#Best Physical Therapist in Bronx

[drsniffleshealth]

Breathing Freely: The Expertise of an Asthma Doctor

Introduction:

Asthma, a chronic respiratory condition affecting millions worldwide, requires specialized care and management to ensure individuals lead healthy, active lives. Asthma doctors, also known as allergists, play a crucial role in diagnosing, treating, and educating patients about this complex condition. This content explores the expertise of asthma specialists, their role in patient care, and the advancements in asthma management under their guidance. allergist Bronx helps you reveal your problems in front of doctor.

Understanding Asthma:

Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease of the airways, leading to symptoms such as shortness of breath, chest tightness, and coughing. Asthma specialists possess in-depth knowledge of the underlying causes, triggers, and the latest medical advancements related to asthma.

Role of an Asthma Specialist:

Diagnosis: Asthma specialists excel in accurate diagnosis through a combination of medical history, physical examination, lung function tests, and allergy assessments.

Treatment Planning: Developing personalized treatment plans customized to the severity and specific triggers of the patient's asthma is a key responsibility. This may include medications, inhalers, and lifestyle modifications. Asthma specialist NYC is there to treat your asthma.

Education and Counselling: Asthma specialists educate patients about their condition, teaching them to recognize early symptoms, use inhalers correctly, and manage potential triggers. Counselling may extend to lifestyle changes and environmental modifications to improve overall well-being.

Complete Respiratory Care:

Asthma specialists offer complete care beyond asthma management. They are well-versed in treating various respiratory conditions, such as obstructive disease, bronchitis, and interstitial lung diseases. Their expertise extends to understanding the interplay between these conditions and how they may impact asthma. If you are willing to get your asthma relief at the earliest search for asthma doctor near me.

Advanced Diagnostic Techniques:

Asthma specialists use advanced diagnostic tools to assess lung function and identify specific triggers. This may allergy testing. The use of cutting-edge technology enhances diagnostic accuracy and informs targeted treatment strategies.

Innovations in Asthma Management:

The field of asthma management is continually evolving. Asthma specialists stay updated of the latest medical breakthroughs, including new medications and therapies that offer more effective and targeted approaches to asthma control. Staying informed about emerging treatments allows specialists to provide the best possible care to their patients. allergist queens are there to get you rid of allergies.

Collaboration with Multiple Teams:

Asthma management often requires collaboration with other healthcare professionals, such as allergists and respiratory therapists. Asthma specialists work flawlessly within multiple teams to ensure a complete and integrated approach to patient care.

Paediatric Asthma Expertise:

Paediatric asthma requires specialized care, considering the unique challenges in diagnosing and treating children. Asthma specialists with expertise in paediatric respiratory care are expert at customizing their approach to the specific needs of young patients and providing guidance to parents and caregivers. ear nose & throat doctor bayside gets you free from ear problem.

Community Education and Advocacy:

Asthma specialists are not only dedicated to individual patient care but also engage in community education and advocacy initiatives. They strive to raise awareness about asthma, its management, and the importance of early intervention, contributing to improved overall respiratory health within communities.

Conclusion:

Asthma specialists are invaluable people in the battle against respiratory challenges, providing expert care, emphasizing patient education, and championing advancements in asthma management. Their commitment to enhancing the quality of life for individuals with asthma underscores the importance of seeking specialized care to breathe freely and lead fulfilling, active lives despite the challenges posed by this asthma condition.

[independentlifestyleservices]

In Home Care Providers Near Me

There is no place like home, especially for the elderly or disabled, whose day-to-day needs may have become too challenging to handle on their own. Unfortunately, a variety of health problems can make independent living quite difficult, so many end up moving to care centers or nursing homes to receive help and medical treatment. For those who wish to stay at home, there is a range of in home care providers near me available, including agencies that provide non-medical and medical services. This article explores the options and provides resources that can help individuals find a home care provider that best suits their needs.

The first step is to create a list of care needs. This will be used to screen potential providers and will also serve as a guide to discuss with them how those needs are expected to be met. It is recommended to interview at least three prospective providers and be sure to discuss each one’s experience, training, and background. Also ask for references from past clients and whether criminal background checks have been conducted.

It is important to understand the difference between personal care agencies and traditional home health agencies. Non-medical or personal care agencies offer support services such as shopping, errand running, meal preparation, and companionship. These agencies are not paid by Medicare or Medicaid. Traditional home health agencies are licensed by a state and provide medical services, such as physical therapy or speech therapy. Typically these agencies are required to give free home care assessments and have a staff that is trained to understand cultural sensitivities.

Choosing the right home care provider can be a complicated process. Fortunately, there are many helpful online resources that can help individuals research and compare services. Often people will begin their search for home care by asking for recommendations from family and friends. They may also contact their healthcare providers, who can provide them with a list of options. Local community organizations and senior centers are another source of referrals. The National Care Planning Council is a good resource for information on local and national home care providers.

The New York City area is full of choices for home care. Galaxy Home Care is a reputable and trusted provider of a wide range of home healthcare services. Founded in 1998, the company is committed to providing quality services and fostering independence for their customers. Their team of professionals includes geriatric nurses, occupational and physical therapists, as well as certified care managers who can assist with care coordination and management. The company serves clients in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Westchester counties. The company offers a free home assessment and a variety of live-in and hourly care options. The company also offers a free care planner booklet that is available on their website.

At Independent Life Style Services, our key priority is to deliver top-of-the-line disability services that focus on home care for disabled people, young and old. Our operations and perspectives are guided by a mission, a vision, beliefs and core values that focus on supporting people with disabilities enjoy a fulfilling life.

[houndofhecate]

Approach and Ritual for Illness in a Loved One

A friend or loved one being ill is a frightening thing. It can be very challenging to learn how to confront not only the situation that your loved one is in, but also the discomfort within yourself. Often, we feel powerless in these situations and the inability to help in a way that seems clear is stressful and uncomfortable in and of itself. What can you do if someone you love is suffering from poor health? 

First, make sure that your own internal resources are capable of being stretched to address this to the best of your ability. Give yourself time before or after you spend helping to decompress and digest your own feelings about it. Validate your own feelings of fear, discomfort, sadness, anxiety and depression. If you’re feeling like these emotions are overwhelming to you, seek help - a trusted friend or a professional therapist to talk over some of your own distress. If you burn yourself out by never giving yourself time to address your own grief you’ll burn out and will struggle to help anyone else. My experience working in medicine has taught me how important this is. 

I am doing my best My sadness, my anxiety, my fear, my anger are valid My feelings deserve to be acknowledged I will make space for my feelings to allow self-healing

Now, to focus on how to approach the person who is ill. If you are able to, offer to be with them in person or on a  phone/video call and if they want to sit in moment of reflection with them, pray with you or engage in any kind of magick/spellwork with you, make them a part of that process - but only do this with their permission or if they are interested. Some people find this uncomfortable and less helpful. Others may find it gives them a lot of comfort and hope. If you are able to, be present, and listen to their own anxieties and fears. Much of that listening is best if you are actively listening and mirroring them instead of trying to give advice or reassure them that things will be OK. Validate their feelings and thank them for sharing with you. If the person isnt available to engage with you, then you can do a ritual or prayer. (It is often best practice to ask permission before doing anything for someone, so keep this in mind). 

Regarding how to approach ritual/spell or prayer in this arena also needs to be considered. We all want people to “get well” or “get better” but there are many facets in illness that should also be considered. This is especially important for chronic illness - there are always goals that make life easier for people that arent just trying to “make them better”. Some spell-work to focus on that not only emphasizes “getting better” includes

Ease of sleep

Memory assistance (for medications or otherwise)

Easing financial troubles

Offering gentleness/comfort

Pain relief

Feeling supported & validated

An Example Ritual: 

1) Visualize your chosen deities and/or symbols related to health, protection, relief, sleep or courage or whatever else you’re seeking to grant this person. 

Example: Hecate is a goddess of the crossroads and for someone in the shade between life and death, visualizing her or her symbology (including a black dog, snakes, saffron flowers, hellebore, etc) 

2) Make a physical representation of these things, whether it’s actual physical items, a scent you associate with this symbol, a drawing, a stitched sigil, a food item, etc

Example: continuing with Hecate - you can use shed snake skin or shed dog fur, actual flowers or cooking saffron, or pictures of the symbols

3) Arrange the symbols in a way on the floor in front of you that is visually / otherwise appealing. If you can, make it so that you’re seated, standing, kneeling or otherwise facing the direction of who you want to help. You can add in crystals or herbs that fit with the mood of the spell 

Ie. if our devotional to Hecate is for protection and wishing rest for someone, we can add lavender (calm/rest) and nettle (protection) 

4) Speak or write the name or alias of the person you’re trying to help, and state your intentions - reference the symbolism you have collected and spend a few moments reflecting after describing the intended effect of each one. 

Hecate, goddess of the crossroads please help [x] find peace and guidance  May Hecuba, your familiar, offer comfort to [x] (dog) May you help [x] find relief among your garden (hellebore & lavender symbolism)

5) Be humble as you close your ritual, and give yourself some time to reflect on the ritual. 

If you’re able to, continue to check in on whoever it is you are helping. In these days of COVID isolation is unfortunately contributing to making more miserable already terrible medical problems. If the person is able to talk or text and wants company, it’s one of the best things you can offer. 

DISCLAIMER: as a physician I feel it’s important for me to iterate that people who are ill should maintain whatever the medical management currently is. Magick can be a powerful tool but should never supersede regular medical care.

photo by me, magnolia tree in Bronx Botanical Garden

[bountyofbeads]

What It Took for a Fox News Psychiatrist to Finally Lose His License https://nyti.ms/2MbUGZu

What It Took for a Fox News Psychiatrist to Finally Lose His License

Keith Ablow was a popular fixture on the cable channel until 2017, and a high-profile therapist. He left a trail of vulnerable female patients who claim he abused them.

By Ginia Bellafante | Published Dec. 20, 2019 | New York Times | Posted December 21, 2019 |

Late in 2009, a 28-year-old woman not long out of graduate school found herself in a stressful job at a Bronx hospital and decided it would be useful to talk to someone. Searching online, she came across the name of a psychiatrist, Keith Ablow.

Dr. Ablow was familiar to her from his writing, both his journalism and the best-selling thrillers he turned out — “Denial,’’ “Projection,” “Compulsion,’’ “Murder Suicide.’’ She had read all of those, as well as “Psychopath,’’ a book about a psychiatrist who prods the interior lives of strangers only to kill them, baroquely obscuring the distinction between patient and victim.

The woman — who has asked to be identified only by her confirmation name, Monique — found Dr. Ablow just as his media star was rising. That year, Roger Ailes had hired him as a regular contributor on Fox News, where he would remain until 2017, speculating about the mental states of political figures and presiding over viewer segments like “Normal or Nuts?”

Dr. Ablow offered counseling in the conventional sense, but he also conducted life-coaching via email. Monique engaged with him this way at first, but after she answered various questions about her past, mentioning adolescent bouts of depression, she agreed to see Dr. Ablow in person. His busy schedule meant that she would have to go to his primary office, in Newburyport, Mass. He was impressive to her, and so Monique made the five-hour trip for her first visit.

