbags, healthcare, mental health

My personal triggers from Amy Silverstein’s heart transplant saga…

Good morning, people. It’s about 10:00 AM, and I’ve already been kind of busy. My day started at about 5:00 AM, which is when I usually wake up nowadays. I can’t believe there was a time when I could sleep until noon. That sure isn’t the case today!

I got up to do my usual morning routine, then did laundry, to include washing the sheets. I have a love/hate relationship with washing the sheets. I love how fresh sheets feel, but I hate the process of washing them and putting them on the bed. I never got the hang of making hospital corners. Bill is home today and could help; he is an expert at hospital corners! But he’s teleworking, because he was kind enough to take Noyzi to the vet for a dental. I didn’t want to bother him. He did come up and help me put the pillow cases on, which of course is the easiest part of that chore. I decided not to do the duvet covers today, because that’s the most annoying task related to washing the bedding. I’m just not in the mood to fool with it today.

After that was done, I moved more of my massive music collection to the new computer. I got through the Ks, although it sure wasn’t easy. Went from Keb’ Mo’ to Laura Branigan. That took a couple of frustrating hours. Then I forced myself to stop, so I could write a blog post. When I did that, I realized I had a pretty good case of writer’s block, and nothing was urging me to write today. Too bad I don’t have that feeling more often, since I often feel like my blog posts cause a lot of avoidable problems… like strained family relations and unpleasant interactions with strangers. But then I realize that I have my supporters, too. Yesterday, one of them, regular reader “dle”, left me a comment on my review of Amy Silverstein’s book, My Glory Was I Had Such Friends.

In my brief comment exchange with dle, I mentioned a few parts of Amy’s book about her second heart transplant that triggered me a bit. I had wanted to address them in the review itself, but decided not to, because my review was pretty long. I had included comments about Silverstein’s first book, Sick Girl, that I thought were important. I know that sometimes I have issues with brevity, and people only have so much time and attention span to dedicate to blog posts. So I didn’t comment on the parts of Silverstein’s story that really disturbed me a bit and made me feel a lot of empathy for her situation. I guess I’ll do that today, since I have a bit of writer’s block.

In this blog, I have mentioned on more than one occasion that I have a real problem trusting healthcare providers. I experienced some traumas at the hands of doctors that have left me very nervous at the prospect of seeing them for treatment. I know it’s crazy, given my educational background. I used to work with doctors before I became an overeducated housewife. A couple of them were also my classmates in my public health graduate program. But there’s a difference between being “colleagues” with medical doctors and submitting to them for care. I know intellectually that most doctors are responsible and decent and do their best to provide excellent care. However, I have run into a couple of them that left me with lingering issues. Being in Amy Silverstein’s medical situation would be a special kind of hell for me. I probably would have given up on life many years before she finally succumbed.

The first part of My Glory Was I Had Such Friends that “triggered” me a bit was Silverstein’s story about how she needed a pacemaker. Because of her vast experiences with medical procedures over decades of care, Silverstein had an aversion to the drug, Versed. She didn’t want to be “put out” for most of her procedures. Getting the pacemaker was no exception. She wanted to be conscious for it. Her physician, Dr. Wayne, was vehemently against the idea. From the book:

She nods and turns to greet the doctor who’s just come in—a small, quick-moving man with wiry gray hair.

“I am Dr. Wayne. Hello, Mrs. Silverstein.”

“You can call me by my first name if you like. I’m Amy.”

“Hello, Mimi.”

“No, it’s Amy,” I say, and then immediately think to correct myself for fear that he might call me “Itsamy.”

Dr. Wayne’s speech is choppy, perhaps due to his jittery manner.

“Today I will put in a pacemaker.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s what you gotta do.”

“I’ll give you medicine for sleep . . .”

“I’m not going to sleep.”

“Not really sleep. Just very, very relaxed. Like sleep.”

“Nope. No sedation at all. I do everything without sedation unless it’s a surgery. This isn’t a surgery, is it?”

“Not exactly surgery, but—”

“Good then. No sedation.”

The doctor whirls away from the exam table and mumbles under his breath loud enough for the nurse and me to hear: “No sedation! For a pacemaker! Sheesh . . .” He heads into the hallway to scrub up. The nurse remains behind, tending to an array of syringes and small metal utensils.

“I don’t want to give anyone a hard time,” I tell her, “but I’ve had lots of experience staying awake through hard stuff. And I don’t like being put out.”

“You wouldn’t really be out. Just relaxed. We’d be giving you some Versed . . .”

Versed! No way. I’d like to ask her how many times she’s had Versed, because I’ve had it plenty and it’s a nasty sedative. Instead, I press my lips closed. Check your attitude, Amy.

Silverstein, Amy. My Glory Was I Had Such Friends (pp. 89-90). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Amy has had enough experience with Versed to know that she really, really does not like it. And it’s her body that’s being worked on; her comfort should be paramount. However, the doctor turns out to be a nasty piece of work. Continued from the book:

That’s what Scott told me just before we headed out to LA. We had a long talk one evening, mulling the challenges we knew would be coming and trying to anticipate what else we might face. “If you’re going to die,” Scott said, “and let’s be honest, you might—you need to think about how you want to act at Cedars, how you want to hold yourself in the end. With your friends—do you want to be loving, or bitter and angry? And with the doctors and nurses—do you want to earn their respect for the way you’ve lived these twenty-five transplant years, or do you want to show how you’ve been wrecked by them? It’s all about how you want to be remembered,” he said.

This was not the first time that Scott had attempted to remind me of my better nature. There had been plenty of instances through the years when frustration and fear overtook me, transforming qualities like self-advocacy, determination, and attention to detail into alienating misbehaviors. The constancy and complexity of transplant-related illnesses would crescendo from time to time, to a point where it felt unbearable—and where it would imbue me with a distorted sense of self-righteousness: Give me a break—I can’t be bothered with decorum. I’m too sick. And then I would rage against Dr. Davis’s missteps, calling him inane, or I wouldn’t pick up the phone for days when friends called to check in, or I’d yell at Scott for no reason at all and then cry and cry and cry. Then came the heavy regret: “Scotty, I’m just so, so sorry . . .” and he would close his eyes and shake his head. “You’re dealing with unbelievably scary stuff, I know. But you’ve got to find a way to stop taking it out on the people around you.” If I didn’t, he said, I would send everyone scurrying away.

I tried to do better. With each successive medical crisis, I got a little more adept at keeping my fear from spiraling into anger and spurring me to lash out. But I found that the success of my efforts was only proportional to the health challenge at hand: the more life-threatening it was, the less I was able to contain my angst. What degree of self-control, then, would I manage to exert in the face of this retransplant? I was yet to find out. But it spooked me to notice that, in light of what awaited us in California, Scott had rephrased his usual advice about how I might carry myself in the hardest of circumstances. For the first time ever, he was framing his words in a context of finality, asking me not about how I might want to be perceived but rather remembered.

I just want to be remembered without everyone misunderstanding me. I know this doesn’t speak to the self-reflection Scott hoped for. But right now, this is what comes to mind as I contemplate how I might explain to this nurse my aversion to Versed. I know my stance is unusual; when patients hear that they’re getting a drug to help them relax before an invasive procedure, they see no reason to object. But long, hard-earned experience has taught me this: Versed messes with your mind. It’s a powerful, tricky sedative that makes you think you’ve slept through the procedure when actually you were awake the whole time. Versed is, simply, a forgetting drug, but its powers of erasure are imperfect. Somewhere in your mind (and certainly in your body) there is a flicker of awareness that something happened to you (for instance, you might have been screaming in pain throughout the procedure), but you can’t quite get at it, so an anxious ambiguity scratches at you and festers. There is a cost to not being able to access and process our own pain and suffering—some might call this post-traumatic stress. I’ve experienced it myself, and this is why I’ve come to insist on keeping things where I can see and process them—without Versed.

