Live and Let Di

Wishful Drinking

Finally, as promised, the book review for Carrie Fisher's Wishful Drinking. Ever since Postcards from the Edge hit the bookshelves in 1987, I have been a Carrie Fisher fan. I was not a fan in the Princess Leia era, although I do have a healthy regard for the original Star Wars since it was such a breakthrough movie at the time and I never would have seen it if I hadn't gone with my cousin, famous artist, Mark Bode. And I loved her in When Harry Met Sally.

Although there are autobiographical references in Fisher's previous books, Wishful Drinking is her first foray into the memoir genre. And if you think her fiction is funny, check out her real life. Imagine being born to the uber-Hollywood-couple of the time, Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher. And then imagine that Eddie Fisher divorces your mother to marry Elizabeth Taylor. Think Jen, Brad and Angelina in the 1950s. Tabloid fodder from birth!!!

She describes her childhood with an ironic, self-deprecating perspective. She drops names, not to impress anyone, but because those names are the people she was surrounded by. She got advice from Cary Grant. She smoked pot with Harrison Ford. She listened to the explanation of why she couldn't wear a bra in space as Princess Leia from George Lucas.

She is honest about her missteps in life. Kind of like everyone's life, only with more press coverage. She has suffered from depression and even underwent ECT (aka Electroshock Therapy), just like me!

Wishful Drinking was the only thing I wanted for Christmas. So my husband, liking the price point better than the other things I might want, like landscaping, got it for me. It's a brief volume, a mere 176 pages. I wanted to both consume it all in one big gulp and savor it. So I forced myself to read it in pieces over the course of three days.

Carrie Fisher is a celebrity you can imagine hanging out with. She doesn't have a distorted view of her importance in the world based on her celebrity status. And she is laugh-out-loud funny. Get the book.

The next only thing I want (but really, honey, we need landscaping) is to see Carrie Fisher perform her one-woman show, Wishful Drinking.

Di

Holiday Magic

I remember when I was about ten, watching my Mom in the kitchen in the kitchen on Christmas or Thanksgiving. The kitchen in our house was about the size of the average McMansion pantry, had no granite, no stainless steel appliances and no custom cabinets, but was still the room that held most of my happy childhood memories.

 

Official disclaimer: This does not look like me, my Mom or our kitchen...mainly because I was NOT born in the 50s.

All of a sudden, it occurred to me that Mom had to work pretty hard to put this big family shindig together. I said, “Mom, I’ll bet you don’t even like the holidays because you have to do all the work.”...[click here to continue reading this post on my Triangle Mom2Mom blog]

Di

I'm still here

I'm hanging in there...hanging on a rope made of the love of my husband, the understanding of my friends and some twine of things I've learned after numerous bouts with this Beast* called Depression.

*  I borrow the term The Beast from Tracy Thompson whose book of the same name provided a turning point in my understanding of this illness. Her subsequent book, The Ghost in the House, seemed to be written directly to me.

I am bouyed by the thoughts, prayers and support of family far away who are often wrenched by their inability to do something to help me.

For perhaps the first time, I'm doing something for myself. Now I don't kid myself that I would have any chance without my safety net of friends and family. But with their support, and the support of surprising people, even some strangers, I'm able to take ownership of my illness, permit myself to be kind to myself, allow myself to say "No" without explanation and know that my friends will understand...and most importantly, won't stop asking.

I'm even knitting a prayer shawl...inspired by my friend Robin whose blog always touches me. She started it as a journal and a way to keep in touch while her Mom was dying. Now that her Mom has passed away, it is a journal of her grief. I won't share the link to Robin's blog unless and until I get her permission. I don't know if it something she wants shared publicly. Here's my prayer shawl so far:

So, I'm going to be fine. I just need to get through this week. And I know I will because of the endless levels of support I can count on from all of you.

Di

Eggs, Fruit and Compassion

I was overwhelmed yesterday by the compassionate, loving comments and e-mails I received in response to my report from the abyss.

I am feeling much better, thanks to doing some healthy things for myself, forbidding myself to wallow in guilt and several episodes of deep breathing. This morning's healthy breakfast was photo-worthy...mostly because I love the food pictures taken in the natural light from my (and when I say "my," I mean "my landlord's" although it feels like mine since our house never seems to be finished!) kitchen window:

I called my resident doc at UNC and found out that she has rotated out of there and that there is a 4-week wait for an appointment. So I have to get on BCBS.com and find a local provider. I've resigned myself to the fact that beggars can't be choosers, so I have to accept that this will probably NOT be someone with whom I feel totally comfortable and who "gets" me like my beloved Dr. Doran in Florida did. I need to look at this person like a drug dealer. I don't have to like him/her, but I do have to go see him/her occasionally to feed my habit.

