Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Tuesday Medicine

Ups, downs and sideways wanderings along the river of life on a cold Tuesday morning.

When Healers Go Bad: In London, a married respitatory physician tried to poison his pregnant mistress, a 33-yeard old single mother, by slipping abortion-inducing drugs into her tea and orange juice.

In Minnesota, a male nurse is said to have participated in international suicide chat rooms online, and stands accused of encouraging several suicides while chatting there, for his own amusement.

According to nursing board documents, Melchert-Dinkel suggested to others in the chat rooms that he could die at the same time they did, and he twice watched through his webcam as they took their own lives.
In Ohio, an especially sordid case of two pediatricians, twin brothers in fact, charged with sexually abusing their young patients. One of the two doctor brothers, Mark Blankenburg, has been found guilty of 16 charges of molestation, and awaits conviction on a further 25 charges of bribery and drug trafficking, in relation to his attempts to keep his young victims from talking about their abuse. His twin brother awaits trial for a further 22 charges of his own. The jury heard graphic testimony from four young men, three of whose lives have been scarred by the doctor's repeated abuse:

Three of the accusers developed substance-abuse problems. Two became convicted felons, one of whom is serving the rest of his life in prison for nearly killing a police officer.
Fortunately, the few bad are far outweighed by the many good. God bless them for the good work that they do.

And speaking of healing: Do yourself a favor and spare the time to watch the inspiring video of octagenarian couple Frances and Marlow Cowan enlivening the Mayo Clinic with a wonderful example of how much of a difference we can make just by making the ordinary, extra-ordinary:



[Hat Tip to Henry at Why Homeschool]

And courtesy of the Mayo Clinic's blog, an equally inspiring interview with the remarkable couple:

2 comments:

Neo said...

watched the performance, was really nice, quite a talented couple I should say.

Charles Henry said...

Yes, and isn't it interesting how the teamwork they display at the piano is so mirrored by how they conduct themselves during the interview, in the second video... one performance, yet given by two people.

I wonder, when our generation reaches that age, if similar harmony is in store for us, or if we're conditioning ourselves, through our many individual and solitary past-times like listening to i-pods and, well, surfing the net, to fall short of achieving that same degree of shared mind and soul with our beloved.

Are we forgetting how to give of ourselves to the extent as seen in the interview, where we leave room for others to so fully compliment our own existence?

Those are the thoughts that have stayed with me since watching these videos this morning..