I share my thinking with the nurse.

She walks from the tray to my stretcher and lowers her voice. “I agree with you. And too much Versed isn’t good for your brain cells either.” She taps her head. “But Amy, I’ve never seen a patient do a pacemaker implantation without sedation. It’s going to be rough.”

“I hope you’re wrong. But thank you.”

Silverstein, Amy. My Glory Was I Had Such Friends (pp. 90-91). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Then, comes the assault by the doctor. This was the part that set me on edge, although I feel pretty sure that if I were Amy, I’d want the drugs. I’d rather be out cold for these kinds of procedures. Or, at least I think I would prefer to be. So far, I’ve been blessed with pretty good health and haven’t needed this kind of “care”.

Dr. Wayne stomps back in and comes to a stop by my left shoulder. “I’m going to have to give you a lot. Of lidocaine. Because you said no sedation. Sheesh.”

“Fine with me.” I don’t mind multiple lidocaine shots. I’ve accumulated three or four hundred of them for localized numbing in all the biopsies and angiograms I’ve had. From experience, I know that if the doctor gives the first shot slowly—alternating a bit of needle with a bit of lidocaine—subsequent injections will become quickly pain free.

BANG!

Dr. Wayne slams the first shot into the left side of my collarbone.

“Ow!”

“That hurt you,” he says.

“My gosh, yes. Ow. In New York, the doctor gives a little bit of lidocaine at a time so . . .”

“I said you would need a lot of shots. Because of no sedation.”

BANG!

This one feels like it has vengeance behind it. I clench my teeth, determined not to give in. BANG and BANG—two more in rapid succession.

That’s it.

Silverstein, Amy. My Glory Was I Had Such Friends (pp. 91-92). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Imagine having a doctor who is noticeably ANGRY because a patient stood up for herself. And instead of realizing that it’s her body and her healthcare at stake, the doctor is cruel and deliberately causes pain, rather than trying to work with the patient and respect her wishes about how her body is treated… or at least trying to assuage her valid anxieties about the procedure. The story continues:

“Ow! Ow! Oh my God! I can’t take it!” I’m weeping now, and I can’t believe I’m crumbling this way. I don’t cry from pain. What pierces my armor this time is the frightening vulnerability I feel at the gruff hands of a masked stranger in a cath lab far from the one I’ve known for twenty-six years. Reciting poetry couldn’t possibly combat what is looming over my body at this moment. A nurse’s tender glance would bring me no ease. The reassuring touch points I’ve come to rely on give way to stabs of surprise—each one of them another fiery agony. I have never known cath lab procedures to be scenes of horror, but I feel myself here in the grip of a ghoul.

“It’s too much for you. Right?” Dr. Wayne glares.

“No, I’m strong as hell. I’ve been on a hundred cath lab tables. It’s you! You’ve got terrible hands—has anyone ever told you that? You suck at this! Just give me the damn Versed.” Oh, I’ve really let loose now. I sure don’t want to be remembered like this, but I’ve lost all control.

“Oh, now you want it? I have to call anesthesia. It will take, I don’t know, an hour. For them to get here. Because you said no sedation!”

I pause, taking a few seconds to muster a conversational tone. “You need an anesthesiologist to administer Versed? In my experience, the nurse just puts it in my IV—at least that’s how they do it in New Y—”

“In New York! In New York!” He galumphs away from the exam table, waving his hands over his head. The nurse follows, and I’m alone.

I’ve never been left alone in a cath lab before.

Silverstein, Amy. My Glory Was I Had Such Friends (pp. 92-93). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

What a fucking bastard! I hope she lodged a formal complaint against that man. The story continues, with Amy fretting because she’s alone in the cath lab, with a very flat pillow. Because of her heart condition, she has trouble breathing when she’s lying flat. So there she is, getting “medical care” that has left her traumatized, and will probably put her life in danger (moot now, since she recently passed away). She continues, having explained that she’s feeling woozy:

Within seconds, the green-clad people descend, ghoulish in their masks and puffy caps, gloves and X-ray shields. There are here to slice into my skin, slide their control wires into my heart. One of them pulls back the sheeting from my left shoulder, where scattered injection punctures still ooze blood onto my naked breast.

The Versed sweeps through my IV . . .

Silverstein, Amy. My Glory Was I Had Such Friends (p. 94). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

After the procedure, Amy is deliberately slow to recover, upsetting her friends and husband. She’s traumatized, terrified, and justifiably angry about how she was treated. Her husband’s response, when he realizes that she’s not responding promptly, like a “good girl”, is to get angry with her. But she’s just been assaulted by a “doctor” who deliberately hurt her because she dared to exercise self-determination.

The second part of My Glory Was I Had Such Friends that triggered me was when Amy found out that she had breast cancer and needed surgery. She, very understandably, got angry and upset with her doctor. Rather than listening to the doctor talk about treatment options, Amy stormed out of her office, leading the doctor to worry that Amy might be a danger to herself. Was it childish? Yes… but remember, this is a woman who had been dealing with this shit for decades. She was tired of it. From the book:

The ordeal occurred just three months before the bad-news angiogram (and four months before I headed out to California): a breast sonogram picked up a strange-looking spot in my right breast. I didn’t worry at first because soon after my first transplant, the regimen of immunosuppressive medicines caused benign fibroadenoma masses to grow in my breasts. They were easily spotted on sonograms and sometimes grew so large I had to get them surgically removed. But this particular spot looked different. When I asked the biopsy radiologist if she thought she’d just put a needle into something scary, she threw up her hands. “Gosh, this is a weird-looking one,” she said. “I don’t know what it is.”

It was cancer.

Silverstein, Amy. My Glory Was I Had Such Friends (pp. 145-146). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Amy’s friend, Lauren, was involved in the drama that followed, after Amy got the news that not only did she need another heart transplant, but she also had breast cancer that would require major surgery. She continues:

When she reached me with the news, I froze. “Oh, come on! With all you’ve been through, this is easy stuff!” my breast doctor implored. She couldn’t have chosen more enraging words. I’d known this doctor since I started growing those golf ball fibroadenomas just after my first transplant, and I liked her a lot. But she was barking up a dangerous tree at a tragic moment by trying to turn my years of illness into a rallying call, when I was seeing it as a signal to raise the white flag.

“I’m not doing it,” I said. “I had a horrid open-heart valve surgery just a few months ago. And, frankly, my heart isn’t feeling so great lately. I’m not taking on breast cancer. I’m . . . I’m out.”

Ooh. Nice. I liked the feel of these words as they rolled off my lips for the first time—I’m out.

“You can’t quit now! You have to fight this. You’re just the kind of person who’s going to do great—”

“I’m out! I’m out! I’m out!” Wow, I loved the sound—and the sentiment. I’m free! I don’t have to do this anymore! For me, taking on an additional life-threatening illness was completely unfathomable. It was so beyond okay or understandable or doable or fair. “I gotta go now . . .”

“Go where?”

And this is where I made a really big mistake. “I’m leaving,” I said. “I’m getting in the car now. I’m not doing this anymore.”

“You can’t. You have to do this. Amy! Let’s talk! Would you come to the city and meet with me? I’ll cancel my afternoon . . .”

“Bye.”

I left. And then I was driving, blindly. My cell phone rang and it was Scott, telling me that my breast doctor called the local police because she’s worried about me. The police were at the house now, he said, and Lauren was on the way to meet them. He told me to go back home. “I’m out!” I cried, and kept driving.

