OATS (6)

          I suppose I should really get back to blogging, although I can't say I have been deluged with queries about my absence, or noticed a demand for new posts in MM. Right now I am feeling like those people who aren't ready to return to the office. Actually, I have far less motivation than they, since I don't get paid. Still, it is depressingly dreary outside and I might as well do this since there is nothing else I can do for which I might be paid.

   Apart from lacking in motivation, I am also lacking in both intelligence and imagination and am having difficulty in coming up with a topic, although maybe all I need to do is ask the AI guy: "What should I write about?" The answer, however,  might be something difficult, about which I know nothing, so I will now try to come up with something. 
   I have decided to remain contrarian and will revive an old series, even though the subject is not a positive one, especially at the beginning of a new year. It is basically about getting old and dying, which many people do, even those who think 80 is the new 50. 
   The series is called "OATS" and that is an acronym for OldAgeThemeS. It was originally undertaken to irritate a couple who I will describe as "never-deathers", in denial of the existence of doom. "OATS" is, in other words, not for those who are feeling their oats and don't want to be reminded of mortality, or for those wasting their time at the gym.
   I see that the first "OATS" was done five years ago and I confess that the couple for whom it was intended is still around. About four of those years, however, were spent by them, not me, in abstinence and the gym and they will be irritated to be reminded of that. That first post has the title "Contrarian News For Old Codgers: The News Is Not Good", and it consist of a discussion of Michael Kinsley's book, Old Age: A Beginners Guide. 
   The second "OATS" post, does what this one will also do -- offer you better writing that is provided by someone else. The writer in the first post is Margaret Drabble and you are presented with some of her thoughts which were found in, The Dark Flood Rises. For her comments see: "More Contrarian News for Old Timers." 
   Now, finally, here is some good prose about the bad subject of old age.

   This is from Staring At the Sun by Julian Barnes.

  “Jean had often wondered what it would be like to grow old. When she had been in her fifties, and still feeling in her thirties, she heard a talk on the radio by a gerontologist.”Put cotton wool in your ears’, he had said, ‘and pebbles in your shoes. Pull on rubber gloves. Smear vaseline over your glasses, and there you have it: ‘instant ageing’. 
  It was a good test, but it naturally contained a flaw. You never did age instantly; you never did have a sharp memory for comparison. Nor, when she looked back over the last forty of her hundred years, did it seem initially, or even mainly, a matter of sensory deprivation. You grew old first not in your own eyes, but in other people’s eyes; then, slowly, you agreed with their opinion of you. It wasn’t that you couldn’t walk as far as you used to, it was that other people didn’t expect you to; and if they didn’t, then it needed vain obstinacy to persist.”....
 “ She lived increasingly inside her head, and was content to be there. Memories, there were far too many memories; they raced across her sky like Irish weather. Her feet with each succeeding year, seemed a little farther away from her hands; she dropped things, stumbled a little, was fearful; but mostly what she noticed was the smirking paradox of old age; how everything seemed to take longer than it used to, but how, despite this, time seemed to go faster.”
[Jean above is 100, but this is a fictional work.]

Sources for the Morbidly Curious:
  The third OATS discusses MAID, a subject to which I will soon return.
  The fourth OATS suggests that all that brain exercise may not be good for you. 
  The fifth OATS is about Barbara Ehrenreich's book, Natural Causes, of which she died.

WEATHER Feelings

"BUT, IT FEELS LIKE...." 
   The screen shot above was taken on the 24th of April when we returned from the south where we had ventured in search of warm breezes and some colour -- other than grey. If you are familiar with Fahrenheit you may recognize that the predicted temperature that day was below 50, although you should notice that it was going to feel even cooler, before things begin to feel much hotter. Apparently the weather in any season is now intolerable for many who feel it is too hot or cold. My complaint is not with the weather and it is a complaint with which you are familiar.
   Since I am not yet in blogging mode and far more important things should be undertaken, I will present here past pronouncements related to this subject. Out of fear of repeating myself, I went looking for them and you might as well benefit from my research since Mulcahy's Miscellany has no index. Besides, some of the posts contain better writing by other people. This list is not exhaustive and more weather-related items are found in, for example, the very popular feature "Beyond the Palewall." I need to remember this if I am low on subject matter and tempted to bring up the weather again.

"The Human Suffering Index" 
   The HSI sums things up pretty well as does the illustration by Edward Munch which you will recognize. Also included is, "The Dead of Winter" which helpfully includes a typically contrarian argument about the virtues of Fahrenheit over Celsius" for reporting the temperatures we feel. 

