THIS IS NOT A MOVIE CRITIQUE…

Last night I went to see a good movie, Argo. I recommend it, I would give it 4 stars if I were David Stratton. Maybe more.

It is ‘based on a true story’ ie, with some tweakings of real occurrences, which took place after the fall of the Shah of Iran, when the US embassy was stormed by Islamic Revolutionaries, students and militia, and the staff of the embassy was taken hostage. The IR were demanding that the US return the Shah to Iran for trial and execution. This occurred November 4, 1979. Six staff managed to get away and took refuge with the Canadian ambassador. The actual film story covers the hostage crisis as background and describes how these 6 were rescued in a hare-brained but ultimately successful mission. (Sorry to spoil it for you. Happy ending.)

It was directed by Ben Affleck who also stars in it, and I must say that Mr Affleck looks pretty good in the 70’s facial hairand hairstyle, but he always looks pretty good, hey? Turns out, he’s not just a pretty face (and the rest), he’s a decent director too.

The film makes excellent use of shaky-cam techniques especially in the frightening crowd scenes, conveying the chaos and the rage of the mob as well as the fear of the Americans. It’s taut and suspenseful and perfect in its re-creation of the time and places.

Alan Alda and John Goodman also have terrific character roles, all based on real people. Anyway, see it for yourself on the big screen, it’s worth it.

As the movie finished, and I prepared for the usual dash to the exit, I noticed that the credits were cleverly drawing parallels between the actors and the real people whom they represented as well as newspaper photos of the time recreated in the movie, so I stayed a bit longer, and then something most unexpected happened.

There was a voice-over by none other than Ex-President Jimmy Carter, essentially taking the credit for the subsequent rescue of the 52 embassy workers who were freed after 444 days in captivity in the embassy building in Tehran. (14 others, women and African-Americans, and one man who had developed MS while held, had been released earlier.) They were rescued and returned to the US, every one of them, ‘without a shot being fired.’

And I nearly choked. Never have I wished so much for Ronald Reagan to still be alive and fully compos mentis, so that he could refute this slimy truth-twister, because believe me it was not Carter, the failed President, who ultimately secured the rescue, it was Reagan. As soon as he was sworn in as President, the hostages were released, probably because the Iranians were punishing Carter for having harboured the Shah in the US where he was being treated at the Mayo Clinic for cancer. (He had died September 1980, 2 months earlier.) Oh yes, there was also a large transfer of gold bullion made to the Iranians. But then, the US also held on to Iranian assets in the USA. Tit for tat, negotiations and negotiations.

Horsetrading for the lives of US citizens.

The imprisonment was awful, as with most imprisonments, with little extra frills, like long stretches in solitary for some who dissed the Ayatollah, and pretend executions by firing squad, and being hooded and cuffed and stripped, all that fun stuff. Despite the claims of the Iranians that the hostages were being treated as ‘guests’. 444 days is a LONG time to be such a 'guest'.

Granted, Carter did try to mount a secret rescue in April 1980… SIX MONTHS into the crisis. It tanked mainly due to equipment failure and 8 US soldiers were killed.

The US has a long history of interference in Iran, having orchestrated regime change, kicking out a pro-Soviet elected leader in 1953, putting the Shah (whose father had not allowed Nazi Germany into Iran during WW2, thus helping the Allies to victory) into power and propping him up for decades while he was oppressing his people and living it up in the way of most despots. Carter had only good things to say about him; I suppose that was back in the day when the US actually supported the despots it put into power, not like today, hey Hosni?Saddam? Muammar? What a rats’ nest.

So the Shah was ‘a prick, but he’s our prick’ as they said in the movie. And the US had a long history of these sorts of overt and covert machinations and interferences in other countries’ governments. But until Carter and his dithering, right or wrong, the US had POWER.

Thanks to Carter and his administration, it suddenly became clear to the Ayatollah and his cronies that America, the Great Satan, was, to borrow a Maoist phrase, a paper tiger. Powerless.

I think you can lay a large part of the blame for what has become of Iran-US relations squarely at the feet of Jimmy Carter.

So Jimbo, spare me the self-serving movie voice-overs. It totally spoiled the experience for me.

And on a final note, look at today. A US ambassador and 3 staff murdered in Libya. US embassies stormed in Egypt, Yemen, Sudan, Tunisia. And what do Obama and his Secretary of State do? Apologize for a dumb film that upset the poor sensitive Muslims.

A paper tiger. In flames.

SIMPLY THE BEST…BUT IT’S NOT ALWAYS SIMPLE

I recently posted about my daughter’s birth experience and a reader wanted to know how I felt about breastfeeding. (Well, she said ‘nursing’, but here in Australia we call a spade a spade, and it’s breastfeeding, except when I get sick of writing ‘breastfeeding’ so I write ‘nursing’. OK?)

In my profile, I state that I am a lactation consultant and a doctor, and to flesh that out a little, I have been an LC for 25 years and an MD for 34. My career kind of took a hook turn and instead of completing my psychiatric training, I went and had a bunch of kids, so reality kind of bit me and I abandoned my hospital-based career. Instead I did some sessions in general practice between babies and then, after I had my 5^th, there was this new profession called Lactation Consulting. I was interested to learn more about this because I had always had trouble breastfeeding, usually with low supply being the problem, and there was not a lot of professional help around. There was the NMAA (Nursing Mothers’ Association of Australia, named when some people flinched at the word ‘breast’, and now renamed the ABA, Australian Breastfeeding Association) and they are nice people who do good things, but there was no real professionalism there, and no answers to my problems. So I was intrigued and I read up and passed the exam and have been working in this field, with a medical slant of course, for all these years.