Silverstein, Amy. My Glory Was I Had Such Friends (pp. 146-147). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Amy drove some more to let off some steam. Meanwhile, the cops had broken into her house and ransacked her bedroom, even reading her journals. Her friend, Lauren, was there to deal with the cops, who were there to “save” her life from suicide… A woman who had already had one heart transplant, needed a second one, and had just been told she had breast cancer. She wasn’t suicidal. She was FRUSTRATED… and understandably so. But the cops had violated her house, all because her doctor sicced them on her. Granted, the doctor had to make the call, due to the law. If she believed Amy was a danger to herself or others, she had to call the police, or else face potential adverse legal ramifications if Amy came to any harm at her own hands. And yet, the scenario just seemed so ridiculous to me. Her friend Lauren explains:

“I get a call from Lenny and he says to go to your house because the police are coming. I don’t know if you’re there or not, but I race over,” she explains. “I pull up to your house and there are three cop cars and they are on your lawn—why they didn’t park on the driveway, I don’t know. I go to your door, and the police have busted through the window. I walk in and hear them in your bedroom, so I head upstairs and they’re rifling through your closet and drawers—clothes are everywhere. One of them has got your journal and he’s standing there reading it. I think to myself, I have a job to do. I have to protect Amy. And I dive into conversation with those cops, rambling on and on, pretending to be helpful. They ask me what color your car is, and I waste ten minutes saying, Hmmm, I don’t know. They ask if you were likely to head north or south, I tell them north—because I know you’re much more likely to go south . . .”

I get a call from Lauren, and I don’t pick up. Another call, and I don’t pick up.

“I keep trying your cell, but you won’t answer. The cops are asking me, ‘Would she hurt herself?’ and I tell them no. She got some really bad news and she wants to be alone. I know her well. She’s fine. But they tell me I have to call you again because they want you back here. They put an alert out on your car.”

Meanwhile, I call my breast doctor and the receptionist puts me right through. “Why did you call the police!” I shout. “It’s my choice to fight breast cancer or not. You’ve known me so many years, you’ve seen all I’ve been through—how can you force a decision on me? I can’t believe you did this!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’ll call them back. It just sounded like you might do something . . .”

“I’m fine. I’m upset because . . . how many times and in how many ways can I be dying? I’m not going to drive off a bridge, for God’s sake! And even if I did, that would be my business.” I’m shuddering with anger.

“But I’m under legal obligation, Amy. I could get in trouble if I know you are going to hurt yourself and then you do.”

“Well, I’m not going to hurt myself. But I am not going to take on breast cancer either. I just had valve surgery. It’s my choice.”

“I’ll call the police and tell them everything is okay, but you have to come and meet me to talk. I’ll meet you at my house or at Starbucks near my office if you want. I just want to lay out what the treatment would be so you can make an informed choice.”

“Okay, I’ll meet you. Four thirty. Starbucks. Now call the police and tell them I’m fine!”

A few seconds later, Lauren calls again, and this time I pick up. She asks me if I’m all right. “I need time alone. I don’t need another person telling me I have to fight breast cancer, blah blah blah!” I tear at the zipper on my winter coat, tugging it down as I shake my shoulders out from underneath, frenzied. I am boiling with fury.

She tells me the police are there. My doctor hasn’t reached them yet.

“I heard. And I know everyone wants me to come home and be a good little breast cancer–valve surgery–heart transplant patient, just racking up the life-threatening illnesses and their shitty, half-assed treatments—”

Silverstein, Amy. My Glory Was I Had Such Friends (pp. 148-149). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

I know a lot of people think Amy should be grateful to have so many people caring so much about her, but at the same time, I can hardly blame her for this reaction. It almost seems like a farce. She’s in such poor health, yet she has so much strength that people think she might off herself. It’s crazy. Lauren goes on to explain that while Amy is seething, the cops are listening. And she has to act neutral, while Amy is yelling at her, calling her “the worst friend”. Lauren then cleans up the mess and even gets Amy’s window fixed, after the police busted it to “save her life”. All because the breast doctor called the cops.

And finally, the last triggering moment for me was reading about how a pharmacist inadvertently told Amy that she had been enrolled in an experimental protocol to which she’d never consented. It ended with the pharmacist running out of the room in tears… From the book:

She had her eyes straight ahead on the screen, keeping up perfunctory conversation while skimming the dense pages. “We’ll be bringing all your meds into the modern age after your transplant. Now . . . um . . . you asked me about whether you can take . . . Oh, wait a minute . . .” She zooms in on some words that elicit a big smile. “Ooh, I see that you’re going to be part of our eculizumab study . . . wonderful!”

“Ecu-lizumab?”

“Yeah. Name’s a mouthful, right? I don’t blame you if you can’t pronounce it. I’m talking about the experimental treatment for your antibodies. You’re going to be part of our NIH study.”

What?

I’d heard a little bit about the study from Dr. Kobashigawa a few days earlier, and someone from the Cedars medical research team dropped off a thick binder filled with detailed information for my review. But this intravenous drug with the mouthful name was a chemotherapy of sorts and had serious side effects, including a significant risk of meningitis. Were I to participate, these treatments were not imminent (they wouldn’t kick in until the time of my transplant surgery). But I had already undergone another potent antibody remedy when I first arrived in California (bortezomib) that posed a risk of blood infections and death. The bortezomib treatments involved a series of direct injections into my belly and many of hours of antibody-cleansing plasmapheresis (plasma removal and replacement) through a thick catheter in my neck. Last I heard, though, the post-bortezomib state of my antibodies was not much better than before treatment; my chance of matching with a heart donor still remained at an inauspicious 14 percent. Feeling fortunate, though, for having at least evaded the dangers of bortezomib, I was not eager to risk another go-round with a second type of antibody treatment—especially an experimental one.

“You’re sure my name is on the study roster—already?” My voice rises.

She pecks at the keyboard, double-checking. “Yup, here you are!”

I jolt upright in bed. “But how can that be? I haven’t said yes!” Pressing my palms against my temples, I begin to reel. “I can’t believe this! Am I being steamrolled into the study?”

“No, no. But the team has decided—”

“The team? I’m the one who’s supposed to choose.”

“Of course you are, but—”

“I have a voice!”

“I didn’t mean to make you feel—”

“Just because I’m . . . sick . . . it doesn’t mean I don’t . . . have a say!” I’m choking on emotion now. Scott steps toward the bed and puts his hand firmly on my shoulder—Easy, let it go . . .

Not a chance.

Silverstein, Amy. My Glory Was I Had Such Friends (pp. 183-184). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

This part of the book reminded me of a book I’d read years ago, A Taste of My Own Medicine: When the Doctor Is the Patient, by Edward Rosenbaum, a physician who got cancer and suddenly found himself on the other side of the bed. The 1991 movie, The Doctor, starring William Hurt and Christine Lahti, was based on Dr. Rosenbaum’s book. Dr. Rosenbaum explained how scary and demoralizing being a patient can be, and how healthcare providers lose sight of how patients can feel disenfranchised when they submit to medical care. Especially when it’s delivered in a hospital setting.

Amy then explains why she had this reaction. She’d been in an experimental study before, and it led to a significant trauma. From the book:

I’ve come to think of this particular memory as the strawberry shortcut—a lesson that came by way of a pulmonary lab technician who said playfully, “Let’s take the strawberry shortcut,” when escorting me from the waiting room to the exam suite. It was 1988. I was in my second year of law school, and my doctor wanted to rule out all possible causes of my very apparent breathlessness. Heart problems seemed so much less likely than lung problems in a woman in her midtwenties, so he scheduled a progression of tests that began with pulmonary.

As I followed in the wake of the technician’s perfectly pressed white coat, turning and turning again through a seeming maze of narrow hallways, he called back to me over his shoulder a preview of what was to come. Apparently, I would soon be breathing in some—particles? Nuclear particles? I didn’t understand—I’d never had even so much as a strep throat culture in my twenty-five years of life—so I obeyed with some trepidation when he placed the clear plastic contraption over my mouth, nose, and a good portion of both cheeks. “We’re friends here, aren’t we? So just relax into it and breathe deeply,” he cooed, and I tried. But there was nothing about inhaling the particles he administered that made me feel friendly or comfortable. He noted my reluctance at once. “Oh, you’re going to have to go deeper than that, pretty,” he said.

