jjablkowski's blog

Dr Stephan N. Willich, professor and director of the Institute of Social Medicine, Epidemiology and Health Economics at the Charité University Medical Center in Berlin, is a keen student of musical history and the representation of medicine in music.

As a couple’s counselor, I have found that relationship challenges can often be attributed to negative patterns of interaction that limit our ability to feel connected to one another. These patterns are often the result of experiences in early years, difficulty with vulnerability, unresolved issues in the current relationship, lack of understanding of our attachment styles, and difficulty regulating emotions in times of conflict. Neither physicians nor their relationships are spared these challenges. 

With considerable interest, I read Dr Jack Chang’s BCMJ blog post about the taboos surrounding cosmetic surgery for men, specifically the taboos about issues relating to penis size. I appreciate Dr Chang’s recommendation that genital cosmetic surgery needs to be accompanied by some form of educational support. In my close to 3 decades of clinical experience in the areas of sexual medicine and sexual rehabilitation, there were three areas of importance to discuss. 

I recently reread an article from the Netherlands where researchers selected 11 men and 14 women in a group of 144 people with a mean age of 82 who expressed a wish to die by their own hand even though they did not suffer any physical or mental disorder.[1] They considered their lives to be “completed.” The researchers followed this group yearly from 2013–2019. At the end of the study, 16 of the group were still alive, but 9 had caused their own deaths. Those who were still alive expressed somewhat similar reasons for not wanting to die yet.

Lawyer and poet William Ross Wallace published his poem, “What rules the world” in 1865 praising motherhood as a force for changing the world for the better. 

Blessing on the hand of woman!
Angels guard her strength and grace;
In the cottage, palace, hovel!
O, no matter where the place!...
For the hand that rocks the cradle
Is the hand that rules the world.