Over the next year and a half, Monique saw Dr. Ablow two or three times a week, at the reduced rate of $350 an hour. During this time she found herself coming unwound.

Her anxiety about work did not recede. On the contrary, she felt increasingly addled and insecure, and problems that had been latent for a long time resurfaced. She began cutting herself, something she hadn’t done in years.

Monique came to believe that Dr. Ablow had not only failed to help her; he left her more damaged than she already was. For his part, Dr. Ablow would maintain that whatever boundaries she thought he violated — the frequent texts and emails, the intimate revelations about his own life — were in the service of her treatment, well within the standard of sound psychiatric care.

As Monique would discover, it would take years — and several other patients coming forward with their own stories of manipulation — for Dr. Ablow’s transgressions to be taken seriously.

The case represents a core challenge of psychological treatment. At a cultural moment in which all kinds of relationships are policed for abuses of power imbalance, psychotherapy takes place in seclusion: two people, alone in a room, with one holding extraordinary influence over the other, just as it has been since Freud. It remains a world with murky oversight, and if you are harmed, it is not obvious what can be done.

By the time Monique left his care, her new marriage had fallen apart and she had developed a dependency on Valium, Xanax and Adderall. She also said she had drained her savings of $30,000 to pay for the treatment.

Most alarming, she had become obsessively, insidiously reliant on Dr. Ablow’s affirmation, a circumstance she and her lawyer would later suspect he engineered.

On an unusually hot late-summer morning, in a coffee shop just north of the city, Monique recounted how she had come under Dr. Ablow’s thrall. When she finally disentangled, she filed a complaint with the disciplinary board in New York that oversees psychiatrists — a body that works secretly and can take years to respond to charges. In this case, when it finally completed its initial review of Dr. Ablow, it found no reason to sanction him.

As we spoke over several hours, Monique’s caution gave way to a fluid and emotional narrative. It was easy to imagine her on the other side of conversations that played out this way hundreds of times. She was, in fact, a therapist herself.

That she had this training compounded the embarrassment anyone in her situation would surely feel. Monique was reflexively skeptical about human motivation. As a child she had resisted authority. How had she landed here?

From the beginning, Dr. Ablow presented himself as an idealized caretaker more than a guide. “As if he said, ‘Let down your guard, let go of everything and completely fall on me, because I will give you everything you ever needed. And you need nothing but to trust me,’” she reflected.

This was intoxicating to Monique. Her childhood had been marked by her father’s volatility, her mother’s emotional absence, a difficult relationship with her brother. With Dr. Ablow, she found herself in the strange state of feeling both further weakened by her past and protected from it.

If therapy is the project of overcoming, Monique belatedly came to believe that Dr. Ablow urged her neither toward strength nor self-reliance. “He did make me feel beautiful and precious and special,’’ she said. “But very broken.’’

On May 15, Dr. Ablow’s license was suspended in Massachusetts after an investigation determined that his continued practice was a threat to the “health, safety and welfare” of the public. He is appealing the ruling.

This article is based on interviews with Monique and others, including her current therapist as well as legal and medical documents obtained by The Times. Dr. Ablow did not respond to attempts to speak with him directly, but his lawyer, Paul Cirel, issued a statement on his behalf, writing in an email that his client would not “breach the ethical/confidentiality standards of his profession” and comment further.

Earlier this year, Dr. Ablow referred to the claims Monique made in her legal complaint to the health department in New York as “groundless.” He has categorically denied all allegations of sexual misconduct against him that have come up in subsequent cases. And he has said, as he did with Monique, that to whatever extent he revealed personal information with patients, he did so in the effort to help them work through issues of psychological importance.

On Feb. 5 next year, a hearing will take place in Massachusetts that will ultimately determine the future status of Dr. Ablow’s medical license.

From the outset, Monique had inklings of doubt about Dr. Ablow, but she easily suppressed them. Her first meeting with him ended with a prescription for an antidepressant. Although she found it curious that he would administer drugs so quickly, she deferred to his approach.

The boundary between patient and doctor was permeable from the start. Dr. Ablow took Monique to a taping at Fox; he connected her with a literary agent when she wanted to write. On one occasion, she mentioned she was near his office with her dog. This was in Newburyport, where she still went for treatment on occasion, running up bills in local inns, in addition to seeing him in New York. She knew Dr. Ablow had expressed an interest in meeting her dog, and he briefly left a session with another patient to come outside and play with him, she said.

Their sessions had an improvisational, transgressive tone. According to her official complaint, Dr. Ablow twice wondered, for no apparent therapeutic purpose, whether Monique had genital piercings. At one point, when she was describing a conflict with her father, Dr. Ablow responded: “Why don’t you tell your father to come stick a gun in my face and see what happens.”

Money was an ongoing problem for Monique, and she eventually questioned why so much of her costly time in therapy was spent listening to Dr. Ablow talk about issues he confronted in his own life — that his sister was drawn to broken men, that his son did a lot of pacing.

These confidences nonetheless made Monique feel as though she held outsize status with Dr. Ablow. Which made it all the more painful for Monique when she felt dismissed by him — when he would arrive late for their sessions, she said, or text and email during them.

Any of these incidents might have given her pause, but it took what she regarded as an explicit act of cruelty to compel her to leave. Early on, Monique had told Dr. Ablow that she feared, above all, being physically trapped — imprisoned, taken somewhere and locked up.

Many months later, during a disagreement about something relatively minor, she said, Dr. Ablow suggested that he might have to hospitalize her. Hospitalizing a distraught psychiatric patient is not an unreasonable course in certain circumstances, but Monique was certain he was preying on her vulnerabilities.

“I couldn’t trust him after that,” Monique said.

When Keith Ablow was in medical school at Johns Hopkins University in the 1980s, after graduating from Brown, he hoped to become an ophthalmologist. It was a mentor at Hopkins who suggested psychiatry, recognizing someone profoundly curious about other people’s lives.

His ambition was evident early on. He wrote the first of his 16 books, “Medical School: Getting In, Staying In, Staying Human,’’ while he was still a student. A paperback edition featured a blurb from The New England Journal of Medicine.

In the mid-1990s, Dr. Ablow was interviewed for a book, “In Session: The Bond Between Women and Their Therapists.’’ The author, Deborah Lott, had met him at a gathering of clinicians and found him to be insightful on the subject of boundaries and transference. Ms. Lott thought of him “as one of the good guys,’’ she said recently, “an advocate for women.”

Before his emergence at Fox, Dr. Ablow was a familiar presence on daytime talk shows, where he delivered advice with a brash compassion. Ms. Lott had lost track of him until his television appearances. As a Fox commentator, she said, his persona was radically different from the one she remembered. (A spokeswoman for Fox confirmed that Dr. Ablow’s contract was not renewed in 2017 and had no further comment.)

On TV, Dr. Ablow’s habit of diagnosing political leaders, particularly President Obama, who he believed suffered from abandonment issues that made him a weak leader, sparked criticism from a profession that maintains a fierce distaste for this sort of conjecture.

In 2014, Jeffrey Lieberman, chair of the psychiatry department at Columbia University, publicly denounced Dr. Ablow, who in turn responded with a clever press statement: “I am apparently joined by my nemesis Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman in rejecting the position that psychiatrists ought not comment on public figures. Lieberman condemned me as a ‘narcissistic self-promoter’ — yet he has never interviewed me.”

In November of that same year, Ms. Lott received a circumspect email from a young woman who had read her book and had questions about Dr. Ablow’s involvement. It was Monique. She was wondering what Dr. Ablow was doing in a book about boundaries. “She had no ax to grind,” Ms. Lott recalled, “other than trying to make sense out of what had happened.’’

Two years earlier, in 2012, Monique had outlined all of her allegations against Dr. Ablow in a lengthy complaint she made with New York State’s Office of Professional Medical Conduct, the agency empowered to suspend and revoke psychiatric licenses.

In these documents, she claimed that Dr. Ablow had crossed multiple boundaries, overwhelming her with details about himself — that he had been attracted to his children’s babysitters, for instance, and that his marriage was unfulfilling.

He asked her to coffee frequently. He encouraged her to move in with a female friend of his in Manhattan when Monique separated from her husband, only to later tell her that the roommate he recommended was “nuts.” He mentioned to Monique that he wanted to send a former all-star running back for the New York Giants to her as a patient. He also suggested that she date him.

At one point, while she was still seeing Dr. Ablow for regular therapy, he offered her a job with his life-coaching business. She took it, counseling people remotely. For a few months, she was both his patient and his employee.

In the course of her efforts to establish her own practice, Dr. Ablow encouraged Monique to move to Newburyport, which would be cheaper than New York.

She almost went through with it.

Monique had recently married a man after a four-year engagement, yet her ambivalence about him persisted. Dr. Ablow knew all about this. In fact, when she emailed him on the eve of her wedding, he gave her confounding advice. In his reply, he implicitly encouraged her to go through with it, at the same time remarking that marriage itself was “absurd.”

On the day she planned to move and leave her husband behind, in January 2011, a tremendous storm hit the Northeast. She decided to stay in New York, where she continued to see Dr. Ablow for another six months.

Once she made the decision to leave Dr. Ablow, Monique met with a Manhattan lawyer, Audrey Bedolis, who has concentrated in psychotherapeutic malpractice since the early 1990s.

Ms. Bedolis knew that cases without accusations of sexual misconduct, clear physical abuse or some other singular, dramatic incident are typically hard to litigate; she and her client eventually abandoned plans for a lawsuit. But Ms. Bedolis believed that the sheer volume of Dr. Ablow’s boundary trespasses would surely result in disciplinary action from state authorities.

In the dynamic between Monique and Dr. Ablow, Ms. Bedolis saw something all too familiar. Though she knew only Monique’s side of the story, it seemed to her a clear case of exploitation that, while it did not involve sex, was just as devastating. “First he medicated her when she never thought she should be medicated,’’ Ms. Bedolis said. “Then he lured her in as the only person who could help her.”

For several years, Monique waited to hear something from the conduct office in New York. In October 2017, the office finally wrote to say that it had found “insufficient evidence’’ to bring any charges of misconduct against Dr. Ablow.

One week after the New York board wrote to Monique saying that it would not sanction him, it sent a separate letter to Dr. Ablow, stating that in her case, he had failed to render proper care and treatment and that he prescribed medications inappropriately. He was told to refrain from boundary violations.

But there was no punishment for this; his license to practice psychiatry in New York remained in good standing.

This spring, however, based on Monique’s claims and the testimonies of four other female patients, as well as several former employees of Dr. Ablow’s, the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine ruled that Dr. Ablow practiced “in violation of law, regulations, and/or good and accepted medical practice.” As a result of that suspension, he consented to cease practice in New York, where a renewed investigation by the conduct office is underway.

Three of the women — like Monique, all young — told an investigator for the Massachusetts board that Dr. Ablow had become sexually involved with them during the course of their treatment. One of them said that he introduced her to sadomasochism and hit her with a belt during their encounters, exclaiming, “I own you.”

In a formal written response to the board, Dr. Ablow denied this, as well as the charges that he had been physically intimate with the other patients involved in the case.