Pretty?

My stomach muscles tightened with angst. I began to shake.

“In . . . and out. In . . . and out,” he coaxed, moving his face closer with each round of inhalation and exhalation until his lips and the tip of his nose were in line with mine, pressing up against the plastic.

I closed my eyes and I felt some tears fall. I’m trapped. My doctor can’t make me better unless I do this test. I’ve got to get through it. Come on, Amy, breathe . . .

“That’s it . . . niiiice,” the technician purred. “And again, for me . . .”

When the test was finished, I hurried off the exam table. “Hey there,” he said, reaching for the door handle before I could. “How about a kiss for the technician?”

“How about a handshake instead!” I snapped, surprising him with a sudden show of nerve. He murmured something about a hot tamale and grasped my hand.

A few days later, I filed a complaint with the hospital and was told there was nothing they could do since I didn’t remember the tech’s name. And besides, they told me, “Maybe he was just trying to help you relax.”

That was the start of my growing a backbone as a patient. Hell, if the same thing were to happen to me now, I’d respond directly with, Kiss? How about you kiss your job good-bye!

Fifty is so much braver than twenty-five, you see.

Silverstein, Amy. My Glory Was I Had Such Friends (pp. 184-186). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

I was never sexually harassed by doctors, but I did have one who left me very traumatized due to her being extremely callous. I wish like hell I had complained about her when the incident happened. I don’t know what would have happened. Probably nothing. But at least I would have done something… and that might have made me feel more empowered. I am fifty now… and I was 22 then. So this story really hit home and left me a little triggered. Amy continued:

Though today’s situation was quite different, it preyed on some of my greatest medical fears, those that had developed out of the strawberry shortcut incident and countless others over the years: feeling a lack of agency, feeling uninformed, and feeling taken advantage of. And this is why I felt no trepidation this morning when telling the transplant pharmacist that I wanted to speak with her supervisor: Dr. Kobashigawa. She logged out of the screen at once and backed away from the computer. “I’m sorry to see you so upset about this.”

“And I’m sorry for these stupid tears, but I can’t help it. I’ve learned the hard way never to turn off my brain and hand myself over. I’m not going to agree to ecu—whatever it’s called—without reading through the whole binder and making my own decision.”

“I understand. But keep in mind we’re just trying to help you, Amy. You’ve got antibodies that are going to pose a danger to any donor heart you might receive. You can’t be transplanted successfully without eculiz—”

“I can’t? Are you saying I don’t have choice? That I never really had a choice? Who told you that? Dr. Kobashigawa?” My fingertips fly to my forehead and I begin tapping, tapping. A rush of panic sweeps through me—Have I been duped?

She started toward the door, pulling nervously at the ends of her hair. It was apparent that Becky had let on more than I was meant to hear just yet, and that perhaps she might be in trouble for it. “I’ll, um, ask him to come see you.”

But the memory match had already struck and ignited. All of a sudden there were words in the air—my words—and they rang calm and clear at first, but then echoed back to me calamitous and full of smoky black, as if tethered to distant fires. Whatever I was saying was not of this moment; it was cumulative—and ablaze: “Wow, Becky, wow, wow, wow. As if I didn’t feel out of control to begin with, watching my pulse disappear day after day. Thanks a lot. You sure know how to make a dying person feel worse.”

“That wasn’t my . . . Oh, I am sorry!” she squeaked with panic, tears welling in her eyes. She quickly turned away and slipped out the door.

Silverstein, Amy. My Glory Was I Had Such Friends (p. 186). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

I did feel sorry for Becky, the pharmacist. I know she was just trying to be helpful. And I’m sure it’s a tough job, as today’s patients are often better informed and more outspoken. On the other hand, a lot of people would be calling Amy a “karen” (hate that term) for advocating for herself. Clearly, her issues stem from understandable and considerable trauma. And even though I could understand that a lot of people would find her behaviors very “karen-ish”, as someone who has also experienced medical trauma, I could hardly blame Amy for her response. She probably couldn’t help it.

I have had some good experiences with doctors since my last trauma. However, in spite of that, I have a hard time shaking those memories. It’s kind of like how Noyzi, the Kosovar rescue dog, spooks at sudden noises and movements. He’s had good experiences, but still reacts in an automatic way to those triggers. I’m the same way. I get extremely nervous just thinking about going through what Amy went through. So, when I read her book, I thought of her as brave, rather than entitled and ungrateful. She had backbone, even if she came off as abrasive. And again, I could hardly blame her.

In a way, my recent post about body shaming that got me on my relative’s shit list is sort of the same thing. I used to just take that sort of thing without too much comment. I don’t anymore, and some people think it’s offensive. But my reactions come from valid traumas of the past. I’m sorry if some people find my reactions upsetting, but they don’t come from a place of meanness. They come from trauma. I think Amy Silverstein’s reactions were the same thing. So, I kind of felt a kinship with her… and again, realize that she must not have been all bad. After all, she did have such friends. Wish I were so lucky… but at least I have a wonderful husband.

Well, this post has gone on pretty long, so I think I’ll end it and practice guitar for a few minutes. If you managed to wade through this long ass blog entry, I thank you. And if you managed to understand it on any level, I congratulate you. Until tomorrow….

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blog news, LDS, mental health, obits, psychology

For some people, Mother’s Day is a “day of infamy”…

Happy Mother’s Day, everybody. I know not everyone loves this holiday, but if you do celebrate Mother’s Day, I hope it’s a nice one for you. I don’t mind Mother’s Day much anymore. My mom and I get along pretty well, and I’ve come to terms that I’m a “mom” to dogs. I don’t really think of my dogs as my kids, although they are kind of my babies. At least I don’t have to send them to college. 😉

I’m kidding about the last part. I think I would have enjoyed sending an adult child to college, even though it costs so much. On the other hand, it’s nice to be debt free… and not having to pay for student loans anymore.

Younger daughter sent us a couple of videos. In one, she talked about how so many people her age are forgoing motherhood. It’s very obvious that she loves being a mom, and she’s very good at the job. I admire her patience and dedication to being there for her children. It’s more than she got from her own mom.

Something surreal happened the other day. I was sitting here looking through old blog posts and I found one in which I mentioned Heather B. Armstrong (nee Hamilton), author of the very popular blog Dooce, and a couple of books. I was never a regular reader of Dooce myself, but I knew about Heather because she was an ex Mormon and had grown up in Bartlett, Tennessee (near Memphis), which is where Bill’s dad lived for years before he passed. I think it might have even been May 9th when I looked at that post, not realizing that I would be getting shocking news about her that very day.

On May 9th, it was announced that 47 year old Heather Armstrong had died by her own hand. She reportedly suffered from depression and alcoholism, which was likely made worse by the toxicity of the Internet. Her writing had enchanted and delighted millions of people. She was even dubbed “Queen of the Mommy Bloggers”, because she was a Mommy Blogger before it was “cool”. At a time when blogs were mostly for people to trade among friends and family members, Heather Armstrong made it a place where anyone could have a voice. Dooce.com took off, and soon, scores of people were reading Armstrong’s thoughts on living, loving, marriage, and motherhood.

But Dooce.com had also excited mean spirited people who harassed her on a site called GOMI (Get Off My Internets), an “anti-fan” blog launched in 2008 by New York based blogger, Alice Wright. I had never heard of GOMI before I read about Heather Armstrong’s suicide, but apparently, a very special class of haters hang out there. They make a habit of reading blogs and trashing the writers.

Aside from garden variety clinical depression and alcoholism, Armstrong also had very severe postpartum depression after she had her older daughter in 2003. It was so bad that she needed to be hospitalized. In 2009, Armstrong published a very well-received book called It Sucked and then I Cried: How I Had a Baby, a Breakdown and a Much Needed Margarita. In spite of her experiences with postpartum depression, Armstrong had another daughter in 2010. Then she divorced her ex husband, Jon Armstrong. She was in another relationship with Pete Ashdown, a two-time Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Utah, at the time of her death.

