Worst Fears Research Articles

Die Wurstmaschine; or, How Sausage Is Made

Die Wurstmaschine; or, How Sausage Is Made David E. Barclay (bio) Interstate 75 north of Atlanta was a gigantic parking lot on that rush hour evening in September. Nothing was moving, and my car was stuck in the middle of it. To make things worse, the temperature was over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (about 40 Celsius, for non-US readers). Suddenly my cell phone rang, confirming my worst fears. The delivery service that the GSA was using at the time had made a horrific mistake, and had not told us about it. The first half of all the names on the GSA membership list had received two copies of the conference program, while the second group of members hadn’t received any at all. What to do? And what on earth had I let myself in for? In the fall of 2005, as I was about to assume the office that Gerry Kleinfeld had so ably occupied for twenty-nine years, I remarked that, for the first time in my life, I actually felt a pang of empathy for Leo von Caprivi. As that unfortunate chancellor quickly learned, it’s not easy to follow a legend. Indeed, nothing could have prepared me for the reality of the job I assumed. Looking back at the past decade, much of my work as executive director has consisted of learning how to coordinate the production of a kind of intellectual and organizational sausage. Generally, one prefers not to know how the sausage is made when one goes to the grocery store or the Schnellimbiss. One just wants some assurance that quality is guaranteed. That’s what we try to do in the GSA. We’re happy if our members come to a smoothly functioning conference without noticing what’s gone into the sausage, or whether problems have arisen during its production. But the sausage-making machine has become increasingly complex in recent years, as we’ve grown from about 1,300 members to more than 2,300. So it might be useful to devote a few words to the sausage-making process, and to do so (I hope) without descending into a boring job description. I can’t possibly discuss all aspects of GSA sausage-making here. So let’s just look briefly at conference hotels. Among my various tasks, I’m ultimately the person responsible for the entire annual conference. The sausage making begins, of course, with hotel selection. These days, given the harsh reality of hotel economics and the dearth of affordable conference hotels that can meet our needs, we have to book hotels at least five years in advance. When I started, I knew nothing about the art of [End Page 669] negotiating hotel contracts, and even now they come with hidden surprises. When you book far ahead of time, you have to guess the number of rooms you’ll need, both for sleeping and for conference sessions. You need to anticipate travel costs and airport convenience. You have to schedule in various regions of the country. You have to worry about location and weather. You have to worry about troglodytic state politicians passing discriminatory legislation that could affect our members. You have to be prepared for last-minute negotiations for extra rooms, which sometimes are woefully inadequate for our purposes. You have to deal with the vagaries of trends in the travel business. You have to remind hotels constantly that we are academics with limited means, and have to work endlessly to keep costs under control. Sometimes you get it right, and sometimes you get it wrong. I’ve learned a whole vocabulary of hotel terms, from “pre-con” to “breakout” to “attrition clauses” to “force majeure” to “F & B minimums” to “BEO.” Even though we’ve tried to avoid problems, we sometimes get blindsided. There was the hotel that had double-booked our exhibitors’ space with a church group. There was the sales manager who accidentally entered the wrong dates for the conference into his calendar. There was the wedding party right in the middle of our sessions. There was the hotel that didn’t understand that we needed more bartenders for our receptions and more coffee stands for...

A qualitative exploration of fear of cancer recurrence (FCR) amongst Australian and Canadian breast cancer survivors.

PurposeFew studies have explored coping strategies used by cancer survivors to deal with fear of cancer recurrence (FCR), and little research has been conducted on the specific content of recurrence fears. This study aims to qualitatively explore the strategies used by younger breast cancer survivors to cope with FCR and whether women with low, medium and high levels of FCR employ different coping strategies. An additional aim was to understand the specific content of worst recurrence fears.MethodTwenty Australian and 10 Canadian women aged ≤45 years diagnosed with stages 0–II disease at least 1 year prior completed telephone interviews. The transcripts of audio-taped interviews were analysed using the qualitative methodology of transcendental realism.ResultsWomen with higher FCR described using distraction and avoidance and fewer coping skills. The fear of death was a common worst fear at all levels of FCR. However, participants with higher FCR described more elaborate fears of death often involving themes of pain and suffering. Cross-cultural differences were not observed.ConclusionsWomen with higher FCR report using fewer and more avoidance-based coping techniques. Whilst many participants feared death, those with higher FCR reported more elaborate death fears. Women with high levels of FCR may benefit from learning a greater repertoire of coping skills. Understanding the specific content of FCR can help refine existing psychological treatment protocols for FCR. Implications for FCR treatment are discussed.