In a statement issued in August, Dr. Ablow’s lawyer, Mr. Cirel, addressed the charges in a series of malpractice lawsuits brought against Dr. Ablow, which were settled out of court this year, as well as the allegations in the complaint to the state, writing: “We are pleased that the civil matters have been amicably resolved. Dr. Ablow can now focus his attention and resources on overturning the Board of Medicine’s order of temporary suspension, so that he can restore his medical license and resume helping patients into the future, as he has countless times in the past.”

Last winter, before the suits were settled, Dr. Ablow appeared on a Boston-area news show, where he addressed them and claimed to be a target of cancel culture. “A male, a public person and a Trump supporter,” Dr. Ablow said in the interview. “So am I surprised? Yeah. But shocked? No.”

In his rebuttal to the Massachusetts board, Dr. Ablow said that one of his accusers had a history of falsely accusing men of sexual misbehavior and that she had essentially confused what happened between them with the actions of a recurring character in his novels.

The documents filed in conjunction with Dr. Ablow’s suspension reveal something else as well — that in three separate instances in which his medical license came up for renewal in Massachusetts, between 2013 and 2017, he failed to notify the state that he was under investigation in New York. During the renewal process, an applicant is asked specifically if he or she is under investigation in a different state. Dr. Ablow said that he wasn’t.

After her time with Dr. Ablow, Monique was apprehensive about trusting a new therapist. Eventually she returned to the psychoanalyst she saw during her first year of graduate school, Robert Katz. Recently, she gave permission to Dr. Katz to speak about her experience with Dr. Ablow.

Monique entered treatment with him shaken by what had happened to her under Dr. Ablow’s care, he said. Dr. Katz viewed the boundary violations she described as a means of grooming her for a sexual relationship.

Of everything she brought up, Dr. Katz added, one detail stuck out most in his mind: that Dr. Ablow had suggested to Monique that she become an escort to earn the extra money she needed. (Dr. Ablow has denied ever saying this, and denied it again when another patient made the same claim.)

In recent years Monique has settled into a successful private practice (this is why she insisted on anonymity in exchange for participating in this article).

Still, even now, after all she has come to understand, she finds herself occasionally missing the connection she had with Dr. Ablow, longing again to experience how much she imagined she meant to him.

When a psychiatrist, psychologist or social worker is barred from practicing, it does not necessarily mean that they are prevented from dispensing advice, in an office, for profit. Life-coaching is a career open to almost anyone; requiring no credentials, it is largely unregulated.

After the suspension of his license, Dr. Ablow repositioned himself. The Ablow Center for Mind and Soul in Newburyport identifies Dr. Ablow on its website as someone who “practiced psychiatry for over 25 years before developing his own life-coaching, mentoring and spiritual counseling system.” Over the summer, he took courses in pastoral counseling at Liberty University, the evangelical Christian college in Lynchburg, Va.

The Ablow Center is expanding its services, including free therapy for veterans once a month. It also announced an essay contest for high-school and college students considering a career in counseling.

Beyond that, visitors to the center’s website can find regular blog posts from Dr. Ablow, like a recent entry with the headline, “Why a Depression and Anxiety Consultant Could Be the Key to Recovering.”

For anyone “still’’ feeling anxious or low, Dr. Ablow had some wisdom: “It may have nothing to do with you,” he wrote, “and everything to do with the treatments being offered to you.”

______

Ginia Bellafante has served as a reporter, critic and, since 2011, as the Big City columnist. She began her career at The Times as a fashion critic, and has also been a television critic. She previously worked at Time magazine. @GiniaNYT

[agritecture]

Karen Washington: It’s Not A Food Desert, It’s Food Apartheid

CONTENT SOURCED FROM GUERNICA

America’s sustainable food movement has been steadily growing, challenging consumers to truly consider where our food comes from, and inspiring people to farm, eat local, and rethink our approaches to food policy. But at the same time, the movement is predominantly white, and often neglects the needs and root problems of diverse communities.

Issues of economic inequality and systemic racism permeate our national food system. The movement’s primary focus has been on finding solutions to “food deserts”—defined as areas empty of good-quality, affordable fresh food—by working to ensure that affected neighborhoods have better access.

But some advocates, and studies, have argued that the proximity of a well-stocked grocery store is not enough of a solution given this country’s elaborate food problems. Farm subsidies in the United States go predominantly to white farmers, which has led a group of black farmers to sue the US government for discrimination. Food pantries, which distribute food directly to those in need, are stigmatized.

Our subsidized food system, as activist and community organizer Karen Washington points out in the interview that follows, “skews the cost and value of food.”

Washington has been battling for food justice for three decades. Before taking up the cause, she worked as a physical therapist, and saw many of her patients, predominantly people of color, suffering from diabetes, obesity, and hypertension. (More than one-third of American adults, and 48 percent of African American adults, are obese.)

Treatment always involved medication and surgery as opposed to prevention, and Washington knew there had to be a better way. She moved to the Bronx, in New York, in the mid-1980s and became a vocal community gardener.

Karen Washington delivers opening remarks at the 2016 Food Tank Summit, in Washington, D.C.

Since that time, Washington has won a James Beard Foundation Leadership Award, been invited to the Obama White House for her involvement with New York’s Botanical Garden, and been called “urban farming’s de facto godmother.”

She’s also worked to transform the Bronx’s empty lots into spaces where food can grow, helped launch a farmers’ market, and, in relentlessly engaging her community, has remained focused on the intersections of food and issues like poverty, racism, a lack of healthcare, and joblessness.

In other words, Washington has been around the block. What she found is that there weren’t very many people who looked like her with active roles in the food system. To bring additional voices to the table, she cofounded Black Urban Growers, an organization dedicated to supporting and advocating for black farmers and black leadership in the food movement, in 2009. And as she creates a more inclusive food community, she is working to redefine the challenges that the food system faces, too.

Washington is opposed to using the expression “food desert,” which she calls “an outsider term” that calls desolate places, rather than places with enormous potential, to mind. She prefers “food apartheid,” which “brings us to the more important question: What are some of the social inequalities that you see, and what are you doing to erase some of the injustices?”

I connected with Washington over a long phone call to ask her about these distinctions, among other things. Throughout our conversation, she pointed to the extent to which food is connected to most everything—health, education, class, the environment—and that, if we’re to be good advocates for a better food system, we need to take an intersectional approach.

“‘Food apartheid’ looks at the whole food system, along with race, geography, faith, and economics,” she says. “When we say ‘food apartheid,’ the real conversation can begin.”

—Anna Brones for Guernica

Guernica: When did you begin growing food?

Karen Washington: Well, it all started with a tomato. I never liked it. It wasn’t red, it was pale pink, it had no taste. Until I started growing it myself, I didn’t even know it grew on a vine, let alone that it was red and brown and juicy. When I finally bit into someone’s fresh, garden-grown tomato, it just changed my world. It really gave me the ambition to want to grow food myself. Then, in 1988, I looked out my kitchen window to the empty lot across the way and saw a man with a pick and a shovel. I went out and I asked him what he was doing, and he said, “I’m thinking about starting a community garden.” I asked if I could help. We’re about to celebrate our thirtieth year [of working together ].

Guernica: That’s amazing!

Karen Washington: It is amazing. My gardening got me into community organizing and activism. I noticed that when I went to visit friends who were white, their neighborhoods, their food system, their supermarkets were totally different compared to what I was seeing in my backyard. At my local supermarkets, things that should have been composted were wrapped up in cellophane and sold at a reduced price. We had a variety of food, but I wouldn’t call it fresh. It looked like it was secondhand, and people had no other options.

I eventually realized that I couldn’t concentrate on food alone because there were so many things that were intersecting. I saw that the people who were in [that first community ] garden were mostly low-income and had no health insurance. The garden wasn’t just being used for food, but also for wellbeing and medicine. The healthcare industry is part of this conversation. As a physical therapist, I used to see billions more spent on treatment than prevention. Look at the pharmaceutical companies. In my neighborhood, there is a fast-food restaurant on every block, from Wendy’s to Kentucky Fried Chicken to Popeye’s to Little Caesar’s Pizza. Now drugstores are popping up on every corner, too. So you have the fast-food restaurants that of course cause the diet-related diseases, and you have the pharmaceutical companies there to fix it. They go hand in hand. The fact is, if you do prevention, someone is going to lose money. If you give people access to really good food and a living-wage job, someone is going to lose money. As long as people are poor and as long as people are sick, there are jobs to be made. Follow the money.

I set out on this journey to explain the conditions of impoverishment. A lot of these communities need an influx of resources and monetary help, along with more local ownership of land and capital, in order to change things around. I go around the country to challenge people to see beyond the “raised beds” and to recognize that we live in one of the greatest nations and countries of all time and yet we still suffer from hunger and poverty. How have we allowed that to happen and what are we going to do to change that?

Guernica: We often use the expression “food desert” today. Does that term help us create infrastructure to ensure better access to food, or is it hindering our ability to do so?

Karen Washington: I was just in Pennsylvania and North Carolina talking about food deserts, and the topic of food justice and food sovereignty, and putting it out there that it means nothing to me. I asked people to define it, and, of course, they gave me their cookie-cutter definition: “Communities who have limited access to food.” That means nothing. Who in in my actual neighborhood has deemed that we live in a food desert? Number one, people will tell you that they do have food. Number two, people in the hood have never used that term. It’s an outsider term. “Desert” also makes us think of an empty, absolutely desolate place. But when we’re talking about these places, there is so much life and vibrancy and potential. Using that word runs the risk of preventing us from seeing all of those things.

What I would rather say instead of “food desert” is “food apartheid,” because “food apartheid” looks at the whole food system, along with race, geography, faith, and economics. You say “food apartheid” and you get to the root cause of some of the problems around the food system. It brings in hunger and poverty. It brings us to the more important question: What are some of the social inequalities that you see, and what are you doing to erase some of the injustices?

So, now, let’s go a little further; let’s talk about food sovereignty. Food sovereignty is being coopted in the same way that food justice is, because “food sovereignty” was a term that was really founded by indigenous people in Central and South America when they were fighting for governance. The organization Via Campesina coined the term “food sovereignty.” They were fighting for land ownership and they were fighting for resiliency, so we should make sure that we pay respect to those indigenous people who have been fighting for so long. “Food sovereignty” is now being interchanged with “food justice,” and although they are coexisting conditions, they are two terms with substantial differences. Even those terms have been watered down, but “food desert” sugarcoats what the problem is. If you bring a supermarket in, it’s not going to change the problem. When we say “food apartheid,” the real conversation can begin.

Guernica: You mentioned wanting to challenge people to look beyond their raised beds. What is the best way to ensure that people have access to food? Is it by focusing on food production or focusing on systemic racism and economics?

Karen Washington: All of the above. This idea that just because you give people the ability to grow their own food, and give up soda for water, that all of sudden it’s going to make these people’s conditions better? No. We have to talk about race, we have to talk about economics, because those are the things holding people back.

I wake up dreaming that my neighborhood has been given capital, has been given opportunity, has been given finance, that we can own our stores and businesses. Why is it that outsiders always have to come into our neighborhood to open a business? Why don’t people with capital come into my neighborhood and think about investing in the people who already live here? Give them the capital, give them the means of financial literacy, teach them how to invest, teach them how to own homes, teach them how to own businesses. Give them that chance, instead of coming in and changing the dynamics and the complexion of our neighborhood.