Heather Armstrong had reportedly quit drinking for awhile before her death, but then relapsed into alcoholism. She continued to write, although her posts– which had been almost daily for years– became a lot less frequent. Some readers were unnerved by the content of her most recent posts, which revealed a downward spiral.

I think a lot of people were shocked and saddened by Armstrong’s suicide. Even though I wasn’t one of her fans, I had heard of Dooce, and realized its success was what a lot of bloggers strive for. Many aspiring writers looked up to Heather Armstrong as a role model, but I think other people just thought of her as a dependable friend. And now she’s gone, and people are left wondering what happened.

I read a few news articles about Heather Armstrong’s death. I was saddened to read that so many comments people left were either clueless or kind of mean. Heather Armstrong will never read those comments, but she was a mom, and her kids can read. Now, it’s Mother’s Day, and their mom is gone forever. For them, Mother’s Day may turn into a “day of infamy”. That’s a day in which a person remembers something awful every year.

Although Armstrong killed herself, I know that her action was caused by legitimate mental illnesses. Many people will say she was selfish to commit suicide, but those people might not understand that suicidal people are often not in their right minds. I write “often not” because sometimes people commit suicide for reasons other than depression. Clearly, in Armstrong’s case, her decision came as a result of deep, unrelenting psychological pain that wasn’t eased by medical treatment. Her death, while brought about by her own hand, was every bit as the result of an illness as a death due to a stroke, cancer, or heart disease is. It’s not like she didn’t try to get well, either. Heather’s depression was severe enough that she even underwent an experimental treatment involving being put into chemically induced comas for fifteen minute sessions. The treatment was supposed to mimic brain death, to see if it might cure extreme depression.

I have suffered from depression myself, and I know how it made me feel. There were times when I was tempted by suicide. But by the grace of God, I managed to resist those impulses. I doubt that my issues were ever as deep as Heather’s were… and although sometimes I get rude comments on my blog, I have never been harassed like she was. I don’t go looking for comments about me, or my blog, so if anyone is talking trash about me, I’m oblivious. But I suspect my blog is too boring for people on GOMI.

I was also never Mormon… and while I know that a lot of people find joy in Mormonism, I also know that a lot of people suffer despair because of it. Armstrong, who had once been a devout church member, left the religion, and reportedly suffered backlash from her family and friends. She poured her thoughts and feelings into her writing, and wound up being fired from her job in Los Angeles. At the time, it was probably awful for her… but then the blog took off, and she was soon earning millions from ad revenue, book sales, and product endorsements.

As a blogger myself, I wonder if maybe Dooce’s success was a source of terrible stress for Armstrong. I know that writing, for me, is kind of therapeutic. But when you become popular, you have to be much more careful about what you write. And when you make money from sponsors, you have to be even more careful, because businesses don’t want to be aligned with controversies or bad press. So then, that “therapy” kind of goes by the wayside, because as a writer, you can no longer be so free with what you express. I would imagine it also becomes harder to stay authentic and interesting.

My own blog used to be more popular. When I was writing it on Blogger and lived in Stuttgart, I shared it a lot more, and I had more readers. I eventually realized that I didn’t really want to be super popular, especially in a military community. Even years since I moved the blog to WordPress and kind of started over, I sometimes run into people who have never even read it, but had a negative opinion of it and me, just because of the name. I try to remember, though, that everyone who becomes popular has to deal with negative opinions and even haters. The most talented, likeable, and famous people in the world have haters.

Heather Armstrong obviously had mental health issues. Writing was a comfort for her… until it was used as a weapon. And now she has two daughters who no longer have their mother on Mother’s Day. I don’t blame Heather for what happened, because I know that the horrors of depression and alcoholism are real. But I do feel for her daughters, who have lost their mom forever. So, my thoughts are with them today, as I am reminded that for some people, Mother’s Day is difficult, at best. And for some, it really is a “day of infamy”.

Wherever Heather B. Armstrong is today, I hope she’s finally at peace. And I wish the most peace and comfort to her survivors, especially her daughters.

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bad TV, celebrities, mental health, narcissists, psychology, Reality TV

“If there is a dark side lurking within you, please bring it forth…” and other weird concepts on ANTM…

Yea! It’s Wednesday! Two more days to go before our home “pack” is complete again, and Bill comes home. There was a time in my life when I loved having the house to myself. That was when I was a teenager, which was many years ago. 😉 I didn’t mind living alone when I was a young woman, either, because apparently I’m not the most likable person, or the greatest roommate. Scratch that. I am a pretty good roommate, but only to the right person. I’m such an oddly shaped puzzle piece that there aren’t that many “good fits” for me in the world.

Against all odds, Bill and I happen to get along beautifully. We genuinely dislike being apart when he has to travel. It’s very boring for both of us. He spends all his time working or sleeping, and I spend mine writing, reading, and watching trash TV. Then he wants to have a chat when I’m knee deep in the trash. Actually, this past week, poor Bill has been working nights, which means he gets even less sleep than usual. We haven’t had too much opportunity to chat. Most of our communication has been through very short emails of little substance. So, we’re both really looking forward to Friday, when he comes home from his latest adventure.

I mentioned yesterday, that reading Good Girls by Hadley Freeman had inspired me to watch old episodes of America’s Next Top Model. I was pretty hooked on that show when it was popular, although I didn’t watch it until Cycle 7, when I happened to channel surf past it one night. I don’t like Tyra Banks very much, even if I can easily see why she’s a famous model. Maybe she’s different offscreen, but I find her onscreen persona very off putting and narcissistic. There were times on ANTM when she acted like a complete twat (in the British sense of the word).

However, I did like a couple of other cast members. Miss J and Jay Manuel were favorites of mine. They could be dismissive and disdainful at times, but I got the sense that they were much more genuine and kind than Tyra was. And I also thought they were legitimately funny and entertaining. Tyra was just nuclear level annoying to me– although I suspect, in her case, that behavior stems from the industry she made her name in, as well as– I suspect– perhaps some family trauma. I don’t know, and I’m not saying my suspicions are true. It’s just that in my experience, people who act like that often have an abusive past, delivered by their families. (raising my own hand, here…) The fact that Tyra has spent years as a model and an entertainer means that she’s also been exposed to a lot of the same types of people– many of whom are pretty damaged.

I do think Tyra Banks is legitimately beautiful, bright, and talented, but her personality comes across to me as entitled, fake, and manipulative. Unless she’s been doing some Oscar winning acting, she has a deep and obvious need for admiration and attention. It was especially clear in some of the widely circulated clips on the Internet showing, which some of ANTM’s craziest moments over its many years on the air.

I’ve studied a lot about narcissism, and it’s obvious to me that a lot of the people who made it on Top Model also suffered from abusive, traumatic pasts that turned them a bit Machiavellian. There are only a few cycles in which it seems like fewer people are drama queens. Those cycles, which I mostly found more pleasant to watch, tended to be the ones that weren’t as highly rated. For example, I loved Cycle 13, which was the “petite” cycle– All of the women were short, like me. I got the sense that they weren’t nearly as blackhearted as some of their taller counterparts. Maybe it’s because they have more concentrated oxygen at such low heights. Kidding, of course… 😉 I am myself only about 5’2″.

So… about today’s title. It comes from Cycle 10. I had just finished watching Cycle 9, where I heard all kinds of red flag narcissism phrases like, “You don’t know who you’re messing with,” and watched Tyra be totally horrible to Ebony Morgan, a beautiful contestant who suddenly quit when she’d decided that being on the show wasn’t for her.

Tyra was awful to Ebony.

Ebony Morgan was clearly someone who’d had a very traumatic past, and determined that she didn’t enjoy modeling. She wisely and nobly decided to quit the show, and allow someone else to take her place. And Tyra said, “The most unattractive thing in the world to me is a quitter.” Really, Tyra? There aren’t less attractive people than that? How about child molesters? Would you put Ebony beneath someone like, say, Josh Duggar?