Introduction to the Focus Section on the 2015 Gorkha, Nepal, Earthquake

It has long been recognized that Nepal faces high earthquake hazard, with the most recent large ( M w>7.5) events in 1833 and 1934. When the 25 April 2015 M w 7.8 Gorkha earthquake struck, it appeared initially to be a realization of worst fears. In spite of its large magnitude and proximity to the densely populated Kathmandu valley, however, the level of damage was lower than anticipated, with most vernacular structures within the valley experiencing little or no structural damage. Outside the valley, catastrophic damage did occur in some villages, associated with the high vulnerability of stone masonry construction and, in many cases, landsliding. The unexpected observations from this expected earthquake provide an urgent impetus to understand the event itself and to better characterize hazard from future large Himalayan earthquakes. Toward this end, articles in this special focus section present and describe available data sets and initial results that better illuminate and interpret the earthquake and its effects.

Letter to the Editor concerning “Systematic review of the effect of dynamic fixation systems compared with rigid fixation in the anterior cervical spine” by Campos RR, Botelho RV (Eur Spine J. 2014 Feb; 23(2):298–304)

We read, ‘‘Systematic review of the effect of dynamic fixation systems compared with rigid fixation in the anterior cervical spine’’ by Campos RR, Botelho RV [1], who should be congratulated for their literature review; nevertheless, we would like to point out several issues. The worse fear about using dynamic plates would be the clinical impact of lordosis loss; as shown by Ghahreman and colleagues who analyzed ABC use [2], even though there is a partial loss (around 50 %) of gained lordosis after surgery, there is still a global lordotic gain, which may explain why changes in cervical angles do not affect clinical outcome in the study. The second fear is about adjacent segment irritation and subsequent early degeneration (which may just happen because of the surgery itself) as with axial dynamic plates there may be plate invasion of the disc space (not any longer with modern designs), which seems to be caused mainly because of surgical technique, and as such can be prevented when using the DOC plate by turning it [3], and when using the ABC the screws should be placed as far as possible from the adjacent level. Once addressed these two issues, the main criticism about the review is the global approach of considering all types of dynamic plates as working identically: no distinction is made among several types of dynamic plates, as they are different not only from static plates but also among them, depending on the dynamism based on rotational or axial (uni-DOCor bilateral-ABC)—the latter also has a combined dynamism. This is important because of the three RCT studies for two level ACDF, while one study shows no difference in clinical outcome or fusion speed of static (CSLP) against rotational (Atlantis) or unidirectional axialangular dynamic plate (Premier), others favor dynamic both with C-TEK [4] (better clinical outcomes) and ABC [2] (faster fusion, including not only two but also at onelevel); further more, even dynamic plates obtain same or superior fusion results with fibular allograft compared to with autologous crest plus static [4]. Finally, the best way of assessing usefulness may be to examine complications—particularly those requiring reoperation—decrease, which should be looked at more carefully as this could be one of the mainstones for advising the use of dynamic plates; translational plates seem to decrease the rate of pseudoarthroses [3, 4].