I had left a message with the secretary for the ECT department at UNC and surprise of the not-so-surprising, Dr. Dawkins, the head of the department, called my husband to see what was going on with me. She was concerned that I hadn't been in. She wanted to dig a little deeper with him as to my situation so she could determine if perhaps I would need a course of 3 or more treatments instead of just one. That is so like her. She is brilliant and amazing and compassionate. The secretary is supposed to call me to set it up so I can get squeezed in this Friday.

So, I am feeling like there is a light at the end of the tunnel and that I'm not terribly far away from it. And it's not that light they tell you to go toward at "the end." That's a good thing.

Di

Good For Me

I'm taking this bull by the horns. I'm not letting the abyss suck me in. So today I vowed to do good, healthy things for myself.

For breakfast, I fixed some scrambled eggs topped with the amazing guacamole my husband made last night:

Then I went on a one-hour walk with my friend Pilar. There's nothing like a little cardio in 100 degree heat...laughing and talking all the way...to get your head back on straight.

And for lunch? How about this amazing array? The fruit salad that my husband made (are you seeing a food preparation theme here) with some yummy Formaggio mozzarella from Costco...also purchased by my husband on one of his Costco runs.

I didn't beat myself up for eschewing the apples (sorry honey, they just don't meld with the fruit salad) and picking out the strawberries to eat first (they are so yummy!)

I took a guilt-free nap. Played gin with my son. And went to Pilar's house for some chicken chili (the leftover guacamole was my contribution). Now I am home in bed and feeling like the abyss has been held off for the time being.

Di

The Abyss

I am not in the abyss...yet. I am clinging to the walls with my fingernails digging into the rapidly disintegrating edge. My head is straining to see over my shoulder into the darkness. I am alternately spiraling and slowly seeping into the vortex.

It is so easy for me to be all candid and brave when I have just been ejected from the abyss thanks to a combination of medication and shock therapy. Not metaphorical shock therapy, real shock therapy. But when I am sliding toward the brink, denial thwarts action. Or even recognition. I've been going too fast and too hard for too long. I'm just tired. I'm not irritable...the world is just irritating.

Negativity is not just a momentary, fleeting thought, but an insidious mindset that is critical of everything. My body. My clothes. My parenting. My friendships. My habits.

Because of the crazy, chaotic schedule of the past month or so, I am about a month late for my monthly dose of ECT. A month ago I was researching online to see if, in fact, this monthly course of ECT to which I am committed is really necessary. I felt great! My marriage felt sound. My kids were doing great. I was optimistic and social. I was myself...the good self, the healthy self. I fantasized about the ECT doc telling me that, no, I wouldn't need to do this every month. I was cured!

Now I feel like I will never be cured. And not in a healthy acceptance kind of way. In a miserable, I'm damaged goods kind of way. The simple tasks of cashing a check at the bank, going to the grocery store and fixing dinner are feeling monumentally insurmountable. My bed taunts me with promises of blissful unconsciousness. My books remind me that I am not finding the joy that reading has always provided. My children's eyes seem to be filled with the awareness that Mom is not herself. She's just going through the motions.

I never wanted to get back here. I promised myself that I wouldn't. I was committed to scrupulously following my treatment regimen. I didn't. Depression sucks. It fights dirty. It sees a moment of weakness and capitalizes on it. It kicks dirt in your face when you are down. It never puts its hand out in a gesture of fair-play.

I wanted to insert a paragraph of hope here because I know that I will get back on track with my treatment and this brief moment will be a distant memory...a memory that the zap of ECT might even erase. But right now, it just felt necessary to write this down. To look at it from this side of the crevasse instead of from the other side where the view is diffused by the vaseline-smeared lens of retrospect.

Di

Crazy

No, this is not going to be a recounting of my chaotic week. And it isn't going to provide any more insight about my own struggle with mental illness. This is one of my favorite things...a GUEST BLOG!!!

