Tag: Pain
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Masters of their fates?
Sentience is the present participle of the Latin verb sentire –‘to feel’- but what is it? What does it imply? Consciousness? Thought? Or merely some form of awareness of the surroundings, however indistinct and vague? Is avoidance of a noxious stimulus enough to establish sentience, or does it have to involve an understanding that it…
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Is there really nothing new under the sun?
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. The older I get, the more I understand the wisdom of that passage from Ecclesiastes. It’s not that I have experienced everything, seen everything, and I certainly haven’t thought of everything; I have no…
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For my Pains, a World of Sighs
What does pain look like? An intriguing question to be sure, but one I hadn’t even thought to ask until recently. Pain is one of those things that, like St. Augustine’s quandary over Time, presents a similar difficulty in defining. The International Association for the Study of Pain made a stab at it: ‘Pain is…
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The Unexpected
What I like about the unexpected is that you never expect it. It’s a surprise. A gift. And the world is filled with this stuff. Each day at work –I’m a gynaecologist- there are little treasures hidden within appointments, presents in names. Especially the unpronounceable Persian names that unravel when I try to work at…
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Reflections on the Bell Curve
We -many of us in the Western world at any rate- live our lives on a Bell Curve, thinking -hoping- we occupy a place near an out-lying position: the 5% area that presumes we are not just normal, but rather, exceptional… And given the population numbers, there is time spent worrying that we are inadvertently drifting towards the center…
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The Guardian
To anyone watching from a distance, they were both very much in love. Hands entwined, bodies linked at hip and shoulder, they clung to each other like moss to a tree. Her eyes sought his for sustenance, energy, approval; their movement along the corridor and into the office was sinuous and choreographed. Synchronized swimming came to…
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Pain
I don’t want the title to imply that I am some sort of expert on pain; I am, like most people, pain averse. I do not necessarily understand pain; I see it in others and assume it has similar characteristics in common with what I experience and so I avoid it whenever feasible. I understand when others have…
musings on women's health 