"The Wind Chill" is about it and also the "HUMIDEX," both of which are typically exaggerated as these quotations indicate:
"But why does every winter day have to be described as colder than it really is? Listen to the radio and count how often the announcer says: “ … but it’s going to feel like …” Increasingly I’m even hearing wind chill given more prominence than the actual temperature."
and:
"Here’s an example. On one day in a recent summer, I found Detroit and next-door Windsor with temperatures near 28 C. The Weather Network gave Detroit a “feels like” reading of 30.5. But in Windsor, Environment Canada had a humidex of 38."

"Weather Statement" includes an illustration which indicates that the "Summer" in Canada occupies only a tiny bit of our calendar and that soon we will be saying, "So Long Summer." 

The Bonus: The Answer to the Question, "What is a "Nice Day?"
"Have A Nice Day."

Post Script: Things Could Be Worse

All that is needed is another man and a horse.

 

  To make you feel better, I will suggest that you would feel worse if you were to wake up in Lahore, Pakistan, which is illustrated above and described below (from, the Washington Post, April 22, 2024, "As the Concrete World Comes Apart, I Hope For More Flowers in the Cracks," Mohsin, Hamid:)

"The first thing that strikes me about the world is that it is has become poisonous. We cannot breathe. From November until February, the blue sky is hidden behind a low ceiling of gray. This is not from clouds but from smoke. It is uncanny to take a flight in these months, to burst only seconds after takeoff into the blindingly bright light and see not a city but a gray blanket below. The cooler months used to be months of outdoor sports and running around with my cousins and shielding eyes with the blades of our hands from the sun. Now they are months when the land receives too little heat to push the smoke into the heavens, and so it settles all over the riverine plains, prevented from proceeding north by the mass of the Himalayas, choking us.
My children are not permitted to do outdoor sports in these months. Indoors, they sleep to the whirring sound of air purifiers, machines I had not imagined until recently. When we played in the winter as children, we would quench our thirst by working the shaft of the hand-pump in my grandparents’ house. Now, our children do not go out to play. The hand-pumps are all dry. We have depleted the aquifer. A machine bore is required to obtain water from hundreds of meters down, and that water too has been contaminated. Our world has become poisonous: The fireflies are gone, the children cough like smokers, the water is full of heavy metals. The economic miracle we have been promised has arrived, and it is a miracle of despoliation."

More Contrarian News for Old Codgers (OATS3)

 The News Continues to Be Bad

(The Death of Elaine)

   Loyal subscribers will know that OATS is an acronym for Old Age ThemeS and the themes are typically negative in tone. It is produced to offset the propaganda to which you are otherwise subjected. If, like most of my friends, you are determined to avoid decrepitude and are going to live healthily and happily until you die while exercising at the age of 110, give or take a few years, you should stop reading now.

MAID

   MAID is a Canadian acronym for Medical Assistance in Dying.  Those of us codgers who have a more realistic view of our future generally welcomed the news back in 2016 when it was decided that we had a constitutional right to determine when we might choose to leave. There were those, however, who disagreed and were determined to erect speed bumps so we could not exercise too quickly the right we were granted. The number of obstacles that were to be encountered if you were attempting to pull the plug, were so numerous that you were more likely to die of old age than you were from having a last shot of Single Malt and an injection from your doctor. Even as I type, Bill C-7 is being re-considered in an attempt to make dying easier. But not too easy. 

No Way To Go

   I am actually feeling well and had not been thinking about MAID until I remembered an article from a few months ago. It was about an 83 year old gentleman from Nova Scotia who was suffering from COPD and had had enough. He did all the hard work that is required to overcome the obstacles constructed by those who did not want him to have an easy passage. His MAID request was finally approved, however, and he was good to go. Although it is difficult for Canadians to choose to die, what made this story newsworthy was the fact that another hurdle was erected right before the finish line and placed there by his wife and her lawyers.

Husband Wins - He Dies

   The article from a few months ago which caught my attention was about the efforts of the wife of the gentlemen above, who initiated court proceedings to prevent his passing. About this, he was not happy and they stopped speaking after nearly 50 years of marriage. It was one of those 'He said', 'She said' situations. He said he was suffering and suffocating, she said he was anxious and mentally incapable of making such a decision. More important, one suspects, were her moral objections to MAID. He moved out. I wondered what happened.

  In this case, the husband did have the last word. After a few months of legal proceedings, the wife's request was denied. He pulled the plug. It is a sad story. The ones included in OATS usually are.

Sources:

  "Husband, 83, Dies With Medical Assistance After Wife's Court Bid To Stop Him Fails: Jack Sorenson of Bridgewater, N.S., Died on Saturday Following Legal Battle With Wife Over MAID," Taryn Grant, CBC News, Oct. 6, 2020.