Guest blogger, JoAnn, and I go way back. About 13 years ago, with a toddler, a baby on the way and a full-time job, I somehow found time to read 75 books a year AND spend hours on the computer "discussing" them. I "met" JoAnn on an AOL newsgroup called "BookNook" and subsequently renamed "Favorite Fiction" when we got tired of people who wanted to talk about their cats and their kids instead of BOOKS!!!

Over the years I have had the greatest respect for JoAnn's take on books. We haven't always agreed, but she's always presented cogent arguments to support her point of view. So, I was thrilled when she agreed to review Crazy for my blog. JoAnn doesn't have her own blog, but her daughter does and you can visit it here. And here is JoAnn's review:

Do you know what the largest mental health facility in the U.S. is? The LA County jail! It houses 3,000 mentally ill inmates.

If this shocks you, I would not be surprised. It is appalling indeed. Earley, a journalist for the Washington Post has written an absolutely chilling expose of the mental health treatment system in our affluent country. Or should I say "non-treatment system"? Shameful. The whole mental health services industry is an unbelievable nightmare, and it is almost impossible to conceive of anything worse.

Some shocking statistics:

•In 1955, 560,000 people were in mental hospitals with a total U.S. population of 166 million.

•By 2000, the U.S. population had increased to 276 million.

•Thus, there should have been over 900,000 people in mental hospitals in 2000.

•Instead, in 2000, there were only 55,000 people in mental hospitals!!!!

Lest anyone naively think that all of those hundreds of thousands of people were cured…..no. Tragically, this was all due to deinstitutionalization of mental health patients, as a reaction to deplorable conditions in state mental hospitals, all done without a safety net for these afflicted people. This was abandonment, not freedom. And the ACLU can take most of the “credit” for this horror. Civil rights laws were and are being used to prevent treatment – unless the patient consents. Yet many of these people are too ill to KNOW that they need treatment. Not only are many of those who are chronically mentally ill in denial as to their disease, so too are our society and the healthcare system in denial.

As one reviewer said, the REAL crime was when we stopped helping the mentally ill, under the guise of protecting their civil rights by turning them out of mental hospitals. Not that those "warehouses" are the answer, but neither is prison or living in a gutter. If civil rights mean equal opportunities, we should remember that if the chronically mentally ill persons are homeless, due to their permanent mental disability, they should have at least the opportunity to live the rest of their life in dignity in a place other than on the street or in prisons.

It did not take long after the vaunted reforms of the 1970's, when warehouses for the mentally ill were shut down, for reformers to notice that the mental-health millennium had not arrived. Inmates were freed from appalling conditions behind institution walls only to reappear on city streets, wandering at risk to themselves and sometimes to others as well as to civic propriety. The community health alternatives that were supposed to replace the oversize state hospitals remained wishful thinking. Even Geraldo Rivera, who was a proponent of deinstitutionalization, now says that this meant that the mentally ill were ''caught between good intentions and broken promises”. Large state psychiatric hospitals were supposed to be replaced by community-based treatment programs. Instead, countless numbers of people with mental illness were, and still are, left on their own without treatment or medical attention. Many have come to the attention of local law enforcement agencies, and jails and prisons increasingly have become a virtual dumping ground for people with mental illness.

Earley first became acquainted with this issue when his son was diagnosed as mentally ill with bipolar disorder and was prosecuted for a delusional act.  His son’s act was viewed as a crime rather than a psychotic episode and this spurred on his father to investigate the "criminalization of the mentally ill." Through a sympathetic judge, Earley was able to get access to the Miami-Dade County jail where guards told him that they routinely beat prisoners. He found out that Deidra Sanbourne, whose 1988 deinstitutionalization was a landmark civil rights case, died after being neglected in a boarding house after she was released from a mental hospital. This book is an indictment of those who fought to restore the civil rights of the mentally ill so that many can now "die with their rights on”.

Overconcern with patient's "rights" makes it next-to-impossible to treat them. Many of the untreated are thrown into prison, where they are housed without effective treatment, just as if they were fully responsible for their acts. Society perceives, often incorrectly, that a large expenditure of money would be necessary to do otherwise, so the problem does not get corrected.

The personal pain comes through in Earley’s writing, but he has also managed to distance himself enough to present a well-researched and thoughtful book which educates its readers.

He suggests that developing better, more lasting drugs with fewer side effects could ease this process. "Eighty percent of persons with mental illness can be helped with antipsychotic medication, yet civil rights laws are used daily to prevent patients from getting help." A public defender told Early that he helps mentally ill clients avoid hospitalization, even though this goes against his grain.