Self-Injury and Suicide: Practical Information for College Counselors

The relationship between self-injury (SI) and suicide is largely unclear. However, researchers have suggested that clients who self-injure are at a heightened risk of suicide (Chapman & Dixon-Gordon, 2007; Toprak, Cetin, Guven, Can, & Demircan, 2011). Thus, it is important that college counselors be knowledgeable about both SI and suicide. In this article, the authors provide an overview of SI and suicide, as well as practical information for college counselors. Keywords: self-injury, suicide, counseling ********** Suicide and self-injury (SI) are complex treatment issues that can be dangerous, challenging to predict, and difficult to treat (Janis & Nock, 2008). Losing a client to suicide is likely every college counselor's worst fear. Similarly, SI evokes strong reactions from professional and lay communities alike (White, McCormick, & Kelly, 2003). Although the relationship between these two phenomena is not fully understood, researchers have found that individuals who self-injure are at an increased risk of suicide (Brausch & Gutierrez, 2010; Chapman & Dixon-Gordon, 2007; Toprak, Cetin, Guven, Can, & Demircan, 2011). Therefore, college counselors should be familiar with self-injurious behavior, signs of heightened risk, and specific indications for treatment. In this article, we present an overview of suicide and SI, followed by practical implications for the college counselor. Brief Overview of Suicide According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (USDHHS; 2009), suicide is defined as deliberate and fatal self-harm with the presence of some intent to die as a result of the behavior. Because suicide is a major worldwide public health issue (Bebbington et al., 2010), substantial effort has been directed toward achieving a better understanding of it. When discussing suicide, one needs to differentiate between risk factors, warning signs, crises, attempts, and completions. Risk factors for suicide are those factors that have been empirically linked to suicide, such as gender, age, previous suicidal attempts, psychiatric diagnosis (Rudd et al., 2006), and childhood physical abuse (Fuller-Thomson, Baker, & Brennenstuhi, 2012). Rudd et al. (2006) proposed a differentiation of warning signs for suicide from risk factors, wherein warning signs indicate a near-term threat and risk factors indicate a long-term threat. Examples of warning signs include isolation, drastic changes in mood, hopelessness, anger and acting out, and increased use of alcohol and/or drugs. Stated concisely, warning signs for suicide are behavioral and observable (Van Orden et al., 2006) and episodic and variable, and they require immediate intervention (Rudd et al., 2006). The specific events that require immediate intervention because of an imminent threat of a suicide attempt or completion are referred to as suicide crises (Rudd et al., 2006). An accurate index of suicide statistics is difficult to calculate because of the deaths under unknown or questionable circumstances. A National Vital Statistics Report issued by the USDHHS indicated a total of 35,933 completed suicides in 2008, making suicide the 11th leading cause of death in the United States that year (Minino, Xu, & Kochanek, 2010). Current data indicate a rise in suicide rates. A report issued by the American Association of Suicidology stated that 39,518 people died by suicide in 2011, making suicide the 10th leading cause of death in the United States that year (McIntosh & Drapeau, 2014). Clear rates within the college population are difficult to obtain, in part because the cause of death is not always reported to the academic institution when the death occurs off campus. However, the current estimates of completed suicide are between six (J. C. Turner, Leno, & Keller, 2013) and seven per 100,000 students (Schwarz, 2011). Across the population, one person completes suicide roughly every 13. …

The school readiness performance of a group of Grade R learners in primary schools in the Gauteng Province of South Africa

Grade R is the year before learners in South Africa start formal schooling and has been part of the General Education Training Band (GET) since 1998. New efforts are being made to enable all five- to six-year-olds to attend a Grade R class. The nine provinces of South Africa approach this problem in different ways. Some of them, like Gauteng, try to establish Grade R classes at primary schools, but in the process seem to appoint many teachers with only minimum qualifications. This article reports on research requested by the Gauteng Department of Education about the school readiness of Grade R learners. The school readiness performance of 114 Grade R learners was measured by means of a standardized school readiness test. The results confirmed the worst fears of department officials: most of the participants were not school ready after attending a year in a Grade R class. The article concludes with some recommendations, among others that attention should be given to the qualifications of teachers and that parents should become more involved.

Neural mechanisms of proactive and reactive cognitive control in social anxiety

Social anxiety—the fear of social embarrassment and negative evaluation by others—ranks among people's worst fears, and it is often thought to impair task performance. We investigated the neurocognitive processes through which trait social anxiety relates to task performance, proposing a model of the joint contributions of reactive control, theoretically associated with conflict monitoring and activity of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), and proactive control, theoretically associated with top-down regulation and activity of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). Participants varying in their degree of trait social anxiety completed the Eriksen flanker task while electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded. Task-related left dlPFC activity was indexed by relative left prefrontal EEG (inverse alpha), and conflict-related dACC activity was indexed by the N2r component of the event-related potential. Stronger activity in both regions predicted better response control, and greater social anxiety was associated with worse response control. Furthermore, for all participants, greater left prefrontal EEG activity predicted better behavioral control, but for high social anxiety participants only, greater N2r responses also predicted behavioral control. This pattern suggests that low social anxiety individuals engaged a proactive control process, driven by dlPFC activity, whereas high social anxiety individuals relied additionally on a reactive control process, driven by conflict-related dACC activity. These findings support a model of control that involves different patterns of interplay between proactive and reactive strategies and may help to explain self-regulatory impairments in social anxiety.

Willy Maykit in Space by Greg Trine (review)