In that same cycle, there was a very smart “nerdy” young woman named Victoria. It was clear that Victoria had never really considered what modeling is all about. She was just very quirky and interesting looking. She came on the show and very quickly got the “bitch” edit. They had all of the contestants dress up like plants and Victoria was a cactus. At judging, she was deemed “prickly”, and when she stood up for herself, she was quickly chastised.

“You need to work on charm.” Can anyone blame Victoria for sticking up for herself? She actually wasn’t that assertive here… I’ve seen a lot worse on this show.

Anyone who ever watched ANTM remembers this gem from Cycle 4. It gets trotted out all the time as an example of how toxic this show could be. It doesn’t matter what Tiffany’s “attitude” was. Screaming at her the way she did is verbal abuse. And no, Tiffany… Tyra doesn’t care about you.

Tyra’s public, extreme, ass chewing was way out of line, even if Tiffany should have been eliminated. And she was basically chewed out because she wasn’t upset enough when she got the ax (at about the 5 minute mark).

And then there was my revelation last night, as I watched Paulina Porizkova talking to the models of Cycle 10 for the very first time. I actually loved Paulina on this show. She seemed very genuine, and didn’t behave like a narcissistic twat. She came up to a beautiful blonde woman named Kimberly and said something along the lines of, “You seem to have this High School Musical thing about you, but I sense you have a dark side. And if there is a darker side of you, bring it forth.” Then, she pantomimed as if the dark spirit would come out of Kimberly, exorcist like.

Kimberly also ended up quitting the show. She claimed it was because she didn’t enjoy modeling and couldn’t see spending $500 on a pair of shorts. Some time later, Kimberly was on Tyra’s talk show, where she explained her real reasons for quitting.

Kim doesn’t like modeling… and yet, her obituary mentions her love for modeling.
Kim explains… It turns out, she was experiencing some pretty serious mental health issues related to suicides by people close to her. In 2016, she took her own life.

Allison Kuehn was also on Cycle 10, and was eliminated early. I found her obnoxious when the show originally aired, but watching her last night was almost unbearable. She reminded me a lot of Donald Trump, especially after she got her makeover. She kept talking about how she was the most experienced and best model in the house, after she made some pretty offensive and racist comments to another contestant. When she got eliminated, she cried. It does look like Allison went back to real modeling, though, which is a credit to her, I guess.

Allison was obnoxious, but she certainly wasn’t the only one…

There are so many other examples… I’ve written posts about Renee Alway, for example. I was a fan of Renee’s, in spite of her manipulative, spiteful, and envious behaviors. I thought Renee was absolutely gorgeous, and I thought she had a lot of potential on many levels. Sadly, Renee has had a lot of very serious interactions with law enforcement. She’s been in an out of prison after committing armed robberies, domestic violence, and drug crimes. There were times when Renee seemed open and vulnerable, and that made me think she wasn’t a completely black hearted person. I still don’t think she is. But she had some very serious problems that I don’t think were helped by being on America’s Next Top Model.

Likewise, Renee’s fellow cohort and sometime friend, Jael Strauss, also had severe difficulties after being on ANTM. I didn’t like Jael that much when I first saw her, but now that I’m watching again, I find her very endearing and entertaining. She seemed like a genuinely kind soul. Unfortunately, she had a terrible problem with drugs, to the point at which she appeared on Dr. Phil. And then, in December 2018, after a two month battle with inflammatory breast cancer, Jael passed away at age 34.

So sad. She deserved better than “help” from Dr. Phil. He’s as bad as Tyra.

Angelea Preston was another contestant who, I think, got exploited on ANTM. I didn’t really care for Angelea’s appearances on three cycles of the show, although I’ve looked her up since her last appearance, and I’m impressed by how she’s recovered. Angelea has proven that she’s a survivor, and is telling her story… having “won” the All-Stars edition of the show, and then been disqualified for briefly working as an escort. After she was disqualified, Lisa D’Mato, who had been on Cycle 5, won. Lisa is also speaking out about ANTM, and Tyra has reportedly blocked her on social media.

One last person I want to mention is Jenah Doucette, who was in Cycle 9. She was a very strong competitor. I ran across a very informative Reddit thread she started, inviting people to ask her anything. It seems like she’s doing pretty well now, but she admits that she had a very hard time after being on ANTM. She says she is a recovering alcoholic, and has been through therapy. She might have been an alcoholic anyway, and she might have needed therapy anyway. However, I doubt that the experience of being on that show was very helpful to her.

I probably shouldn’t watch these old episodes of Top Model, but I’m finding them very engrossing and, I’ll admit, often entertaining. They help pass the hours before Bill gets home on Friday. And, if you’re interested in psychology, it is interesting to pay attention to the interactions among the contestants, especially so many years later.

Thanks to reading Good Girls, falling back down the “fashion rabbit hole”, and watching old episodes of Top Model, I’ve also started reading Jay Manuel’s novel, The Wig, The Bitch, & The Meltdown. I don’t read many novels anymore, but I couldn’t resist this one. I suspect the book is highly influenced by his time with Tyra Banks, who is now a former friend of his. Stay tuned for a fresh review, which I hope will come sooner, rather than later…

For now, I need to walk the dog, play guitar, and go buy some more half and half at the store. Then, I’ll probably dive back into my ANTM reruns, which do a good job of keeping me from binge watching YouTube DWI videos. So, have a happy hump day. Catch you later.

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book reviews, mental health, psychology

A review of Good Girls: A Story and Study of Anorexia, by Hadley Freeman…

Leave it to Amazon’s suggestive selling feature to sell me things I didn’t think I wanted. Before last month, I had not heard of journalist Hadley Freeman, or her new book, Good Girls: A Story and Study of Anorexia, which was published on April 18, 2023. Now that I’ve just finished reading Freeman’s personal story about her experiences with anorexia, along with anecdotes from people she knew when she spent months in eating disorder programs in London, I can say that I’d definitely read another one of her books. She has a very engaging style, and her talent for turning phrases makes her writing interesting and an overall pleasure to read.

I also enjoyed Hadley Freeman’s story, because she and I are somewhat close in age. I’m almost six years older than she is. There was a time when that would have been a significant age gap, but once you get to middle age, that gap really isn’t so wide anymore. Her book was interesting to me, because we were young at the same time. I got a lot of the cultural references she made. Good Girls is about her experiences with anorexia nervosa, but it’s also about the experiences of people she met while “in hospital”. A number of the women she interviewed are my age or slightly older. I could relate to them and their stories because of that closeness in age.

Freeman included some interesting anecdotes about some of the cases involving her fellow patients that invite more research and study for my blog. Regular readers know I’m a sucker for a scandalous story, and she made me aware of a couple of them in her book. Perhaps on a day when I have writer’s block, I will think to revisit Good Girls and be reminded of those stories, which I will then write about. As I’ve discovered through blogging since 2010, I’m not the only one who is a sucker for a scandal… even the low level ones that are only interesting on a local level. 😉

Everyone has a story, and Hadley Freeman is no different. She is a British-American journalist who was born to a Jewish family in New York City. Freeman spent her early life in New York, where her father worked in finance. Freeman has dual American and British citizenship, and continues to live and work in both countries.

When Hadley was eleven years old, her family moved to London, and Hadley was plunged into a similar, but different culture. I could relate to that. I was born in Virginia, but moved to England when I was about three years old. I stayed in England until I was almost six years old. Although I was in England as an “Air Force brat”, that experience really left a mark on me, and I can remember being bewildered when we moved back to the US, having doubled in age. Granted, Hadley Freeman was eleven when she moved, so surely she had a concept of countries and continents and such. But there are some significant differences between life in the United States and life in England. As Freeman points out, New York and London, though both big cities, are very different. Hadley had some trouble adjusting.