The US needs to invest in retirement-like homes, where chronically mentally incapacitated can live in dignity while under supervision and medication.

The average person has no idea of the hopeless, helpless position someone with a mental illness and their family are put in by the very people who we hope will HELP. As Mr. Earley points out in the book, who among us, particularly those in the medical profession, would walk by a person in pain, dying of cancer, without attempting to help? Who would send that person to jail to be locked up with murderers and rapists instead of to a hospital, where he would be given the medical treatment he needed? Who would suggest that no help could be given to him until he tried to kill himself or someone else? This is what happens to someone's son, daughter, mother, husband every day in this country.

Especially painful are the accounts of parents who find that the only way they can get some sort of medical attention for their children is to have them convicted of a felony.

These days, reformers appear to be focusing on luring or coercing the mentally ill into treatment, pressure once resisted by civil liberties advocates. Unfortunately, persons without insurance have little hope of obtaining quality medical care, and even less of receiving any type of mental health care; and most health insurance policies have strict limits on mental health coverage.

Crazy will frighten and enrage you; it will make you weep. If you know or love anyone with mental illness, it will give you greater understanding of how that person sees the world. Most of all, Crazy will make you want to change the laws.

For persons with mental illness, today's system represents a reign of terror and error. As a society, we can do better.

Eat, Pray, Love

I recently finished Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski and am still so consumed by its beautifully crafted plot and unique perspective that I can't yet do a book review. However, last night I flung Eat, Pray, Love (I refuse to bend to the oh-too-cutesy lack of caps on the book cover...sorry Amy) across the living room and could hardly wait to arise this morning and tell you why.

Eat, Pray, Love (sorry, if I pan the book, you only get two links...the one in the first paragraph and the one linked to the book cover) is on every shelf. From my own personal experience at Kroger last night, I can tell you that it's easier to find this book in the grocery store than it is to find Steak-Umms. (Special thanks to Ruth. I ran into her at Kroger as I was limping around trying to find them and as I was getting ready to meet the manager in the frozen section, she emerged triumphantly waving a 24-pack that somehow eluded me during my three passes through aisle 11.) I am sure that this book will appeal to many who will delight in the author's self-indulgence. I, for one, and Amy for two, do not find her truth- and healing-seeking travels to be entertaining or insightful.

Since one of my feelings about the book is that it tends to be shallow, I shall be shallow myself and point out that the lovely Ms. Gilbert looks strikingly like the beautiful Elizabeth Mitchell who stars in Lost. Now, if I wrote a book and some boneheaded book-blogger decided to pan it, I would be completely mollified if she likened my appearance to that of a movie star. Besides, I linked to her web site so that my readers can visit and decide for themselves if this is just another example of me being a snobby, elitist reader. And by the way, Ms. Liz, I bought this book TWICE!!! Yes, I left my first copy in the laptop bag I bought at the Apple store and subsequently returned. So not only did I contribute to your royalties TWICE, I BAFAB'd inadvertently and foisted your work on a potential fan who shops at the Apple Store in Boca Raton.

I can't help but feel that her descriptions of how her marriage ended may have been somewhat doctored in hindsight. Who am I to say that an author is bending the truth to her own purposes? A reader, that's who I am. And also a master of self-justification myself, when I need to be. I'm sure that lots of women would happily take a long physical and metaphorical journey of self-discovery if they were fortunate enough to have a book deal waiting at the end of it and didn't have to worry about mundane things like earning money, paying a mortgage, etc.

I must admit, I did find some joy in the early chapters about her time spent in Italy. I long to visit Italy myself and after reading about Liz's experiences, I desperately want to have some of that pizza in Naples! I love Luca Spaghetti...the name, the person, etc. But I found it hard slogging through the self-absorption to get to the sensuous descriptions of mouth-watering food, the joy of hearing that someone else gains weight while traveling and the sound of the gently spraying fountains in the piazzas of Rome.

Chapter 16, with its awkward personifications of Depression and Loneliness, points out all that I didn't like about this book. As someone who has lived with depression for over 20 years, I can relate to someone like Tracy Thompson personifying our illness as The Beast.  But Elizabeth Gilbert's contrived metaphor in chapter 16 combined with her opinionated view of the use of often-life-saving medication made me feel like her "depression" was something she dabbled in and then decided would make for this cool personification thing. Didn't work for me. While I respect each person's right to make her own decision about treatment options, I worry when a book that is so widely read as this one reinforces the dangerous assumption that depression is some kind of weakness that can be overcome and that one should "strive" to be free of the medications that help so many people survive and thrive in spite of the debilitating effects of depression. I'll step off my pedestal now, but if you want to read more, I suggest you visit the category of Depression on my blog, read Tracy Thompson's books and have an open mind about an illness that is terribly misunderstood.