Reviewed by: Willy Maykit in Space by Greg Trine April Spisak Trine, Greg Willy Maykit in Space; illus. by James Burks. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015 [208p] ISBN 978-0-544-31351-4 $13.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 3-5 Fourth-grader Willy misses his father desperately after his pop is lost during a research trip to the Amazon, but he still really wants to be able to travel to Planet Ed on a school field trip. Mom reluctantly agrees to let another of her loved ones venture far from home, but her worst fears are realized when Willy is left behind on a faraway planet after bad weather cuts the trip short. Luckily, Willy’s not alone; he has a few strong allies including a kind, funny extraterrestrial, a schoolmate (his crush!), and an android who only recently discovered the addictive magic of knock-knock jokes (astute readers may remember their own exhausting enthusiasm upon first learning to tell jokes). Together, they fend off giant monsters and manage to keep alive until they are rescued. The pace is just right, with quick scene changes keeping things moving toward what will obviously be a happy ending. The frequent illustrations break up the text effectively and also work to present the monsters as, ultimately, ridiculous and defeatable, rather than terrifying. Dad’s parallel story takes an awkwardly colonialist turn in the descriptions of the savage dark-skinned “foothunters” of the deep jungle, but the rest of the novel is effortlessly diverse in open, friendly ways, and the two stories of bold adventurers headed back toward [End Page 469] home are exhilarating. Readers seeking a speedy space thriller and fans of Trine’s other series will be well pleased with this outing. Copyright © 2015 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Concessions or Coercion? How Governments Respond to Restive Ethnic Minorities

Destabilized multiethnic states and empires are environments that are highly susceptible to violent ethnonationalist conflict. Conflicts between states built on the ruins of such empires and their minorities are especially common. James Fearon has famously argued that these conflicts are the result of minorities' rational incentives to rebel, which in turn are the result of newly independent states' inability to guarantee that these minorities will not be discriminated against if they acquiesce to citizenship, as well as expectations that over time the balance of power will shift against minorities as states consolidate their institutions. States can, however, take steps to reassure their minorities. The puzzle is why they often fail to do so. In fact, states often adopt policies that confirm minorities' worst fears, pushing them toward rebellion. Such action may be precipitated by a state's belief that a minority is motivated by a separatist agenda rather than by the desire to have its concerns and grievances satisfactorily addressed. If secession is a minority's primary objective, then concessions intended to demobilize the minority will only make the state more vulnerable to future demands and separatist bids. The existence of third parties with incentives to support minority separatism exacerbates the problem. The violent and nonviolent minority disputes in post-Soviet Georgia illustrate these findings.

Tu1271 An Inflammatory Bowel Disease Patient's Worst Fears: A Prospective Evaluation of Quality of Life Following Permanent Ileostomy Creation

sensations and is heightened in panic disorders. Private body consciousness is attendance to internal bodily states and is associated with greater frequency and intensity of chronic pain. Dissociation is neglect of body states and affects managing chronic diseases. Body awareness is healthy attention placed on the body and processes, and is improved in mindfulness based psychotherapy. Aims: The study aimed to identify, in CD patients, constructs meaningful in psychotherapy, hypothesizing that emotion processing distress and body connection issues would be present in severe disease. Methods: A prospective crosssectional study was conducted at St. Paul's Hospital, Vancouver, BC, Canada. Fifty outpatients participated; 36% were in remission, 30% had mild activity, and 34% had moderate-to severe activity. Participants completed validated surveys, including: the Emotional Processing Scale, Scale of Body Connection, Private Body Consciousness Scale, and Body Vigilance Scale. Scores were compared to control standards derived from the general population. The Harvey Bradshaw Index was used to assess CD severity. Results: Moderate-to severe disease patients emotion processing distress was significantly greater than healthy controls and remission (p<0.001, p<0.001; Figure 1). CD activity was significantly correlated to emotion processing distress (r=0.458, p=0.001). In remission Irritable Bowel Syndrome-like symptoms were associated with significantly greater emotional suppression (p<0.05). Moderate-to severe patients body vigilance was significantly greater than healthy controls and remission (p<0.001, p=0.0069; Table 1). Moderate-to severe patients private body consciousness was significantly greater than healthy controls and chronic pain controls (p=0.01, p<0.0001). Body awareness was significantly reduced in moderate-to severe disease than healthy controls (p<0.0001). Body dissociation was significantly correlated to emotion processing distress (r=0.69, p<0.001). Conclusions: This study, using validated psychological surveys indicates emotion processing distress and body awareness issues in moderate-to severe Crohn's, where theoretically, psychological treatments would be most helpful. Table 1. Body Vigilance AVG of Crohn's Disease Subgroups Versus Controls