When she was about fourteen years old, Hadley began suffering from anorexia nervosa severe enough to land her in the hospital. She spent the next three years in and out of different psychiatric hospitals in London, occasionally being treated by an arrogant doctor who apparently did more harm than good. Most of the hospitals where Freeman was treated are not specifically named in this book; Freeman does mention one clinic that was eventually renamed where a fellow patient had spent time and was exposed to a predatory male nurse. I did some preliminary research about the nurse and found his case was covered in the news. I’ll be reading more about him.

Freeman’s experiences put her in contact with other people who suffered from eating disorders, including a few men. Not everyone she met had anorexia; some were diagnosed with bulimia, while others were compulsive or binge eaters. Because the hospitals were residential, she had the opportunity to get to know the other patients. She eventually lost contact with her fellow patients, as social media wasn’t a “thing” in those days, and she had been discouraged from keeping in touch with them. Therapists had told her that staying in contact with other people with eating disorders could encourage her to keep up the destructive behaviors that had led to anorexia.

Years after her final release from hospitals, Hadley Freeman decided to reach out to some of her old friends. She found that a number of them were eager to speak to her about their experiences. So, while Freeman writes about her time on the eating disorder wards in the 1990s, she also includes stories from others she knew back then. In one case, the story didn’t come from the fellow patient, as she had died by her own hand. Instead, Freeman spoke to the woman’s family. This particular patient was a talented actress who had starred in some television and theatrical shows before she ended her life. I had not heard of her before I read Good Girls, but I looked her up and now I want to know more about her.

The theories and treatment modalities for treating eating disorders were different in the 1990s than they are today. I read several Amazon reviews from irate readers claiming that Freeman’s book is “dangerous” because she doesn’t delve into the most recent research regarding eating disorder treatment. I don’t think this book is supposed to be about current treatments or theories. It’s a memoir. Freeman is writing about her experiences in the 1990s. There is an audience of people who would be interested in reading about Freeman’s experiences during that era, even if the information she includes is not as useful to people who suffer from eating disorders today.

Many years ago, I read Cherry Boone O’Neill’s 1982 book, Starving For Attention. Cherry Boone O’Neill is Pat Boone’s eldest daughter. She suffered most extensively from anorexia nervosa in the 1970s. Her book includes theories and treatment modalities from that time, which would probably be thought of as “wrong” and “dangerous” today (even though Cherry ultimately survived and has five adult children). I wouldn’t go to Cherry’s book for information about how to help someone with an eating disorder in 2023. I don’t think that’s its purpose. It’s a story about her experiences, which has worth in and of itself. I think I feel the same way about Hadley Freeman’s book, Good Girls.

I wouldn’t recommend Good Girls to a worried parent or spouse of someone with an eating disorder, desperate for solutions or answers as to why eating disorders happen. There are other books written by experts for that purpose. Freeman does include comments from physicians and mental health professionals about today’s treatments, but I didn’t really feel like that was the main idea of her book.

Freeman eventually became a “functional anorexic”, after “cramming” at different British schools to pass her “A-levels”. She wound up earning her university degree at Oxford University, and then curiously embarked on a career as a fashion journalist. She found she had an “in” with people in the fashion industry, because she was very thin. After about ten years of that, she moved on to other areas. She’s written for The Guardian and The Telegraph, and she has also penned other books. I enjoyed Good Girls enough that I would seek out her other books– after I’ve read a few that have been sitting in the “to be read” queue for awhile.

I do wish Freeman had expanded a bit more on the British education and healthcare systems. I wouldn’t have expected an in depth explanation per se, but a little bit of information about the differences between the U.S. and British systems may have been helpful to the many American readers whom I suspect will read this book. The U.S. healthcare system is much more expensive for consumers than the British system is. Freeman also mentions “sectioning”, which could be a foreign concept to US readers, as the U.S. system doesn’t really have “sectioning”, which allows healthcare professionals and family members to involuntarily commit adults for mental health treatment for illnesses that are life threatening.

Yes, a person can be involuntarily committed in the United States, but it’s my understanding that the system is broader in Britain, which allows for commitment for illnesses like anorexia nervosa that put a person’s life at risk. In the United States, the criteria for commitment is set by individual states and is more focused on an individual’s civil rights and potential for harming or killing other people. A look at the number of people who have been recently killed by gun violence in the United States might offer a clue at the discrepancy between the U.S.’s system and Britain’s system.

Overall, I’m glad I read Good Girls. I know a lot of people with eating disorders might not like it and will protest that it lacks value due to its “dangerous and outdated” discussions of eating disorder treatments and theories from the early 90s. I would like to remind those readers that discussions about past treatments and theories are still worth reading about, if only because they provide a historic view of how things were handled in the past. History is useful, as it offers a look at where we’ve already been. This book isn’t a volume on how to treat eating disorders in 2023, although it does include some commentary from healthcare professionals of today. It’s mostly a memoir, and should be regarded as such.

On a side note… maybe one distressing side effect of reading Good Girls is that Freeman mentions the fashion industry and certain models of the 1990s and 00s. Because of that, I fell down a rabbit hole, watching America’s Next Top Model. Talk about toxic! I’ve written about that show a few times, but I have a feeling this latest look will spawn some fresh content… particularly after I watched Cycle 8, which starred Renee Alway and the late Jael Strauss. I hadn’t watched ANTM in years, but I’m hooked again, and I think it merits some discussion. So stay tuned, if that piques your interest.

As an Amazon Associate, I get a small commission from Amazon on sales made through my site.

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book reviews, healthcare, history, mental health, politicians

A review of Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter, by Kate Clifford Larson…

Amazon.com tells me that I purchased Kate Clifford Larson’s book, Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter on October 25, 2015. It was originally published on October 6th of that year, and I believe I bought it based on recommendations from Alexis, who was my #1 reader and commenter for years. I’m sorry it’s taken me almost eight years to finally get around to reading Kate Clifford Larson’s fascinating book about Rosemary Kennedy, and the very dysfunctional Kennedy family. I’m glad I finally sat down and read the book, because it was surprisingly compelling in many “soap opera-ish” ways.

I’ll admit that before I read Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter, I knew almost nothing about the Kennedy clan, other than the fact that they were a very rich and politically powerful Irish Catholic family from Massachusetts, and they seemed to be cursed by many tragedies. I never knew just how many tragedies there were until I finally read this book that’s been sitting in my Kindle queue for so long. My mind is blown on many levels.

Who was Rosemary Kennedy?

Rose Marie “Rosemary” Kennedy was born in her parents’ home on September 13, 1918 in Brookline, Massachusetts. She was the third child and eldest daughter of Joseph P. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. Her older brothers, Joe and Jack, were perfectly normal boys, born to wealthy and prestigious parents. Joe and Rose Kennedy would go on to have a total of nine children, eight of whom were healthy, strong, intelligent, and high achieving. Rosemary might have been completely normal, too, except for a terrible decision that was made as she was being born.

On the day of Rosemary’s birth, Rose’s doctor was not immediately available to deliver her, on account of a severe breakout of Spanish flu. The doctor had to be in attendance when the baby was born in order to collect his fee. Consequently, the nurse who was tending to Mrs. Kennedy told her to keep her legs closed and actually pushed Rosemary back into the birth canal. Because of those unfortunate decisions, Rosemary was kept in the birth canal for two hours without adequate oxygen. When the baby was born, she appeared to be healthy and normal, but as she grew, her parents realized that she was not developing as her brothers, and later, her younger siblings, did.

Soon, it became clear to her family that Rosemary had significant intellectual and mental delays. However, because the Kennedys were so rich, powerful, and ambitious, they kept Rosemary’s condition carefully hidden from most people. She was apparently beloved by her family, yet she was also an object of shame for them. Her parents– especially her father, Joe– took great pains to keep Rosemary’s difficulties out of the public eye.