People often interview me and they ask me questions like: What’s it like to live in a neighborhood with limited access to food? After a while, I shut it down. I say, “Why don’t you turn it around?” Because I want to hear what people in affluent neighborhoods are doing. What is their take on people who live in food deserts? What is the conversation that rich, white, privileged people have about poverty and hunger and what are they doing to make a change? Sit down at the table with a family member, a father, a mother, who owns a business, and ask them what they’re doing to ensure that their businesses are employing people who need jobs, or [ask if] they’re getting out of their comfort zone, not just writing a check, because it’s easy to write a check, but what are they doing to invest in neighborhoods that are less fortunate?

Guernica: I’ve moved back to my hometown, a rural community where we have high poverty rates and many kids receive free school lunches. We do have a food bank and other programs that provide access to fresh food, and it’s easy for people to write a check to a food bank or buy a couple cans of food to donate, but it feels like a Band-Aid on a larger problem.

Karen Washington: It is a Band-Aid. I recently asked [the students in my gardening] classes, “What is the purpose of food pantries and food kitchens?” And of course they say, “To feed the poor,” and “to have access to food,” and so on. But the main function of these two approaches is [supposed to be] that they’re reserved for emergencies only. Instead, they’ve become a way of life.

How do we sit with the fact that 40 million people are in poverty? The system of giving out free food is not going to fix that. Even as a farmer, I have to deal with the fact that when I come down to the farmers’ market and sell my produce I have to educate people about the value and cost of food, because I am surrounded by a food system—a subsidized food system—that skews the cost and value of food. My carrots are two dollars. They are two dollars because I am a for-profit farmer, and unlike the carrot for 99 cents that’s sold in cellophane at the supermarket down the street or the bunch of carrots that you got for free from the food pantry, this two-dollar carrot is feeding me, my family, and it means something.

The conversation around actual food value is a conversation that we don’t have in low-income neighborhoods, regardless if they’re black or white, rural or urban. But things are changing. People are talking more than ever about food. It’s such a major shift, so you’re seeing major corporations offering different options, like fast-food chains offering salads. The consumer is starting to understand the relationship between food and health. It’s also happening in low-income communities. The rise in school gardens impacts children and they shift their parents’ perspectives. In my neighborhood, every year, we have a block party and they don’t serve soda anymore. The kids are asking for water! Education is working.

Guernica: Would it be more advantageous for us to restructure the charity system?

Karen Washington: Yes! First of all, let’s think in terms of labeling and messaging. Food pantries are stigmatized. When you say “food pantries,” you’re talking about people who are poor, standing in line, getting their food as a handout. The organization West Side Campaign Against Hunger has a pantry that they have started to rebrand. They set up their organization like a supermarket, so customers are coming and they’re shopping like they would at a regular store. It’s not a food pantry where you’re giving out free plastic bags of food. They also offer job training, and a chef who teaches the clients if they want to learn how to prepare food.

I tell them to ask people, “Why are you here? What is causing you to be on this food line? Is it the fact that you don’t have a job? Are you ill? Are you homeless?” By knowing those answers, they can help a person. For a problem like, “Well, I was homeless, so I am in a food pantry,” they talk about what we offer in terms of social work and helping people get apartments.  For, “Oh, I just got out of jail,” they talk about some of the entry programs out there that can help them. Or: “I lost a job… I’m looking for a job.” Let’s have job training on site for employment opportunities so people can seek jobs.

Guernica: You launched the Black Urban Growers organization because you had traveled around and hadn’t seen anyone else who looked like you in the food movement, which I can imagine felt like a desolate, lonely place.

Karen Washington: That’s accurate. I recently went to the Organic Grower’s Conference, which is in its twenty-fifth year, and someone told me that it was the second year that they had speakers of color. The second year! I don’t know how many attendees they had, but I can tell you offhand it was less than maybe seven people of color. And these are food conferences. I ask people about the work that they do, and a lot of them say, “Yeah, we work on a community farm,” “We work in a community garden,” “You know, it’s full of vegetables and flowers,” and I say, “You know what? Even within the work that you do with flowers and vegetables, you see diversity. But when it comes to the movement, it’s not diverse.” How can you see beauty and diversity in the food system, and yet these workshops and conferences are all homogenized? There is no diversity, there’s no inclusion.

That’s why we have the Black Urban Growers Conference. It’s because no one talks about our issues, and when they do talk about our issues it’s from a white voice. Why does the respected [one] always have to be a white voice?

People talk about food justice, but where are the farmers who look like me and who were brought here as slaves to do agriculture? When I asked that question, I was told, “Black people don’t want to farm, all they want to do is play basketball and play music.” When people tell me that, I know I am doing the right thing with this work.

For me and my friends, it has been inspirational. People come up to me at the end of the conference and say that they have never seen so many black farmers in a room. They have never had a conference that presented issues that pertained to the black experience.

Guernica: Why do you think food conferences don’t give people of color a platform?

Karen Washington: They’re not taking the time to go out of their comfort zones to reach people. That’s the bottom line. The reason I attend conferences is because people reach out and invite me. I’m going to write to Organic Growers and give them a list of people of color that they need to reach out to. Some of those people include: Leah Penniman, Malik Yakini, Lorrie Clevenger, Dr. Gale Myers, Kirtrina Baxter, Keisha Cameron, Kelly Carlisle, and Chris Newsome. I asked people in the African American community if they were going to that conference and they said they weren’t invited. That’s the problem. People live in their silos.

I also have a problem with organizations in urban areas and communities of color that are white-led. You started an organization and you have been there for ten or fifteen years and your mission statement says that one day the people within the community will have leadership. They should have your job right now; why are you still there? I talk about power, and how power is a drug and power over people is a drug and it’s hard to give up. But once you start taking a job in a community, and particularly a community of color, once you are there as the emergency department, you should be thinking about how you are going to transition out.

Guernica: In the sense that a desert is an “empty” place, do you feel that the food movement has become a “desert”?

Karen Washington: At the conference, it’s also powerful to hear young people talk about reparations and going back to the land. The younger black farming community is growing. Leah Penniman of Soul Fire Farm is doing excellent work. Young people are understanding the power that they have and they are not waiting for us to fix it. Look at Black Lives Matter; they are very outspoken. They are unapologetic. They know what’s right. They know the oppression and segregation and the racism that have happened and continue to happen. They’re not drinking the Kool-Aid.

Even still, the average age of a farmer is fifty-nine. The movement is going to be a desert if we don’t get more youth involved. Who is out there? How are we going to get the next wave of farmers? The price of land for new farmers is crazy. So how do we entice a new generation to become farmers if they don’t have access to land? They have credit-card and student-loan debt, and there’s no diversity to encourage the young blood of new farmers with different faces to come into the food system.

Guernica: The food movement has essentially become a monocrop.

Karen Washington: Exactly. As we know, you lose diversity and it will truly end up a desert because you’ve never taken the time to nourish that seed, diversify that seed, and you kept doing the same thing over and over again. And you know what happens when you continue to grow in the same soil? It gets depleted of nutrients and becomes barren. That’s what’s going to happen to the food movement if we don’t think about planting seeds of diversity, of new young blood, into the food system.

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[seo-nyspineandsport]

5 Non-Surgical Treatments for Knee Arthritis

Our doctors at NYSS specialize in providing PRP, Stem cell therapy and physical therapy to treat and heal knee injuries. We have the best knee specialist doctor in North Bronx and joint specialist doctors in North Yonkers. Our cutting-edge therapies help in restoring function and regaining a healthy lifestyle. For any medical assistance, schedule an appointment with us. 

Stiff and aching joints can make it tough to get through the day. Whether it affects your knee, elbow, shoulder or hip, chronic joint pain is debilitating and sometimes unbearable. 

Among these, the knee joint is the most common joint to develop arthritis. Knee pain that wakes you up from sleep can result in Osteoarthritis. It is also known as “wear and tear” arthritis. This type of joint inflammation generally happens in old people and also in younger athletes whose joints are harshly used repeatedly. Osteoarthritis usually develops due to the wearing down of the protective cartilage in a joint. Due to this, the bones begin to rub against each other and cause shooting pain. Another type of injury that you can develop in the knee joint, is called post-traumatic arthritis. 

Arthritis can result from many causes:

Trauma or injury

Wear and tear

Age

Inflammation

Infection

Let’s now talk about, the 5 non-surgical ways to treat knee arthritis.

Physical Therapy - Physical therapy is the first line of treatment for knee arthritis. It can help to treat knee and joint pain and charts your road to recovery. Regular stretching of the quadriceps and hamstrings helps in taking the stress off the knees. Strengthening these muscles can help in proper knee alignment and reducing the pain. A physical therapist can suggest a variety of methods that can help you get back in motion. 

PRP therapy - Regenerative therapy is an emerging field that uses your body’s ability to heal itself and can help to overcome joint pain. Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP) is a highly effective treatment for treating knee injuries. This treatment involves taking your blood which is then spun into a high-speed centrifuge after which some specific portions are injected into your knees.   

Stem Cell Therapy - Stem Cell Therapy is one of the best-known types of regenerative therapies and is mostly used for treating joint and tissue damage. The reason why stem cell therapy works so well is that it uses stem cells and growth factors to reduce pain. Some of the benefits of stem cell therapy are:Less pain from past injuries

Reduced joint stiffness

Reduced dependency on medications

Improved mobility

Injections of stem cells reduce inflammation, repair damaged tissues and may help to prevent knee replacement surgery.  

Antiinflammatories - Antiinflammatories can prove helpful in treating knee swelling and pain for most people.  

Ice - It is a safe and effective treatment and can be used after strenuous activity which may include extensive walking.   

Get professional help at New York Spine & Sport Rehabilitation PC

[cooperhewitt]

The Ability Project: Empowering People with Disabilities Through Design

Written by Claire Kearney-Volpe

In 2016, Mayor Bill de Blasio and the New York City Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities presented the Ability Project with the ADA Sapolin Award for their “fearless and innovative approach to developing tools that will improve the lives of people with disabilities.” The Ability Project builds relationships and designs solutions to eliminate barriers for underserved audiences. In spring 2017, Cooper Hewitt partnered with the New York University Ability Project to develop new ideas for broadening access to the museum.

Testing tactiles: NYU students test out the viability of a tactile wayfinding prototype as part of an Ability Project class. Creating raised surfaces or textures in the museum can enable people with visual impairments to become aware of installations around them. This technique is utilized throughout pedestrian avenues in New York city and around the world. Pictured above are some Ability Project prototype solutions for museum wayfinding.   

Established in 2013, the New York University Ability Project is an interdisciplinary research space dedicated to the intersection between disability and technology, with an aim to foster collaboration among individuals with disabilities, community organizations, and NYU students and faculty. A variety of students and professionals—engineers, designers, educators, speech and occupational therapists, and individuals with disabilities—work together to create opportunities for teaching, learning, and research. Students across three of NYU’s schools comprise the Ability Project whose majors range from occupational therapy and integrated digital media to interactive telecommunications. Classes in the basics of methodology in assistive technology, accessible design and development, research, prototyping, and user interaction/experience design for museums round out the program’s offerings. Among the Ability Project’s fundamental principles is that technology serves people best when they participate in its design. Participatory research ensures access to the critical knowledge of those living with disabilities while also offering opportunities for those without disabilities to better understand what life is like for their collaborators. Collaboration, rather than problem solving in silos, produces more creative results.