Shiva’s dance of the relational interface

In the midst of the turbulence of digitally mediated world redefining our sensory experiences, whether in the form of artificial life, biological robotics, trans-humanism, virtual identity, we note a concern about the vulnerability of the self. As Greenfield (2009) notes that when this individual sense of self is threatened (e.g. electronic surveillance), our very worst fears are ignited, since there no longer exists a ‘fire wall’ of group identity, family or social identity, between the inner self and the outside world. Sennett (1998) in his book, The Corrosion of Character, draws our attention to the turbulence of fragmented self and notes that in the brave new economy, the fragmented or dislocated nature of self-experience moves to the fore, thereby setting the scenario for an emotionally adrift and vulnerable self, losing control of the purpose of life and feeling the loss of the sense of the self. (ibid:130). It is held that central to the turbulence of the self and society, is the dominance of technologic of seeing things in terms of the I–It relation, objects of calculation, moving away from the I–Thou framework of judgement. It is this shift from judgement to calculation (Weizenbaum 1976) which leads to perceiving human relations, may they be social, cultural, ethical, economic, governance, in terms of I–It relations. The summary on Martin Buber’s I and Thou (SparkNotes Editors 2014) notes that Buber looks at modern society and finds: ‘how it is entirely built up based on the mode of I–It. Politics, economics, public institutions, even much of personal life, are all fundamentally grounded in the fact that we view every other being as an It, rather than as a Thou. Modern man has come to feel alienated fundamentally because modern society is exclusively an It-world. Existential angst, worries of meaninglessness, and the sense of impending doom that most modern human beings feel at some point in their life (often in the dead of night, when they cannot sleep) are all the result of our strict reliance on experience to the exclusion of encounter’. Bloch (2010) and Scott (2002) give a deep insight into Buber’s I–Thou and I–It relations, in which Buber sets out a philosophy of relating. The experiencing I in an I–It relation is an objective observer rather than an active participant in this mode of engaging the world. In the I– Thou relation, we are present with others; it is the presence of others which influences our own sense of presence (Gill 2015) and creates an environment for us to be active participants rather than just mere objective observers. In our multipolar world of reality (observed) and actuality (the world as it is), I–It and I–Thou relations, in many ways, intersect, overlap, converge and diverge, making us seek a balance between these relations in a way that valorises their purpose and impact. In this perspective, we may say that we are seeking a relational interface of balance in the sense of harmony, kyosei, Yin-Yang, Symiotics, Swikriti (Gill 2009). The Dancing Shiva or Nataraja (Ramachandran 2012) depicts the very spirit of balance of actuality and reality of our universe, and from our perspective, provides a holistic model for conceptualising, creating and building relational interfaces. In viewing metaphysic as ‘beyond’ the physical, Rao (2014) gives an insight into the idea of subject (I, Thou) and object (It). In accepting, One-Godhead as the ‘ultimate’, Monotheistic religions (e.g. Judaism, Christianity and Islam) accept duality of subject (the worshipper) and the Object (the Worshipped—the God). He further says that although Monism (Non-dualism) appears to deny Godhead, it accepts God as having an ontological status at least ad hoc. What is of interest to us in the case of the K. S. Gill (&) University of Brighton, Brighton, UK e-mail: kgillbton@yahoo.co.uk

Once bitten

Jane Bates encounters her worst fear

Courage is not the absence of fear: responding to the Ebola outbreak in Liberia.

Courage is not the absence of fear: responding to the Ebola outbreak in Liberia.

Intralesional cryosurgery for the treatment of upper lip keloid following deep chemical peeling

Scarring following chemical peeling of the face is the worst fear for the treating physician. This case report describes the successful treatment of a large mature keloid of the upper lip following deep chemical peeling by using intralesional cryosurgery.

The Limits of White Memory: Slavery, Violence and the Amistad Incident

This article addresses the Amistad incident, and the evolving way this event was viewed by Connecticut journalists and residents; an examination of the language used in contemporary newspapers reveals why the Amistad story was largely forgotten in popular imagination in the United States until the 1980s, and completely forgotten in Sierra Leone, the homeland of the captives. The Amistad displayed the nation's most racist beliefs, along with its worst fears, in Connecticut newspaper accounts, accounting for the discomfort with which Southerners in particular regarded the case. The rebellious African kidnap victims were exotic visitors to Connecticut, eliciting much commentary about the “ignoble savages” who might be cannibals, but most certainly seemed to be murderers with insight and intellect; more troubling, they were men – this seemed indisputable – and they were fighting courageously and against the odds for their own freedom, the pivotal American value. In a culture that evaluated savagery visually, there was much to identify as “savage,” but, nonetheless, as the Africans came to reside in Connecticut awaiting their trial, they became human beings, with their own voices, recorded in newspaper accounts. They acquired names, translators, Western clothing, English and Bible lessons, transforming their threatening black masculinity into the only image acceptable to white America, “the suffering servant”; in spite of the pro-slavery newspaper portrayal of the Africans as being lazy, inarticulate in English, mendacious slave-traders, a deliberate process of “heroification” of Cinque was occurring. These competing stereotypes of black man as supplicating victim versus black man as intelligent, violently forceful agent of his own fate were difficult for Lewis Tappan and his fellow abolitionists to navigate. The images also brought into question the value of “moral suasion” as a tool, especially when white Americans were faced with the reality of a strong, potentially violent African man. The Supreme Court decision freed the African captives, but set no precedent for future cases, and it did not improve the lot of even one other enslaved soul; worse yet, the returned captives found no peace after their hard-won return to Africa, nor did they choose to maintain their Christianity, much to the disappointment of their American hosts. Furthermore, the unhappy postscript of the Africans' resettlement called into question the value of the colonization plans so beloved by activists.