  For Bill C-7 see this recent G&M editorial: "Reasonably Forseeable Litigation," Oct.16, 2020. 

   Given that the Bill attempts to make dying a little easier, there are many who are opposed. See, for example, this statement from the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops:
"Today, more than 50 religious leaders from across Canada released an open letter to all Canadians in opposition to Bill C-7 An Act to amend the Criminal Code (medical assistance in dying). This ecumenical and interfaith message is a response by religious leaders to the legislation introduced by the federal government on 5 October 2020 which seeks to expand the eligibility criteria for euthanasia and assisted suicide (euphemistically called “medical assistance in dying”) by removing the “reasonable foreseeability of natural death” criterion currently in the Criminal Code, and by loosening some of the existing “safeguards” allowing patients whose death is “reasonably foreseeable” to waive final consent to receiving euthanasia by making an advance directive."

   If you think MAID is a good idea, support for making the process easier is found here:
Dying With Dignity: It's Your Life. It's Your Choice. 

For the official government web site see MAID. 

For more postings in the OATS Series see here and here. 

The Bonus:

  Usually the OATS postings are accompanied by this image:

  The new one at the top is a painting by Homer Watson, The Death of Elaine. Now you know who the boulevard in Kitchener is named after. The image is from Homer Watson: Life & Work, by Brian Foss. Both the image and the biography are found on the website of the Art Canada Institute.

THE PTSD PANDEMIC

Trauma Inflation

The Present Intrudes Again

If you look at the portion of this blog that offers the rather flimsy rationale for its existence you will find that I said I would likely be writing about benignly boring events and uncontroversial subjects which occurred in the remote past. Now here I am again pontificating, this time about PTSD, a topic about which I know little, but which cannot these days be avoided. And again I will be taking a contrarian position which is unfortunate since the holder of such an unpopular view will seem to be devoid of any sympathy for the suffering. (At least, I am consistent; see my earlier post about Stress and the “Anxiety Industry).

One does not have to scan a wide variety of national or international sources to find evidence of trauma inflation. Local stories about the apparent rise in the incidence of PTSD among EMS workers, first responders and the police are increasing.  Even those less directly associated with a critical trauma incident can become a victim. A recent article focussed on the PTSD experienced by a juror who had to sit through a trial involving the kidnapping, rape and murder of a young child. “Symptoms have been debilitating, she says, including memory loss, bouts of extreme anger and a shopping addiction that drained her retirement savings and children’s education plans.” Perhaps it is a good thing that in Ontario, members of juries are not allowed to discuss the deliberations with others, thus possibly preventing the infectious spread of PTSD.

I am pleased to live in a compassionate society and in such a place one expects compensation as well as commiseration. As a result, a local hospital is doubling the size of its “operational stress injuries clinic” and the province is “dedicating money and resources to preventing and mitigating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in first responders.” Earlier this year (2016) the Ontario Government introduced Bill 163, Supporting Ontario’s First Responder’s Act (Post-traumatic Stress Disorder), 2016.  The Bill sets out proposed changes to the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act, 1997 (“WSIA”) and the Ministry of Labour Act.

“The amendments to the WSIA cover a variety of first responder’s, including among others, firefighters, including volunteer firefighters and part time firefighters, fire investigators, paramedics, and police officers.  The amendments would create a presumption that a first responder who is diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder is eligible for WSIA benefits as if the PTSD was a personal injury.  For purposes of entitlement, the Bill removes the need to prove causation or a link to the workplace, and creates the presumption that the PTSD arose out of and in the course of the worker’s employment unless the contrary is shown by the employer.  Workers will not be entitled to benefits for PTSD arising out of an employer’s decisions or actions relating to the worker’s employment including a decision to change the work, the working conditions or to discipline or terminate the worker’s employment.” For now, at least, the last sentence seems to indicate that PTSD cannot be claimed if one is simply shouted at by a supervisor.

In the case of the traumatized juror, the jury is still out. Victims of violent crime are entitled to compensation from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board and in this instance the juror argues that she also is a victim of the crime. Her case will be considered soon by the Ontario Court of Appeal. Some fear that “compensating a juror would open the floodgates so anyone who sits through a extremely violent trial — judges, court staff, prosecutors, defence lawyers, police and journalists — will want compensation.”