Inside NYU Tandon’s Media and Games Network (MAGNET), where the Ability Project is located.

The Ability Project has developed several ventures in partnership with New York City advocacy groups and agencies. In 2015, the program partnered with AT&T to lead the ConnectAbility Challenge, a three-month technology challenge designed to spur innovation for people with physical, social, emotional, and cognitive disabilities. The competition, which coincided with the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, resulted in sixty-three proposals for software, wearable, and other technology solutions from developers in sixteen states and fifteen countries aimed at enhancing the lives of people with disabilities.
 For the Lavelle School for the Blind in the Bronx, the Ability Project joined with Bridging Education and Art Together (B.E.A.T.), whose groundbreaking program Beat Rockers works with blind and visually impaired students to develop confidence through music. In a semester-long course, Ability Project students were tasked with designing and developing accessible tech enhancements
 to enable the Lavelle students to fully participate in B.E.A.T.’s music-making through the use of voice, body, and a microphone.

Markus Proell’s prize-winning project the KinesicMouse, from the AT&T/Ability Project Connect Ability Challenge. The KinesicMouse software allows for hands-free, facial expression-based control of a PC.

Eager to continue its revolutionary work, the Ability Project teamed with researchers at NYU’s Hospital for Joint Diseases to investigate how to provide growing children suffering from cerebral palsy with affordable orthotics/prosthetics. Using a combination of 3D-modeling and printing techniques, Ability Project designers help to fit participants with low-profile yet stylish rehabilitation orthotics that can be adjusted and reprinted as they grow.

During the spring 2017 semester, Ability students worked with Spectrum Cable to evaluate and test Spectrum’s existing home-entertainment products and services. Based on findings and feedback from subscribers with disabilities, the students will design accessibility solutions.

From left to right: Student’s process documentation for the Ability Project and Cooper Hewitt Co-Lab course; Students’ wireframes of an accessibility toolkit—an online tutorial to inform exhibition design; Accessible musical interface designed with feedback from students at the Lavelle School for the Blind, by Ishaan Chaudhary, Kai-han Chang, Nicola Carpeggiani, Satbir Multani, and Yi Zhao.

Using a museum as a laboratory 
is new territory for the program and applying the tenets of design thinking and process proved to be exciting and challenging. In the Ability Project’s partnership with Cooper Hewitt, the museum served as client and creative inspiration. Some of the challenges experienced for the first time for the students as both designers and visitors were the architectural constraints of a landmarked historical home and the requirements that come along with museum display and presentation. Collaborators looked at designs for the museum’s website and experimented with Cooper Hewitt’s collections application program interface to find ways for fully integrating visitors with disabilities into the Cooper Hewitt experience. In a comprehensive presentation, four groups each shared research, user testing analysis, and iterative prototyping designs. The parameters that the students offer real, scalable recommendations resulted in replicable work that considered cost, physical constraints, and multiplicity of audiences. The Cooper Hewitt partnership not only schooled the students in new ways of thinking about design but revealed design’s potential for enhancing and welcoming new audiences to the museum.

Claire Kearney-Volpe is a Doctoral Fellow and Adjunct Professor for the NYU Ability Project. She works on a variety of human-centered assistive and rehabilitation technology projects and is active in the digital accessibility community. This article was originally published in the Spring/Summer 2017 issue of Design Journal.

from Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum http://ift.tt/2HRWvpz via IFTTT

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[books-n-wine]

~**~ Release Blitz for Chasing A Legend by Sarah Robinson w/ Excerpt & Giveaway ~**~

Today we have the release day blitz of Chasing a Legend by Sarah Robinson! Check out the release day festivities and grab your copy today!!

Title: Chasing a Legend

Author: Sarah Robinson

Genre: August 22nd

About Chasing a Legend:

The most soulful Kavanagh brother tackles the challenge of a lifetime—with a little help from the girl of his dreams. “Fans of Lori Foster’s SBC Fighters series will love the MMA atmosphere of [Sarah] Robinson’s Legends.”—Library Journal A topnotch manager and agent, Quinn Kavanagh pictures a life outside of his family’s renowned MMA gym. Beneath his sleek exterior, Quinn has a secret passion for sculpting. But after a nearly fatal motorcycle accident, he’s struggling just to walk again, let alone get back to the studio—and it doesn’t help that the doctor in charge of his physical therapy is his childhood crush. Quinn’s always ready for a fight, but the bittersweet sting of unrequited love has him begging for mercy. Dr. Kiera Finley is determined to make her medical residency a success. Six years ago, she gave in and shared a single passionate night with Quinn. Now she’s just hoping the cocky lover from her past doesn’t derail her plans for the future. Little by little, though, Kiera gets to know another side of Quinn. She knew he was a family man, devoted to his parents and brothers, but he’s also a free spirit trapped in a cage—and only she has the key. To heal both Quinn’s body and soul, Kiera’s tempted to give him a special kind of medicine.

Get Your Copy Today!

Amazon US | Amazon UK | Amazon AU | Amazon CA | Barnes & Noble | iBooks | Kobo | Books a Million | Google Play | Penguin Random House

Read the Free Short Story Set Between Becoming a Legend and Chasing a Legend!

  Catch up on the Series Today:

BREAKING A LEGEND:

Amazon | Audio | Other Retailers

SAVING A LEGEND:

Amazon | Audio | Other Retailers

BECOMING A LEGEND:

Amazon | Audio | Other Retailers

  Advance Praise:

"Robinson concludes her Kavanagh Legends contemporary quartet (after Becoming a Legend) with a perfect blend of smoldering heat and gentle tenderness. After an accident, mixed martial arts fighter Quinn Kavanagh is placed under the care of physical therapist Keira Finley, his first and only love. She has no idea that she broke his heart when she left for college six years earlier. They’d been best friends since they were kids and never experienced life without each other’s unwavering support, but when Quinn didn’t ask her to stay, Keira needed to prove to herself that she could make it on her own. Quinn’s emotional scars run a lot deeper than the physical ones. He’s afraid to open himself up to Keira again, but with the encouragement of his boisterous, fun-loving family, he learns to give to himself as freely as he’s always given to others. This endearing story showcases Keira and Quinn’s easy banter, familiar warmth, and unquenchable heat. Quinn is the last Kavanagh brother to meet his mate, but subtle mentions of potential future love matches among their friends will leave readers eager for spin-offs." - Publisher's Weekly

Exclusive Excerpt:

“I’m leaving Legends now. My bags are packed, so be ready to go as soon as I get there,” Quinn said into the phone, his thick arm flexing as he twisted it to look at his watch. “UK, here we come!” his older brother Kane shouted through the line. Quinn could practically see him fist-pumping the air. “You’re the best manager ever, Q!” “Better believe it, Killer.” Quinn laughed before disconnecting the call and pushing his phone into a small interior pocket of the leather jacket that fit snugly over his chiseled back and broad shoulders. Straddling his prized possession, a classic Ducati he’d kept in pristine condition for years, Quinn pulled on his helmet and gloves. His shaggy black hair peeked out from under the edges of the helmet, framing his face. Though covered in leather, glimpses of his love of ink showed on his neck and hands. What could not be seen was how the tattoos continued onto his chest and back as well. He loved the images, and each one had a special meaning to him—a falcon across his chest in midflight to symbolize his yearning for freedom, a dragon wrapping his arm to mark the fire in his blood, the Kavanagh family crest and motto in Gaelic on his back to represent family pride, along with phrases and names of people and moments that had made him who he was. But the small metal bar through his eyebrow, or the piercings in his ear? Those were just for fun. The motorcycle roared to life beneath him, easily heard from blocks away, as he pulled out onto the main street and headed for his parents’ house to meet his brother. He might not live there any longer, but he’d grown up in that house, and it would always feel like home. The whole neighborhood was his home; he knew everyone there, and everyone knew the Kavanaghs—for better or worse. Quinn rode past the quaint houses in the Woodlawn area of the Bronx, going through a mental checklist of everything he needed to do before Kane competed next week. The International MMA Championship, held in London this year, was the biggest mixed martial arts competition in the world. Kane had won that championship the last two years, giving him the title of World’s Greatest MMA Fighter. Kane planned to win a third time next week and Quinn was eager to stand by his side when he did. It’d been three short years since his brother had been thrust into the public spotlight after winning his first U.S. National Championship in Vegas. Quinn beamed proudly at the memory. Even though he wasn’t the one in the cage, he still felt a part of his brother’s success, having managed his entire career from the beginning. Kane’s win was Quinn’s win. It was a win for all the Kavanaghs—something they each really needed after everything the family had been through. As he approached his parents’ street, he signaled with both his right hand and turn signal that he was switching lanes. A large truck whistled past, completely ignoring his signal. Quinn yanked the bike to the left, narrowly escaping a collision as his heart leapt into his throat. Asshole. Taking a deep breath to calm the adrenaline shooting through his body at the close call, Quinn carefully looked around, and once he’d confirmed that the right lane was clear, he again signaled his intentions. Sliding the bike into the right lane, he accelerated, eager to get to his childhood home. That was his last thought before it happened. His family. How happy he was. How much he loved his life. A silver sedan parallel-parked against the curb nosed out into the right lane, directly in front of Quinn’s bike. His eyes widened as the air left his lungs, and he attempted to swerve around the sudden obstacle. But there was no time. There was no space. The front wheel of his bike slammed into the front wheel well of the sedan, and Quinn was weightless. He barely had a moment to blink before he was twisting through the air—over the handlebars, over his bike, over the sedan. He heard the impact before he felt it. His body skidding over the unforgiving pavement as wind rushed past him—a crunching, tumbling screech. Car horns firing, people screaming—or was he screaming? The echoes inside his helmet both muted and deafened. But then he felt it, and it was fucking hell. The crack of bones, a searing pain shooting through him. Every nerve ending in his body set on fire at the force of impact, consuming him till he was certain he couldn’t stand another second of it. Sliding across the pavement, his skin burned against the grating asphalt, his leather gear no match for the unforgiving surface. And then it was quiet. So fucking quiet as he stared up at the sun and waited . . . for what, he didn’t know. He wasn’t connected to his body, but somehow trapped inside it. Quinn tried to call for help, tried to get up, but his lungs and limbs ignored his commands. Just as his eyes began to flutter closed, the pain overtaking him, pushing him beyond what he could ever handle . . . he saw her. Her strawberry-blond hair falling down past her soft pink cheeks, the sun creating a halo behind her. Her fingertips grazed his face, and she whispered to him so softly he barely made out what she said. Light blue eyes, nearly translucent in their brightness, told him to just hold on . . . don’t let go . . . don’t give up. And then she was gone. And so was he.      