After the revolution: DRGs at age 30.

1 October 2013 marked 30 years since Medicare began paying hospitals by diagnosis-related group (DRG), arguably the most influential innovation in the history of health care financing. Initially developed as a tool for hospital management, DRGs became the basis of the inpatient prospective payment system that Medicare implemented in 1983. The strong incentives were revolutionary in their impact. Medicare spending growth slowed sharply, and, more remarkable, hospitals posted record profits. After the link between cost and payment was broken, hospitals moved quickly to cut costs. Nevertheless, a literature survey concluded that none of the worst fears about adverse effects on patients were realized. Diagnosis-related groups have also come to define "the product of a hospital" for purposes of benchmarking and risk adjustment. The acceptance of DRG algorithms owes much to their categorical approach, clinical focus, and transparency. The 2 most commonly used algorithms, Medicare DRGs and All Patient Refined (APR) DRGs, typically explain more than 40% of cost variance in inpatient stays, although with considerable range by care category. Because Medicare DRGs are unsuitable for obstetrics, pediatrics, and neonatology, some payers prefer APR DRGs. Diagnosis-related groups have proven to be a suitable basis for payment, as evidenced by widespread use. Common issues include mitigation of adverse incentives, appropriate payment for extremely costly stays, applicability to certain hospitals and care categories, and growing complexity. The DRG experience offers lessons about the effectiveness of financial incentives, the likelihood of adverse effects, the usefulness of case-mix measures, the risks of growing complexity, and the example that sensible policy need not be the domain of any one political party or other entity.

Prepping for the Day You Hope Never Arrives: Facing Recurrence

Prepping for the Day You Hope Never Arrives:Facing Recurrence Terra Trevor My 14–year–old son was eight years past diagnosis of a brain tumor. Gone were the pristine sick days when his white hooded sweatshirt stayed spotlessly clean for weeks at a time. Each time he left a muddy footprint on the kitchen floor I rejoiced; it felt so good to have a healthy kid again. However, my son was a survivor of an anaplastic ependymoma, grade IV, brain tumor, and although I wanted to be out of the woods, I knew we were not. I’d climbed out of the space where medical problems were fi led in my mind, yet I kept the door open because statics showed that the type of brain tumor he had, frequently recurred. Still, I was determined to keep our lives as ordinary as possible. But for a brain tumor family this meant staying connected to sources of support. Parent programs, patient and sibling support groups [End Page 27] and camps, and we remained connected to hospital resources. Most of all we needed to have fun as a family, and we attended the cancer survivor picnics and parties our hospital hosted, where the doctors served as volunteers, grilling hamburgers and dishing up ice cream for the guest of honor patients. My husband and I felt confident that as long as we worked as a team with our doctors and stayed connected to resources offered, we would find a way to meet any challenges that might surface. In the end ultimately what saved us was this mosaic of support provided to us over the years from a multitude of good people and organizations offering help when we needed it most. And I had the opportunity to learn to accept help, which it turns out, is far harder than offering to help. Shortly after my son Jay celebrated his 8th year as a brain tumor survivor, I watched him open the medicine cabinet and reach for the bottle of Advil, for the second time in a row that day. “Do you have a headache again?” I asked. He shrugged his shoulders, then hiccupped hard, and ducked his head in the toilet and threw up. Tears welled in his eyes. I sank into the deep, silent panic that made me calm. Our primary care physician called in an authorization for an MRI. Jay hid his fear behind a mask of quiet strength. It was ten days before his fifteenth birthday. While we waited for the MRI appointment, that week Jay was elected student of the month, and he got a lead part in the school play. My idyll of family hood continued until the MRI confirmed my worst fear—the tumor was back, and this time its fingers spread into the brainstem. We had to decide on a plan of treatment. Surgery was scheduled. When Jay was admitted to the hospital and I requested that he be placed in the pediatric ward, an environment he was familiar with, they agreed. Although Jay was a teenager, the recurrence caused him to revert emotionally back to a younger age. It was as if he was seven–years–old again, reliving his first brain tumor experience, and he kept his childhood security item—a small teddy bear with him, tucked under the hospital covers, like he had with the first diagnosis. Luck held. With surgery most of the tumor was resected and symptoms disappeared. Three days later, on Thanksgiving, he was feeling well enough to be excited about the Thanksgiving dinner our hospital provided us. A table and chairs were brought in, along with a feast of good food. The nurses gave Jay lavish attention, they laughed at the corny jokes he told, and made us feel like special company. Within a week Jay was out of the hospital, recovering well. But what to do about the remaining brain tumor slivers that were inoperable? He had already received his lifetime dose of whole brain radiation, and chemotherapy available offered little hope of curing a recurrent tumor. But there was a small chance that stereotactic radiation might stall tumor growth. We set up a consultation. We had...