When she was still a child, it wasn’t impossible to hide Rosemary’s condition from the public; but as she grew older, stronger, and wanting more independence, figuring out what to do with Rosemary, and hiding her disabilities from the public, became much harder for her parents. Complicating matters was the fact that physically, Rosemary was very attractive and flirtatious. She enjoyed the company of men, and they liked her, too. The Kennedys were concerned that Rosemary would end up falling into a disreputable lifestyle that would put her in danger or, seemingly worse to them, somehow embarrass the family.

Power parents…

Rose Fitzgerald was a favorite daughter of John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald, a very politically powerful Irish Catholic man from Boston, Massachusetts who had served as a Massachusetts State Senator, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and the Mayor of Boston. Rose met her future husband, Joseph Kennedy, when she was a teenager vacationing in Maine. John Fitzgerald hadn’t really liked Joseph Kennedy and discouraged Rose from being involved with him. But Rose didn’t listen to her father; the couple were wed October 7, 1914, when Rose was 24 years old.

Joseph Kennedy was quite wealthy, and his wife and children wanted for nothing materially. However, he was very unfaithful and had many affairs, to which Rose turned a blind eye. As I read this book, I learned that Joseph was also very image conscious and ambitious, and he expected his family to present the proper look. Rose Kennedy was also very image conscious and obsessed over her children’s bodies. She weighed them every week, and according to Larson’s book, both parents relentlessly fat shamed poor Rosemary, who had a tendency to gain weight.

Rosemary’s schooling…

Because of her intellectual disabilities, Rosemary Kennedy did very poorly in school. Her reading ability never rose past a fourth grade level. She had terrible penmanship and spelling, even though she apparently enjoyed writing letters. She also had trouble counting.

Although Rosemary was basically sweet and loving, she often had what today we might call “meltdowns”. Because she had trouble regulating her emotions and could not seem to grasp basic educational concepts, she went through a whole lot of different schools. Her younger siblings’ scholastic achievements soon surpassed Rosemary’s, as Rose Kennedy was constantly searching for the right boarding schools for her children. Though the other children were bright, competitive, habitual winners, Rosemary was constantly the subject of anguished letters from harried teachers and headmasters who didn’t know what to do with her.

The family experienced a brief hiatus in their scholastic drama when they moved to England in 1938. Joseph Kennedy was then serving as the U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain, so the family was temporarily based in London. Rosemary was placed at a Catholic boarding school called Belmont House, where she thrived. Unfortunately, the Kennedys had to move back to the United States due to Nazi Germany’s attack on Europe. Although Joseph and Rose kept Rosemary in England for as long as they could, it was too unsafe to allow her to stay there permanently. She moved back to the United States and then seemed to enter a negative spiral. All of the gains she had made at Belmont House quickly vanished as Rosemary became even less manageable.

Another tragic decision– Lobotomy…

Rose and Joseph Kennedy kept trying to find a suitable place for Rosemary. They failed repeatedly. Rosemary’s behavior grew more erratic and unpredictable. While her parents were apparently genuinely worried about her well-being, they also worried about how public knowledge of Rosemary’s condition might affect their political status and business standing.

Joseph Kennedy had heard about a new psychosurgical procedure being offered at George Washington University Hospital in Washington, DC. Psychiatrist Dr. Walter Freeman, and his associate, surgeon Dr. James W. Watts, were developing a technique that supposedly made “difficult” people like Rosemary more compliant and calm. The procedure was called “lobotomy”, and it involved numbing, and then boring small holes at the top and on either side of the patient’s head while they were awake and restrained. Although the vast majority of patients who had lobotomies did not experience good outcomes, Joseph Kennedy was apparently so eager to solve his issues with Rosemary that he eagerly signed her up for the operation. He did not tell Rose or his other children that Rosemary had the surgery until after it was completed in November 1941.

Like most of the other patients who had served as human guinea pigs for Freeman’s and Watts’ research, Rosemary Kennedy had devastating results after the lobotomy. She temporarily lost the ability to walk and talk, and became even more significantly intellectually delayed. Rosemary eventually learned how to walk again, but did so with a limp. She never regained her ability to speak clearly, and her arm was left palsied.

Heartbreakingly, after the lobotomy, Rosemary’s family basically abandoned her to the care of psychiatric facilities and, later, nuns. She very rarely saw her family for over twenty years, until Joseph Kennedy’s death in 1969. At that time, her family began bringing her back into the family circle. In spite of her intellectual and mental health issues, Rosemary Kennedy was very physically strong and healthy. She died of natural causes on January 7, 2005, in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin. She was 86 years old.

My thoughts on the book…

It may seem like I’ve given away a lot of Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter in this review, but actually, I’ve just scratched the surface of this incredible story. Kate Clifford Larson did an excellent job researching this book, and writing a compelling explanation of the Kennedy family. I’ve barely mentioned Rosemary’s siblings, three of whom died tragically young, nor have I shared some of the more shocking and outrageous aspects of this story. I definitely came away with an opinion of Rose and Joseph Kennedy, who gave birth to remarkable children who would shape and influence America, yet showed such crass and callous disregard for Rosemary. Yes, it’s true that some of their actions had a lot to do with the mores of the time period, but a lot of it was also just very cold-hearted and cruel, not just to Rosemary, but also to the people who were tasked with helping her.

I do think that this book is profoundly sad, and parts of it are pretty infuriating on many levels. However, it’s also fascinating, given the historical importance of the Kennedy family and the events that were going on at the time. If you’re interested in American and world history, this book may be a page turner for that alone, as it offers glimpses of the current events of the time, and touches on business, politics, health, and mental health care.

While I definitely think the way Rosemary was treated was cruel, I also realize that there were very limited options for people like her when she was coming of age. That was a time when “defectives” (as they were sometimes called then) were forcibly hospitalized or otherwise locked up, sterilized, and/or kept out of society, and away from their families. Rosemary Kennedy was both blessed and cursed by having such a wealthy family. They could afford to send her to different camps, schools, and hospitals, but they were also ashamed of her, and didn’t want her to “ruin” their financial and political successes.

The Kennedy family was also very deeply entrenched in religion. Larson touches on how Rose Kennedy’s deep devotion to Catholicism caused huge rifts with her children, as she insisted that they adhere to her strict beliefs. If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you might already know how I feel about religion, and parents insisting that their children adhere to their religious beliefs. Rose Kennedy’s use of Catholicism in her attempt to try to control her adult children is bad enough, but Joseph Kennedy’s disastrous decisions made solely to protect his image and career were especially reprehensible. Moreover, both Rose and Joseph Kennedy treated some of the people who helped Rosemary with contempt and a true lack of consideration.

Kate Clifford Larson includes extensive footnotes, photographs, and a detailed bibliography. Some reviewers complained that there were too many resources included, and too little text. Personally, I didn’t have that complaint, but then to me, this book included information I didn’t know. People who already know a lot about the Kennedys may find this book to be repetitive. Some even stated that they felt it was a waste of time to read it. Again– this is my review, and it wasn’t a waste of time for me. It does make me think I might want to read more about the Kennedys, however.

Overall

I’m glad I read Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter, by Kate Clifford Larson. I would recommend it to history and political science buffs, but also to anyone who enjoys true stories. However, I would caution readers that this story is pretty sad and infuriating in some parts. Also, I would caution that this book is not strictly about Rosemary Kennedy, but is more from the perspective of her family. You won’t be reading much about what life was like from Rosemary’s perspective, as Larson doesn’t seem to do a lot of original research.

If I had known more about the Kennedys before I read this book, I might have had a more negative opinion of it. But, since I learned new things by reading it, I honestly don’t think of it as a poor effort. Some Amazon reviewers who obviously know more about the Kennedys than I do did take issue with the fact that the book is more about the Kennedy parents and, to a lesser extent, their children, than Rosemary herself.

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