About the Author:

Aside from being a Top 10 Barnes & Noble and Amazon Bestseller, Sarah Robinson is a native of the Washington, DC area and has both her Bachelors and Masters Degrees in forensic and clinical psychology. She is newly married to a wonderful man who is just as much of an animal rescue enthusiasts as she is. Together, they own a zoo of rescues including everything from mammals to reptiles to marsupials, as well as volunteering and fostering for multiple animal shelters. Subscribe to her newsletter at www.subscribepage.com/sarahrobinsonnewsletter Visit the author's website for more information about Sarah and her books: http://booksbysarahrobinson.net/  

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[hickorycreekrp-blog]

Out of Character:

Name/Alias: Kit

Pronouns: She/Her

Age: 23

Timezone: PST/GMT -8

Face Claim Preferences: Rami Malek

Character Basics:

Full Name: Eli Touma

Nicknames/Prefers: N/A

Age: 29

Occupation: Greenhouse Keeper at the Busy Bee

Pronouns: He/Him

Gender: Cisgnedermale

Hometown: Bronx, New York

Current Neighborhood: Cohen Point

Highest Education: High school (however he’s working towards completing his BSc in Botany, and a minor in history)

Religion: Agnostic

Family and Relationships:

Parents: Omari “Omar” Touma (Father, 43), Salma Touma (Mother, 38)

Siblings: None

Children: None

Other: Nahla Khali (39, Aunt and primary guardian)

Pets: None

Sexual Orientation: Heterosexual, however in light of certain events, Eli hasn’t been sexually inclined in the least. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say he’s aromatic.

Romantic Orientation: Heteroromantic

Marital Status: Single

Personality:

Favorite Film: N/A

Favorite TV Show: Doesn’t watch much TV, but has taken a shine to Bob’s Burgers

Favorite Book: American Gods by Neil Gaiman

Favorite Song: Old Time Rock & Roll by Bob Seger

Favorite Color: Dark navy

Likes: Mythology, languages, flowers, star gazing, a good strong cup of Turkish coffee, rain, jogging

Dislikes: Loud noises (especially fireworks), cauliflower, mosquitos, crowds, people that pry, phantom pains, forgetting where he put his keys  

History:

People always like to say, “like father, like son”, and for a large part of Eli’s life, that saying rang true.

Omar had a vicious personality and dreams that extended far outside the reaches of the Bronx, and his mother, Salma, had been swept right along with his charismatic charm. It wasn’t long before Eli was born, although Salma could barely be considered a woman and Omar, while excited and determined to care for his young family, couldn’t quite grasp the concept of what that exactly meant. They were married shortly after Eli’s birth, and moved out into their own little box apartment, both sides of their family wanting nothing to do with either of them. Despite Omar’s reassurances to his young bride that they would be fine without them, it was a far more difficult task to accomplish than he expected.

It all started out well enough - Omar worked three jobs on rotation while Salma took it upon herself to do laundry for the other residents in the building - but soon enough, Omar’s youth and dissatisfaction with the kind of life he was leading versus the lives of his childless friends caught up with him. Omar was quick to return his devil may care ways, and soon enough Eli was able to recall the memories of the faint sounds of his parents bickering and fighting whenever Omar returned in the early hours of the morning smelling like alcohol and obviously high on something. Their way of life only deteriorated from there. The final straw was when Omar was caught in a drug bust. At the age of six, Eli was taken by Child Services, being placed with in the care of his aunt Nahla, Salma’s older sister who lived in Hickory Creek before too much damage could be done to him.

Nahla had never fully approved of her younger sister’s decision to keep her child or Omar, but she, unlike the rest of their family, hadn’t cut off contact with her. Despite the change in scenery, it was clear to Nahla that Eli had taken after Omar in personality. He was charming, he knew how to get what he wanted and he had Omar’s devil-may-care smile. His aunt had a stronger hand than either of his parents though and managed to hold Eli’s personality in check. She was a strong willed woman, instilling in him that he finish high school and kept him busy, enrolling him in extracurricular activities and having him help her out at her flower shop, The Busy Bee, when he wasn’t doing those things.

Eli was well aware where he came from, and where Nahla was coming from too. His father wasn’t the best influence, and he didn’t want to fall into the path he had, but even the most well intended plans can be derailed. His high school career saw him with a busy social calendar as Eli reveled in the new social scene. He was well liked and he liked people - but it seemed that that was his downfall. His relationship with Nahla, which had always been quite good become strained when he got caught in the wrong crowd. Despite Nahla’s insistence that the crowd he was falling into was nothing but trouble, Eli was stubborn, and insisted that she was simply being overprotective and uptight. He ate his words when shortly before graduation he was caught in a drug bust that had been orchestrated by his so called friends as an unknowing drug mule.

Being sent off to juvenile detention was the last thing that Eli wanted and it was a sobering experience for him. He spent a year there, completely missing his graduation and incurring the disappointment of his aunt Nahla. It was by sheer stroke of luck that he was pardoned for his crime: but he didn’t get off completely free. Part of his sentence involved serving army time. While he was by no means enthusiastic about this particular condition, it was the lesser of the two evils in his mind. In time though, the army became something good for him, and he came to acknowledge it himself.

He spent the better part of his early twenties being shipped from army base to army base across the United States. It gave him some direction, allowing him to come to his senses, finish high school, pursue a degree in botany at NYU, and realize that everything Nahla did for him was for his own benefit. He was able to repair the relationship with his aunt, and begin figuring out whether or not he wanted to reconnect fully with his parents on his own terms. In short, Eli matured during his training and in the time spent overseas, flourishing in the structured environment that he had been thrust into. Not all good things were meant to last though.

In the four years that Eli had served overseas in Iraq, he had been fortunate to escape with little physical damage. In a routine patrol of a village his battalion had been charged with however, they were ambushed, a land mine obliterating his troop and leaving Eli as the sole survivor. Shrapnel from the landmine sliced through his abdomen and left calf ended his service effective immediately, but there was also the mental and emotional damage that the attack caused him. He was sent back to New York for treatment and has been suffering from PTSD ever since then.

Eli had never had a true attachment to Hickory Creek, but his therapist had suggested getting out of the big city could help in his rehabilitation. Nahla was only happy to have him back (although he mistook this for her simply missing him, and not because her health was taking a turn for the worse), and upon receiving the green light, Eli packed his bags and moved south once again. His physical injuries only cause him minor pain now, and he’s able to walk without the need of any aids, but the PTSD is something that he still struggles with on a daily basis. He’s taken up shop again as the greenhouse keeper at The Busy Bee, and has been taking part time classes in Greene Hills to complete his degree. He has hope that he’ll get better, and knows that there are steps to recovery that he needs to go through before reaching that point.

It’s just that sometimes, there are days when he doesn’t think that day will come at all.

[newyorktheater]

Playwright David Adjmi’s delightful new book Lot Six: A Memoir (Harper Collins, 388 pages) is the most entertaining theater memoir I’ve read since  Act One, the gold standard of theatrical memoirs, which the celebrated playwright and director Moss Hart wrote in 1959 (two years before his death) about his stage-struck, impoverished childhood in the Bronx, his theatrical apprenticeship and his first of many Broadway triumphs. If there are some similarities in the stories – and the wit – of the two Jewish New York theater artists born into challenging circumstances seven decades apart, their differences reflect the many ways the theater has changed. Hart was forced to drop out of school as a teenager, had his first play produced at 18, and was writing Broadway hits starting in his twenties. The Brooklyn-born Adjmi matriculated at several prestigious universities and graduate programs, and has won major prizes and fellowships — in the acknowledgements page, he thanks nine different writers residencies where he wrote much of the memoir – yet at the age of 47, he has not yet had a play on Broadway. (His new play “Stereophonic,” was aiming for a Broadway run in 2021, but like everything else, is currently in limbo.) He is probably best known for his play “3C,” an Off-Broadway parody of “Three’s Company,” and then largely because he won a lawsuit against the copyright holders of the TV sitcom. If “Act One” capped an illustrious career, “Lot Six” promises a higher profile for a writer who deserves it. Adjmi wins me over in his very first story, about seeing “Sweeney Todd” when he was eight years old. His mother had been taking him from their insulated Syrian Jewish community in Brooklyn to Broadway shows since the age of five, determined “to bring me up as cultured – even if she didn’t know what culture was, exactly.” But this musical shocked him from the first earsplitting shriek of a factory whistle and the terrifying first song. “Was this the right show? Where was the pie lady from the commercial?” What follows is the funniest yet clearest and most spot-on description of “Sweeney Todd” that I’ve ever read – all the more priceless because it includes his reaction to it, which was passionate enough to ignite not just an identification with the wronged Sweeney but a life-long devotion to the theater. “Sweeney Todd made me physically sick, but somehow the ugliness in it was exquisite….I wanted that beauty in my life.” After the first scene, however, there is little mention of theater for a very long stretch, as the author takes us through the next decade or so of his lonely, circumscribed life — his quirky, dysfunctional family, parochial community, and oppressively rule-dominated yeshiva, where he most definitely did not belong: “I found God very off-putting. He was a bully who inflicted psychological torture on people . And the Bible wasn’t spiritually edifying. It didn’t fill me with emotion, it didn’t make me want to bolt up and start singing or dancing or sobbing the way I did watching The Wiz and 42nd Street.” The anecdotes from his childhood can be horrid: Sent to school hungry, because his neglectful parents couldn’t even get it together to feed him, he once asked a group of girls whether they could share their snacks with him. One of them threw a fistful of potato sticks on the dirty floor, and giggled. David scooped them up and ate them. “Soon my classmates were all standing in a semicircle, throwing food at me – dried fruit and potato sticks and Twizzlers, and I ate whatever they threw. It didn’t feel like a compromise or humiliation, it didn’t feel like anything…” His own family made him feel alienated because of their ridicule of what they called Lot Six, which is a dismissive epithet used by the Syrian Jewish community for queer people. Adjmi knew he was attracted to men from an early age, but never said it aloud until 14, when his therapist (to whom he was sent because of bad grades) encouraged him to do so using a hand puppet. The overall impression of Adjmi’s unhappy childhood is far from grim, because of the many moments of rebellion and relief – the tales of mischief with his one friend, Howie, for example – and also thanks to the author’s sharp, often comic rendering of unforgettable characters and vivid moments. Adjmi is mercilessly precise in his description of physical appearances. A long paragraph skewers a vengeful teacher by detailing her features, including “fingernails..so long and glossy they seemed part machine. Each element felt so blown out and artificial that when one put them all together it was like a surrealist painting…” It’s not surprising that, as he tells us in an Author’s Note, all the names in his memoir have been changed, even those of his family. But if such a visual portrait might feel like revenge, he applies the same unrelenting eye to characters he likes. “…his fingers were long and thin like insect antennae…” “She was from Los Angeles but seemed like a New Yorker. She wore a lot of black and looked like she’d be good at hailing cabs….” “He was doe-eyed and chinless, unrugged and soft-voiced. On cold days, his nose appeared bright red” The second year acting students at Juilliard “had the unnatural ablated openness of people in cults – their skin seemed ripped off and all the raw nerves exposed.” About that “ablated.” It means tissue surgically removed. “Lot Six” contains the sort of profuse use of abstruse vocabulary most common in poets and autodidacts – cathecting, pelagic, proleptic – sometimes paired with a low-rent word for what I assumed was intended as comic effect — dyadic closeness, cynosural cuddling. Given this display of erudition, I was surprised at his occasional lapses in grammar and his profligate use of “disinterest” to mean lack of interest rather than impartiality. It comes as something of a revelation about halfway through the book, when he tells us (amid much discussion of Nietzsche and literature) that as a sophomore transfer student at Sarah Lawrence he purchased “Barron’s Vocabulary Builder and a pack of index cards….” – and shot the words he learned “like lead balls from a cannon.” There are other unusual choices in “Lot Six.” It includes footnotes, which often tell stories that he could have included in the body of his book, including, weirdly, the story of his coming out to his family. Given the title of the book, there is relatively little about his gay life – little more than a few paragraphs on his first awkward sexual encounter, and a few pages about his first boyfriend. It isn’t until about two-thirds of the way through “Lot Six” that the author – and his character – dive deep into the theater. Feeling at a low point in his life, he takes a train into the city from college and buys a ticket to see “Six Degrees of Separation” – which he describes with the same clarity and passion as “Sweeney Todd,” struck by how much playwright John Guare, “whom I had never met…knew me.”– then walks through Times Square. “I stood for a moment in the jangle of voices and noise, and I felt a sense of enormous calm wash over me. It was where I belonged.” He experiences a similar epiphany again walking in Manhattan a few years later, this time in Chelsea, on Thanksgiving break from his graduate studies at the Iowa Writers Workshop (having decided senior year to become a playwright.) He began hearing dialogue for a play in his head. “It was uncanny….the sort of thing that was supposed to happen to writers all the time” – but had never happened to him. Theater people in the know will probably be talking most about the chapters of “Lot Six” that focus on his year in the playwriting program of the Juilliard School, and his tense relationship with the co-head of the program, whom he calls Gloria (but whose real identity is easy to uncover.) He graphically depicts her brutal treatment – how she looks at her cell phone, rummages through her handbag, and sometimes simply leaves the classroom, whenever he reads new pages: “Her overlong fingernails plucked the surface of the table with an aggressive clack. ‘Well,’ she trilled, ‘do you actually need comments on this, or can we just move on?’ Weeks later: “’Are you trying to write cardboard characters,’ she said, ‘or are you trying to write people?’ “The way she said the word ‘people’ made it sound like I wasn’t really a person, how would I even remotely know the workings of the species.” “’People,’ I replied with a slight aphasia…..” There is a measure of satisfaction from the fact that, although Gloria so upset Adjmi that for a long time he had trouble writing, she also (inadvertently) helped contribute to his first theatrical triumph – a convoluted tale that’s funny and touching, and involves a gazelle; that’s all I’ll say. “Lot Six,” like “Act One,” more or less ends with the story of the playwright’s first big success, a play called “Stunning” that was produced at Lincoln Center in 2009 and extended several times. But unlike the story of the Broadway hit that concludes Hart’s memoir, “Stunning” didn’t make David Adjmi rich, and it didn’t make him famous; it made him infamous, at least among the Syrian Jewish community of Brooklyn. They were the subject of “Stunning,” a bleak play that places some largely unappealing characters into a plot he tells us was loosely based on “A Streetcar Named Desire.” It was a play he wrote when he had given up on playwriting, never expecting that “Stunning” would be produced, viewing it in fact as unproduceable. “It was a suicide note — my one last missive to humanity before hurtling myself like Anna Karenina onto the train tracks at McDonald Avenue.” So it makes sense that “Lot Six” ends not in a celebratory theater party for his play, but in a quiet dinner out with his mother and sister, at which his sister recounts an ugly family funeral that Adjmi did not attend. The reaction to the play, and the discoveries he made as a result – “I’d summoned the very past I’d wanted to annihilate” – are among what feel like the new lessons in “Lot Six” about the theater of today. And they are stunning.