A Jewish Radical, a Jewish Liberal, and Russian History

David Caute, Isaac and Isaiah: The Covert Punishment of a Cold War Heretic. 335 pp. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013. ISBN-13 978-0300192094. $35.00. This is an unsettling book. David Caute set out to explore the careers of two iconic figures of the Cold War, Isaiah Berlin and Isaac Deutscher, each a refugee from a different dictator, whose careers unfolded in England. Elegantly written, based on comprehensive research, and displaying empathy and respect for both Berlin and Deutscher, Caute's book is infused by a current of sadness and disappointment over how each conducted himself. As Caute argues in Isaac and Isaiah, they each compromised their integrity over Cold War concerns. In the case of Berlin, Caute uncovers a serious lapse in academic ethics when his intervention at Sussex University in 1963 cost Deutscher a position he was seeking. In the case of Deutscher, we learn how his strong opinions about Soviet culture and history crossed the divide between the writing of honest-minded, objective history and the polemics of a partisan. Caute brings the conflict to the fore against a background of two lives in which the similarities are as striking as the differences. Their brilliance was never in dispute. Born in Riga in 1909 to a wealthy, Russian-speaking Jewish family, Isaiah Berlin spent five years in Petrograd, where he witnessed the revolutionary turmoil of 1917, before his family escaped to England in 1920. Within a year, Berlin was fluent in English. His memories of Russia and his family's experiences sealed his hatred of communism, while the triumph of Stalinism confirmed his worst fears of Lenin's and Trotsky's legacy. (1) Throughout his life, Berlin resisted any romantic notions about the consequences of the Bolshevik revolution. As a resolute liberal and historian of ideas, Berlin wrote eloquent essays in defense of liberty and made an equally significant contribution to the study of Russian culture. His collection of essays, Russian Thinkers, focused on several of his intellectual heroes, most notably the journalist and revolutionary activist Alexander Herzen, the writers Ivan Turgenev and Leo Tolstoi, and the literary critic Vissarion Belinskii. Berlin found a commitment in Herzen's life and work to the kind of expansive liberalism that he championed himself. His study of Herzens career also colored his responses to the challenge of Marxist and communist beliefs that enjoyed adherents during the Cold War. Berlin abhorred the notion that a single, unifying theory or idea could organize human society in a positive or productive manner, as Marxists insisted. As Berlin wrote about Herzen, they both understood that nature obeys no plan, that history follows no libretto; that no single key, no formula, can, in principle, solve the problems of individuals or societies; that general solutions are not solutions, universal ends are never real ends, ... that short-cuts and generalizations are no substitute for experience; that liberty ... is an absolute value; that a minimal area of free action is a moral necessity for all men, not to be suppressed in the name of abstractions or general principles so freely bandied by the great thinkers of this or any age, such as eternal salvation, or history, or humanity, or progress, still less the state or the Church or the proletariat--great names invoked to justify acts of detestable cruelty and despotism, magic formulas designed to stifle the voices of human feeling and conscience. (2) At the height of Berlin's career, he was among the most famous and respected academics in England. Embraced by the British establishment, he was knighted in 1957 and later became president of the British Academy. He was also a widely sought-after lecturer on both sides of the Atlantic. His speaking style was as renowned as his essays. His biographer, Michael Ignatieff, called his diction rapid fire gabble. …