There is some evidence from abroad that the floodgates already have been opened. A veteran BBC war reporter with some experience with circumstances we will simply describe here as ‘difficult’, reported on the expansion of PTSD claims among civilians who generally operated in more peaceful and serene environments. According to his report on the “Trauma Industry”, it is now worth 7 billion (pounds sterling). One person interviewed for the program indicated that he thought that PTSD was being over-diagnosed: “ Dr.James Thompson, a trauma psychologist, made the comments on BBC's Panorama programme investigating the growing army of sufferers. The programme claims that the NHS now treats an estimated 220,000 people a year suffering with post-traumatic stress disorder, a diagnosis once reserved for those coming back from war zones. The disorder is adding enormously to the burgeoning multibillion personal accident industry business, it said. Those being diagnosed include people who have had a minor traffic accident, bullying in the workplace, even in the schoolyard. In the programme, titled “The Trauma Industry,” Dr Thompson suggested it was part of the growing "victim culture"."And that is always attractive to all of us. Now you can teach yourself PTSD on the internet within five minutes." “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Has Become a "Fashionable Diagnosis" That is Far Too Liberally Diagnosed…”,  Richard Alleyne, The Telegraph, July 27, 2009.

Trivializing Trauma

There has been an increase in both the types of things classified as ‘traumatic’ and in the number of those individuals likely to experience them. A term originally applied to physical injuries is now applied to psychic ones and those affected include not only those who experienced the incident, or witnessed it, but even to those who have learned or heard about it. Perhaps it is the case that not every unfortunate episode is traumatic nor is everything that is horrible horrific. The merely distressing does not have to be totally debilitating. If one uses the term ‘traumatic’ to describe a bad day at the arcade, how does one describe a day in Aleppo?

Stoicism

Since you probably remain unconvinced by my argument, here is a piece by someone better credentialed than I and I encourage you to look at the full article:

“How we Became a Country Where Bad Hair Days and Campaign Signs Cause ‘Trauma’”, by Nick Haslam, Washington Post, August, 12, 2016. ( Haslam is a professor of psychology and head of the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Melbourne.)

“Trauma is being used to describe an increasingly wide array of events. By today’s standards, it can be caused by a micro-aggression, reading something offensive without a trigger warning or even watching upsetting news unfold on television. As one blogger wrote, “Trauma now seems to be pretty much anything that bothers anyone, in any way, ever.”

This is not a mere terminological fad. It reflects a steady expansion of the word’s meaning by psychiatrists and the culture at large. And its promiscuous use has worrying implications. When we describe misfortune, sadness or even pain as trauma, we redefine our experience. Using the word “trauma” turns every event into a catastrophe, leaving us helpless, broken and unable to move on.

All of this is problematic. The way we interpret an experience affects how we respond to it. Interpreting adversity as trauma makes it seem calamitous and likely to have lasting effects. When an affliction is seen as traumatic, it becomes something overwhelming — something that breaks us, that is likely to produce post-traumatic symptoms and that requires professional intervention. Research shows that people who tend to interpret negative events as catastrophic and long-lasting are more susceptible to post-traumatic reactions. Perceiving challenging life experiences as traumas may therefore increase our vulnerability to them.

Another fine invention of the ancient Greeks was stoicism. Contrary to popular opinion, the stoics did not think we should simply endure or brush off adversity. Rather, they believed that we should confront suffering with composure and rational judgment. We should all cultivate stoic wisdom to judge the difference between traumas that can break us apart and normal adversities that we can overcome.

Some Sources:
“Juror at Trial of Michael Rafferty, Found Guilty of Killing Tori Stafford, Suffering PTSD, Looking for Compensation,” Jane Sims, The London Free Press

Tuesday, October 18, 2016.
“London's Parkwood PTSD Clinic for Veterans, Soldiers, and RCMP Officers Expanding,” John Miner, The London Free Press, Friday, October 21, 2016.

When I poked around a little bit, I was surprised to learn that the founder of a major PTSD Association has London connections and she would certainly offer a rebuttal to this piece. For more see:“Struggling for a Way to Just Get Over It: After Witnessing a Horrific Car Crash, Ute Lawrence Couldn’t Find a Group to Help Her Recover from PTSD, So She Started Her Own,” Gerald Hannon, The Globe and Mail, Aug. 4, 2008. [The accident was indeed horrific - the fog crash on the 401 Sept. 3, 1999, 87 cars, 45 injured and 8 dead- and Ms Lawrence was in it.]

Ute Lawrence is the CEO and founder of the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Association and has published The Power of Trauma.
(Since I have not ‘gone public’ with this blog she is unlikely to read this, nor is my son who is a first responder - nor for that matter is his mother, who is in the ‘industry’ and would surely be opposed to these opinions.)

See also this interesting article which shows how the definition of trauma has evolved: “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit Put the War Behind Him. Why Can’t We?” Annals of Psychology and, "Getting Over It,” Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker, Nov. 8, 2004.

“Somehow in the intervening decades our understanding of what it means to experience a traumatic event has changed.”