Book Review: Lot Six: A Memoir Of Gay, Yeshiva-Tortured Syrian Jewish Playwright David Adjmi Playwright David Adjmi’s delightful new book Lot Six: A Memoir (Harper Collins, 388 pages) is the most entertaining theater memoir I’ve read since  

[artofpeacelove]

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

As states across the country issue stay-at-home orders to limit the spread of COVID-19, an increasing number of people are working from home, or they’ve lost their jobs and are navigating unemployment and hoping for the best. While this is all happening, countless memes and tweets joke about how people are perpetually watching Netflix or stress baking sourdough bread. One particularly contentious tweet asserted that people need to capitalize on all the “extra” free time:

If you don’t come out of this quarantine with either:

1.) a new skill 2.) starting what you’ve been putting off like a new business 3.) more knowledge

You didn’t ever lack the time, you lacked the discipline

— Jeremy Haynes (@TheJeremyHaynes) April 2, 2020

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

The idea within the tweet—that we should use our time at home to be as productive as possible—isn’t a new one. But it has become more widespread and controversial during the COVID-19 pandemic, when some people may have more perceived free time, but are also feeling more stressed and anxious. The tweet “sums up all that is wrong about our hustle, work harder, be more culture,” says Lee Chambers, an environmental psychologist based in the United Kingdom. “It doesn’t take into account that many people will be in situations so challenging that purposely acquiring a new skill or business is not a priority right now,” he says.

Ericka Quezada-York, a certified nurse-midwife who works for a hospital-based OB/GYN practice in the Bronx in New York City, says that even though she sees a lot of her patients through telemedicine chats now, reducing some pre-appointment interaction time, she is spending even more time at work—so even her “normal” free time has become even more limited. “Because I spend so much time reviewing my charts to see who needs to come in face-to-face and who can be seen remotely, I estimate I spend an extra 60 to 90 minutes daily at work compared to before the pandemic,” she says. “On top of that, I spend a lot of time treating my patients for their pandemic anxiety [on top of everything else], and it takes me longer to take the [subway] between work and home because of transit reductions.”

Even if you do find yourself with new pockets of time, other emotional factors may be otherwise clouding your energy, precluding you from nimble productivity we glorify in more normal times. Take Erica Harvey, a bar owner in Las Vegas, who says she had to lay off 47 employees. After she closed her business, she made a list of everything she wanted to accomplish during the month she plans to have “off,” but she feels an overwhelming amount of guilt and depression from laying off her employees. “It’s all I can do to get out of bed,” she says. “I can’t even watch new shows or movies. I just keep watching old movies I’ve seen multiple times because my brain can’t process anything new.”

Even people who are safely working from home have had trouble adjusting to their new normal. Noel Liotta, who works in sales and marketing in Raleigh, North Carolina, says she’s working harder than ever because her company had to lay off employees for the first time in its 18-year history. “I’m just trying to keep some pulse on what normal is,” she says. At the start of the pandemic, she pulled out her guitar and keyboard, but she hasn’t touched either in almost two weeks. “I’m childless, I’ve still got a job, but I’m not doing anything extra or anything out of the ordinary except for a new Saturday night game night with friends via Zoom.”

Free time is a luxury, especially during a pandemic, when parents are trying to become teachers at home, health-care professionals and other essential employees can’t stop working, and those being laid off or reduced in hours are desperately trying to make ends meet.

Prioritizing productivity can lead to burnout, but it also changes the concept of “free time.” “When we are in this productivity mind-set, the concept of free time just doesn’t exist,” says Ander Camino, a therapist with Alma, a community for mental health professionals. Not only that, but when most people get off work, if they still have jobs, they might check in with family members and friends via phone, take care of their children, and meet their own basic needs. “We can easily fall into the mistake of perceiving [any free time] as an opportunity to invest and do more.”

But “more,” for many people, isn’t possible right now. Free time is a luxury, especially during a pandemic, when parents are trying to become teachers at home, health-care professionals and other essential employees can’t stop working, and those being laid off or reduced in hours are desperately trying to make ends meet.

Kelly Small is one of those parents, along with their wife. [Edit note: Small uses they/them pronouns.] A creative director living in Toronto, Small has struggled with the demands of homeschooling their 7-year-old child. “We both work full time from home,” Small says. “It’s chaos to try to manage kids and clients all at once.” Any semblance of “free time” has nearly vanished. 

Quezada-York says it’s much harder for her to find free time than it was before the pandemic. Her wife, who is a stay-at-home parent, is now supervising their 9-year-old child’s remote learning program. Their three year old also just started speech therapy and physical therapy—the latter moving forward over video chat. “Our whole schedule of doing chores and all those little household-running things is way off,” she says. Pre-pandemic, she used to enjoy reading during her commute, but she thinks that wearing a mask 11 hours a day makes it hard for her to focus. Even at home, she says doing anything other than resting is difficult. “Once I’ve finished all my work-work and my household work for the day, maybe [before the pandemic] I would have watched some TV or done some reading or played a game, but now I just want to sleep,” she says.

That makes sense, Chambers says, because for most people, now is not the time to take on more. He says people need to prioritize their own well-being, and if they have free time, consider helping those who don’t. “Everyone has their own challenges in this period, and those with more free time should be looking to support the most vulnerable and the overburdened, not being individualistic and having tunnel vision, missing what they could be doing for their communities,” he says. “It is the time to be more for each other, to do what we can to support ourselves and others through the challenges we face.”

from Good Advice – Well+Good https://ift.tt/2xQ5loq via IFTTT

[ratthewrodent]