Against the Invisibility of Old Age: Cindy Sherman, Suzy Lake, and Martha Wilson

Feminist Studies 40, no. 1. © 2014 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 101 Michelle Meagher Against the Invisibility of Old Age: Cindy Sherman, Suzy Lake, and Martha Wilson Weirdly, what happens more frequently, now that I’m getting older, is doing characters that suddenly look like a character I was doing twenty or thirty years ago, when I was trying to look older. Only now there’s less makeup and it happens a lot more easily. — Cindy Sherman1 I had to find a way of dealing with the older body. —Suzy Lake2 I have become my own worst fear. —Martha Wilson3 in feminist studies of age and aging, the matter of invisibility is paramount. In the introduction to a key book in this field, Figuring Age (1999), Kathleen Woodward makes this point with the following story. 1. Cindy Sherman, quoted in “Cindy Sherman and John Waters: A Conversation ,” in Cindy Sherman, exhibition catalog, ed. Eva Respini (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2012), 76. 2. Suzy Lake, public lecture, Hallwalls Gallery, Buffalo, New York, January 14, 2006. 3. “I Have Become My Own Worst Fear” is the title of Martha Wilson’s solo exhibition at the PPOW Gallery, New York, 2011. 102 Michelle Meagher The setting is the Israel Levin Senior Center in Venice, California, in the 1970s. Woodward writes: This senior center was a space supported on the slenderest of shoestrings where people in their seventies, eighties, and nineties came together to celebrate with each other and to do battle with each other. One day as eighty-six-year-old Anna Gerbner was leaving the storefront center, she was run over by a young man on his bicycle…. She died of her injuries. What was his defense? “I didn’t see her,” he said. For me this small story with its appalling consequence is a parable of generational ignorance and the invisibility of older women in everyday life.4 Woodward suggests that Anna Gerbner’s death was an instance of death by invisibility.5 Certainly, this is a dramatic interpretation of the story. But I tell it here because it points to the regularity with which the term invisibility is deployed in writing about age and aging. On the one hand, scholars in this field point to the invisibility of older women in academic feminism. Theorists including Baba Copper, Barbara Macdonald, Cynthia Rich, and Margaret Cruikshank point out that the matter of age has not been integrated into feminist scholarship and that the field of women’s studies has ignored old women’s issues.6 Key points of feminist activism, including the demand for equality in the workforce and reproductive rights not limited to access to birth control and abortion are structured around the experiences of young women. Although there is a widespread recognition of what Susan Sontag called the “double 4. Kathleen Woodward, ed., Figuring Age: Women, Bodies, Generations (Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 1999), ix. 5. Woodward is relying on anthropologist Barbara Myerhoff’s work on this community. See Barbara G. Myerhoff “Life not Death in Venice: Its Second Life,” in her Remembered Lives: The Work of Ritual, Storytelling, and Growing Older (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 257–76. 6. See Baba Copper, Over the Hill: Reflections on Ageism Between Women (Freedom , CA: Crossing Press, 1988); Barbara MacDonald, “Outside the Sisterhood : Ageism in Women’s Studies,” in Women and Aging: An Anthology by Women, ed. Jo Alexander (Corvallis, OR: Calyx Books, 1986); Cynthia Rich and Barbara MacDonald, Look Me in the Eye: Old Women, Aging, and Ageism (San Francisco: Spinsters Ink, 1983); and Margaret Cruikshank, Learning to Be Old: Gender, Culture, and Aging (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003). Michelle Meagher 103 standard of aging,” few feminist scholars have placed the matter of ageism at the center of analysis.7 A recent issue of Women and Performance dedicated to the topic of aging suggests that, although the markers of women’s old age have shifted, aging is “still defined on a deficit model.”8 Getting older, the editors explain, means moving “to the margins of visibility in the labor market, the visual market, the socio-political market, assisted living facilities and nursing homes.”9 The essays in this...

Nurses’ perspectives on supporting children during needle-related medical procedures

Children state that among their worst fears during hospitalization are those related to various nursing procedures and to injections and needles. Nurses thus have a responsibility to help children cope with needle-related medical procedures (NRMP) and the potentially negative effects of these. The aim of the study is to describe the lived experience of supporting children during NRMP, from the perspective of nurses. Fourteen nurses took part in the study, six of whom participated on two occasions thus resulting in 20 interviews. A reflective lifeworld research approach was used, and phenomenological analysis was applied. The result shows that supporting children during NRMP is characterized by a desire to meet the child in his/her own world and by an effort to reach the child's horizon of understanding regarding these actions, based on the given conditions. The essential meaning of the phenomenon is founded on the following constituents: developing relationships through conversation, being sensitive to embodied responses, balancing between tact and use of restraint, being the child's advocate, adjusting time, and maintaining belief. The discussion focuses on how nurses can support children through various types of conversation and by receiving help from the parents’ ability to be supportive, and on whether restraint can be supportive or not for children during NRMP. Our conclusion is that nurses have to see each individual child, meet him/her in their own world, and decide on supportive actions while at the same time balancing their responsibility for the completion of the NRMP. This work can be described as “balancing on a tightrope” in an unpredictable situation.