I usually try NOT to read other critics' comments on the books I review, lest I be swayed from my initial take on a book. But when I clicked on Ms. Gilbert's site, I couldn't help but notice the following:

New York Times: "If a more likable writer than Gilbert is currently in print, I haven't found him or her.

Let me introduce you to Anne Lamott, Alan Alda, Nora Ephron, John Grogan, Claire Fontaine, Laurie Notaro and Ruth Reichl to name just a few.

And:

Entertainment Weekly: "This insightful, funny account of her travels reads like a mix of Susan Orlean and Frances Mayes."

I've read Susan Orlean and she's no Susan Orlean.

I hope you are the person who found this book at the Apple Store...that is the kind of serendipity that makes life so much fun. I hope that if you have read Eat, Pray, Love, you either want to tear me to pieces for my insights or delight in finding another dissenter in the Eat, Pray, Love-fest. Let the comments begin!

Di

Sicko - the Sequel

Sicko, the 2007 Michael Moore film, was an eye-opener for those of us who breathe a sigh of relief every day that we are fortunate enough to have insurance. We are annoyed by the capriciousness of our insurance companies when they inexplicably deny coverage for a new medication that would forestall a lengthy illness and possible hospitalization and blithely cover medications that are subject to potential abuse or dependence (I won't name them...we all know what they are) because they are available in generic form! But we soldier on, the lucky ones, the insured.

As it happens, having insurance is not a guarantee of good medical care or of avoiding the financial disaster that looms when the uninsured cross the threshold of any medical facility. Moore points out the many examples of insured citizens in the U.S. receiving care that is inferior to third world counties or being bankrupted due to the whims of managed care. While we await the election of a Democrat who will tackle the monster of healthcare reform, we can rest assured that if things get too bad, we can always go to France or England or...Cuba?

OK, now on to the sequel. The sequel will tackle the question of how insurance companies can possibly make money when they don't seem to have a lick of business sense in their collective heads.

Here's a quick question to determine if YOU have a lick of business sense:

You are a large, well-known insurance company (for the sake of this example, we'll call it True Floss...since I don't want to cast aspersions on any particular company). You need to explain to a customer what was paid and what wasn't paid during a 13 day hospital stay. What is the most cost-effective means of accomplishing this goal?

(a.) e-mail the pertinent documents to the customer

(b.) mail an itemized listing of the charges and benefits via mail

(c.) send a total of 16 separate Explanation of Benefits forms in 16 separate envelopes with 16 separate stamps on the same day

Hmmm...cue Jeopardy music. Yes, YOU have a lick of business sense because you opted for (a.), with (b.) as a reasonable back-up. True Floss, in its infinite wisdom, chose (c.)

So in the mail today I received a separate Explanation of Benefits for EACH DAY I was in the hospital, a separate EOB for the ER, a separate EOB for each test I had and strangely, a separate EOB for my release from the hospital. They even charge you to LEAVE!!! This takes us up to the day of my discharge. I have been back to the hospital as an outpatient five times since then, so I can only imagine the trees that are shivering in their boots in anticipation of the mountain of paper THESE visits will waste!

How can I feel like I am making an impact when I recycle my newspaper, carefully breakdown, fold and recycle boxes and painstakingly rescue every can or bottle from the trash and bring it to the proper bin in the garage? The amount I recycle in a week can be undone by one insurance company's paperwork on one hospital stay.

I have no more words.

Di

Di Does Art

While at the hospital, my favorite thing to do was Occupational Therapy which was usually some kind of artwork. I found out that when forced, I could do artwork I would never try at home. Here are some of my pieces:

A tile mosaic I made for my daughter. I did a tile backsplash once in my kitchen. Now I think I will want to do a tile backsplash and make my own tiles.

Leather stamped keychain I made for my son.

A watercolor that my sister says she would like to have for her house!!! My first piece sold.

So next time you are presented with an art project, don't automatically assume you can't do it. You might just be able to do it...and it might just do you some good!

Di