This fuck up has been set up perfectly for disaster over the past few months and is continuing to destroy my life. This is a long one, but every detail counts in portraying one of the worst weeks of my life.Let me preface this by saying I love my cat more than anything, and while he is currently not sleeping anywhere near me, he's still getting a lot of cautious love. I can't imagine being self-isolated alone without him right now. Truly, I love him too much - too much love got us here today.In January, I adopted an 11 yo, 19 lbs chonker. I fell in love instantly. His last family returned him after 6 months with a bad case of fleas. He had been defleaed but came home with a slew of other health issues. By end of January after a lot of vet visits, he seemed to be on the mend. I knew what I was signing up for when I adopted a senior cat, but just didn't realize the endless possibilities. Truly, I tell him every night before bed he's my ride or die, and that's about to be tested with this saga of the greatest love story ever told.Early February, he starts coughing and stops pooping in his litterbox, despite me cleaning it daily. He's still peeing in there, but seems cautious and runs out immediately. Even when he started pooping on the floor (thank God for wood floors), he'd run under my bed from it. That was the only time he'd go under my bed, otherwise he was cuddled up on or next to me. His medical chart from when I adopted him said he had issues with litterbox pooping- they suspected he was afraid of his last family's other cat and it was behavioral, but something didn't add up. He was fine with pooping in the litterbox for the first month after his kitty enema. I cleaned up his poop every other day and saw nothing out of the ordinary. He was starting to lose weight, which was good because as cute of a chonker as he is, it's NOT healthy, folks. I stopped free feeding him, started feeding him scheduled wet food meals, and we had daily playtime to get him to a healthy weight.I bring him into the vet in February for the 6th time in a month and a half. He had half of his teeth removed before I adopted him. This resulted in an incision infection and an enema due to opiod constipation. This visit was for his cough. I even ask if he could have worms. The vet tells me, "I know you're trying to be a good pet owner, but he likely has allergies and it's a behavioral issue. This might be something he has to live with. Come see me if his mucus turns brown". I had been right about every single Dr. Google diagnosis up until this point, but whatever. I buy an air purifier, vacuum and clean regularly, change the bedding weekly- I already have an obsessive cleaning schedule, and COVID/quarantine has only allowed that the time to thrive. Ask any of my previous roommates and I am the cleanest person you'll ever live with. Despite the cleaning, some coughing days were better than others.All of a sudden end of last week, he starts coughing a lot less, and I start feeling like absolute shit. My best friend even makes a joke that I caught whatever my cat had. Sick, sick foreshadowing.When I read the article about the tiger in the Bronx catching COVID19, I was convinced we both had it. My chest was tight, frequent bathroom runs, just pure exhaustion, losing weight rapidly despite being quarantined for a month in a tiny studio- malnourished to the point my hair is falling out. I'm a mess. I guess it's a good thing I got laid off 2 weeks ago, because the bathroom and I are very close friends these days.I wake up Monday morning to the pungent smell of my cat's usual poop surprise on the wood floor. He's such a kind cat to poop where it's easy cleanup. That's when I see them - worms crawling around EVERYWHERE. I'm gagging, take a little sample for the vet, and flush the rest. I Dr. Google the shit out of it and it is for SURE tapeworms. Then I read about the eggs. Let me remind you I change my sheets and wash my duvet cover weekly. I make my bed the second I get out of it and even vacuume my duvet cover. I RUN to inspect my bed- there are eggs EVERYWHERE. Little rice demons of hell that have been dropping from my poor cat's bum for 3 months. I'm dry heaving at this point. I live in an old studio apartment and my bed is against a brick wall, so I get little grout crumble patches that I have to vacuume up pretty regularly. I remember feeling little patches of what I assumed one night was grout in my sheets, but fell asleep wine drunk and ignored it. When I tell you they were everywhere, I mean they were everywhere. My pillow, under my pillow- my cat and I fall asleep cuddling every night. Again, I love this cat too damn much.I call the vet and it is undoubtedly tapeworm. We suspect he's had it since I adopted him. His prescription gets to me within a few hours. I also get flea medication and spray. I check him for flea dirt regularly and hadn't seen anything, but better to be cautious. I bag all of my bedding, throw out half of what I own, vacuum every inch of this place for an hour, I'm on the fucking floor with my flashlight and find a dead tapeworm under my couch, Swiffer, disinfect my couch, flip my mattress- like total mental breakdown. I give him his medication and his cough stops instantly. He hasn't coughed once since Monday.This has been one of my childhood phobias since I read that urban legend about the guy who starved himself then put a burger patty on his tongue and lured the tapeworm out until he could grab it from his mouth. I'm thinking about this story after giving my cat his meds when holy moly diarrhea. I look in the toilet bowl to 3 long strings floating on the sides that normally I would have flushed to sewage heaven without second thought, but they are undoubtedly tapeworms. My grown ass calls my mom and sobs while still sitting on the toilet in all of my wormy glory. I call and embarrassingly show the doctor, doctor undoubtedly tells me I too have tapeworm and writes me a prescription. He asks me if I want just tapeworm or a full deworming? I'm like wtf does that mean? He's like, "You'd be surprised how many parasites are living in you regularly. Just wait and see what you're about to poop out". I honestly just want to die at this point.My cat and I are prescribed the same medication, obviously just different doses and different pricetags. His was $13 for two doses. Mine? $130 for one dose, 2 pills. That's WITH my last month of insurance from my previous employer. I immediately receive a text that my prescription is on back order because of COVID. I'm trying to fall asleep that night on my couch without any blankets, when would you fucking guess it- my heat stops working. So now I'm just shivering on a small ass couch knowing there's worms crawling around inside of me and eggs everywhere. I don't sleep.I call the pharmacy when they open in tears asking when my meds are going to get there. Lucky me, they had just arrived. He asks me, "Did you know your prescription is $130?" I'm like, "Uh no I've never had tapeworm, but I guess the price is irrelevant". We both nervously laugh. I also haven't had an in-person human interaction in a month because I've been self isolating alone and laid off due to COVID, so this is trying on soooo many levels.I order delivery for a big ass meal from my favorite restaurant because 1. I have no appetite because the thought of feeding the worms makes me want to die and I was hoping ordering from my favorite restaurant would entice me to eat. 2. Medication has to be taken with food. 3. I realize this is the last day the calories don't matter. Might as well enjoy it.I pick up my prescription, light a candle, call my best friend, we have a little virtual funeral for my worms and try to make light of the situation. I play the song I want played at my funeral (Hamburg Song by Keane, it's beautiful). But it just keeps getting worse, y'all. My best friend hesitantly tells me he was telling his physical therapist about my worm saga. She recommended buying clove oil and rubbing it on my pink starfish. I'm like why? Apparently worms like to bite your butt on the way out, and clove oil prevents that. I hate everything at this moment. It's like the different levels of hell.I take the pills and am reading the prescription pamphlet. It notes that you'll experience random aches and pains while the worms are dying. Let me tell you- I felt every fucking worm dying as I lay blanketless on my couch in the fetal position. All of a sudden, I'm thinking about the worms and I can't breathe. My throat is kind of itchy, and I'm thinking there are worms dying in my tonsils at this point or I got COVID at the pharmacy. I'm laying there in the fetal position, telling myself it's just a panic attack. My cat decides to go pee at 2am, jumps out startled trailing pee all over the apartment. I know the medication says limit your alcoholic beverages, but I say fuck it and make a drink. I clean the pee and finally fall asleep for about 3 hours.I wake up bright and early to the smell of cat poop. Still half asleep, I searched his normal spots and couldn't find any poops. He left it in the tub for me- a new spot- thanks, cat. Easy cleanup and no worms- I take it as a win. I flush it down the toilet, bleach the tub, and obsessively wash my hands.Let me tell you- my hands are bleeding from the amount of times I wash them between COVID and wormageddon. I look at myself in the mirror while scrubbing my raw hands and holy shit. My face is is swollen to the point I'm still surprised I can see out of my eyes. My tongue is flopping all over the place. I am having a severe allergic reaction to the tapeworm medication. That panic attack while falling asleep was actually an allergic reaction.I immediately video chat my doctor, he tells me to go get Benadryl immediately and writes me a steroid prescription. I get a call from their finance department on the brief walk to the pharmacy: $140 for that 5 minute virtual visit. I try to dispute the charge- she can't do anything. I just flat out ask her: "Can I just tell you about my shitty life then for $140?". We talk for 5 minutes about how much my life sucks and she agrees. She was very nice about it, but still $140. She basically tells me that if I had waited a month to get tapeworm and almost die from the medication, the virtual visit would have been cheaper without insurance. Fucking love it and American healthcare.I cut my losses go back to the same pharmacy from the day before and they ask me what's wrong. I lift up my glasses and they were like "Ooooof- did you know you were allergic to this medication?". At this point, I'm like "WHY DO ANY OF YOU THINK I'VE HAD TAPEWORMS BEFORE?" Truly, complete mental breakdown. I buy my medication, a box of wine, and $20 worth of candy to ease the pain.So folks, here I am. Unemployed and alone during a pandemic, clenching my butt like never before, still haven't pooped because I'm terrified of worm kisses on the way out, face still swollen shut, but I'm breathing fine. My cat is a new cat, so for that? I am grateful. I am 100% sure I will have PTSD from this experience. It is going to be a long, long, time before my cat and I snuggle regularly again, but I know we'll get there and I still love him. Adopt senior pets regardless of this story, because 10/10- would still get worms again for him.Wormageddon 2020 will not soon be forgotten.TL;DR My recently adopted cat gave us both tapeworm, I almost died from the meds, and this is my hell.Edit: I'll come back and give more meaningful update, but I'm reading all of these comments over the phone, basking in the worst kind of Reddit fame with my best friend, and his smart ass says, "Your tapeworm is going to come out of your butt and ask DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?"But really, y'all are too kind. via /r/tifu

[sexednyc]

Sex and Orgasms on Antidepressants

Antidepressants can be a lifeline for many people. They become something that they must take to lead normal, happy lives. There are many great advantages to these and if they are a necessity for you, you should by all means take them if you have a prescription. 

But there are a few frustrating side effects that come with taking antidepressants, and a common one for a lot of people is the lack of libido or the inability to orgasm. It seems like people are faced with having to choose between having a happy, normal life in general or having a fulfilling, normal sex life. This dilemma can be enough for people to stop taking antidepressants, or to use them in a way that they aren’t intended. For instance, I have heard of a few female friends who have stopped taking their Lexapro a few days before a sexual encounter, in order to be able to orgasm. This is a dangerous solution, because stopping antidepressants without help from a psychiatrist can have some serious side effects including suicidal thoughts, flu-like symptoms, dizziness, dissociation, and a setback in treatment. 

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are one of the most common antidepressants prescribed and one of the most likely to cause a change in libido or the inability to reach orgasm — a condition called anorgasmia. This can obviously interfere with a person’s sex life and romantic relationships. I spoke to Alessandra Velez, a medical student at Baruch College in her seventh and final year, about the sexual side effects of antidepressants. In addition, she works for the Echo Free Clinic in The Bronx as a Pre-Health Interpreter. The clinic provides an array of services including free sexual health care, so she regularly deals with patients suffering from sexual dysfunction. 

“Different types are more likely to cause anorgasmia or lack sensation. It is not an extremely common side effect so if you have that problem with one antidepressant you may be able to switch to another one, like an norepinephrine-dopamine reuptake inhibitors (NDRI), with the help of your doctor, and you most likely won’t have the sexual side effects,” said Velez. 

“Another issue with the sexual side effects, it’s sort of like a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Velez continued. “Meaning, if someone is worried about a sexual side effect, it can become psychosomatic, where you're in your own head too much and can't focus. For anxious personality types, researching side effects ahead of time (before starting on medication) is not a good idea, because a lot of times people will become really concerned with a certain side effect happening and they’ll manifest the side effect accidentally.” 

Orgasms are not solely about the stimulation of sexual organs; a person’s mental state can affect their ability to orgasm. If they aren’t comfortable, relaxed, or are preoccupied by the fear of not finishing, it’ll most likely affect them negatively. 

If you are suffering from anorgasmia or a lack of libido, there are a few things that can be done. To begin, waiting it out ( though it can be annoying) is your best option. If you consistently take your medication for a couple of months, your body is most likely going to adjust to the increase of serotonin and you’ll be able to orgasm normally again. It may be beneficial to lower the dosage of medication you are on, so talk to your doctor about what is best for you. 

In addition to waiting, you can do a few things to help yourself relax and become more comfortable in your situation. If you are not fully comfortable with your partner, your sex life will not be ideal. Open up a dialogue about sex and knowing what you like. Also, get to know your own body and masturbate on your own, so you can be fully aware of what you like. It can help open up a dialogue with your partner. Healthy communication, without shame, can make you much more comfortable with your partner and yourself. 

Another thing to keep in mind is that alcohol and drugs can make it difficult to orgasm, so it may be best to lay off drinking or using drugs for a while; they don’t often interact well with antidepressants, anyway. If symptoms last more than a couple of months, you can talk to your doctor about switching to a different medication with less effect on libido and see what’s best for you. 

Most of all, don’t be afraid to bring your sex life up to a qualified psychiatrist therapist, because a fulfilling sex life can have a positive affect on your mental and physical health.