SO. What do I think of breastfeeding? I think it is the best thing in the world. When it is going well. When it isn’t going well, however, it is the biggest nightmare. There isn’t much in between.

When I first started, it felt like a personal wound when a patient weaned, ie, quit breastfeeding. In the intervening years I have gained much wisdom and insight into the human condition and my attitude has shifted.

My aim as an LC is to help women who want to nurse their babies by giving them correct advice and helping them skill up and learn how to nurse, to correctly diagnose and appropriately manage the presenting problem, and to be sensitive to the BIG picture.

If I can see that things are not looking great and that too many things have gone wrong for too long, or if the mother really has done her all and is ‘over it’, then I say this to them:

‘I am not the Breastfeeding Fascist, and I do not believe that ALL babies MUST be breastfed at ANY cost.’

And it’s true. I share their disappointment, but you are not supposed to grind yourself into the ground and suffer and struggle for weeks and weeks and weeks in order to breastfeed. If you want to do that and have the strength to, I will help you; but sooner or later the problem either gets better or it doesn’t. And if it doesn’t, it’s time to wean. If mum feels that she has done whatever she can, then there is no room for guilt and she can move on. Better luck next time.

I have seen everything over the years, and there is no shortage of irony. There is ‘Could but Wouldn’t’ who has the milk but not the desire and the patience to see it through the first few difficult weeks, and ‘Would but Couldn’t’ who struggles and struggles with every problem under the sun until, heartbroken and disappointed, she must give in to the bottle of formula.

I have so much to say about this and any other topic related to the breastfeeding mother-infant pair, but there’s another thing I have learned over the years: NOBODY is interested in breastfeeding, unless it pertains directly to themselves, personally or professionally. Not OBs, not Pediatricians, not GPs, nobody. From time to time some woman is arrested for nursing a 5 year-old or something like that makes it into the news, and suddenly everyone has an opinion, usually negative, and everyone wants my opinion. Who cares about these freaky cases?  Or some prude complains abut women breastfeeding in public, as if the threat of a bit of boob showing while shoved in a baby’s mouth will destabilize civilization. Get over it. That’s all nonsense.

I don’t care about anything so newsworthy. I care about the thousands of women who want to breastfeed but are having problems, often brought on by poor management and ignorant health care professionals, or just plain bad luck. I care about the thousands of babies who are denied their birthright for inadequate reasons. But if breastfeeding doesn’t work, well, sometimes it just doesn’t work, and in the absence of available wet-nurses, it’s the bottle of formula, so the baby won’t starve.

A final comment: there has never been a time in the history of the world when all women could give birth safely with a guarantee of survival of the mother or the baby. Ditto, there has never been a time when all women could breastfeed successfully. Ancient Egyptian mummified infants have been found with feeding pots. We in the West need to be thankful that today most women survive childbirth and most babies survive infancy, including lactation failure. So we don’t have wet-nurses, officially anyway, but we have clean water and adequate formula, and the human organism is very robust. Thank goodness.

Please feel free to comment!

WHOSE IDEA WAS THIS CHILDBIRTH THING, ANYWAY?

My daughter gave birth 48 hours ago to her first child, a boy (3.825kg, that’s 8 ½ lbs in the old money, although, bleary as I was, I was saying 7 ½ - well, I had been up for most of the night, OK?) and she was a champion. She is committed to the ideal of natural birth, and, although we all know how the wheels can fall off the process and demand intervention, thank Gd she got what she wanted- natural, drug free, pretty short labour, healthy baby. Of course it was an eye-opener for her, because who can really anticipate how painful and primal the whole process is?

I am proud to say that not only was I there, but I was actually useful as a birth attendant. The OB offered me a job and I think he was half serious- and he was terrific too, so it’s a bit of a mutual admiration society. He has delivered 2 other grandchildren and he is a rare breed of OB- one who doesn’t do anything unless he has to, and who has an attitude of trusting the female body to generally get the job done with encouragement and support, rather than threats of dire consequences and ‘what-ifs’. So I was in the thick of it and didn’t have time to take photos, sorry.

But honestly, what a business. How ridiculous to think that this enormous passenger has to be pushed and squeezed and extruded from inside to outside through a narrow tunnel which has to stretch and often tear, accompanied by the worst pain the woman has ever experienced, as a rule. ‘Like kacking a watermelon’, as a friend of mine says. And there’s shit and pee and blood and amniotic fluid, and just when you think it’s all over, WHOA out comes the placenta. Please tell me what sort of evolutionary process got us this charming state of affairs? Or, if you will, what sort of punishment is this for listening to a snake and eating a damn piece of fruit off a lousy Tree of Knowledge 5773 years ago? And there could have been a better way!

Yes! I am from Australia, and I can see that there are 2 other options available here. Because here, we don’t just have the boring old placental mammals; we have marsupials and monotremes too.

So the monotremes, basically 2 animals, the echidna (an ant-eating simulacrum of a hedgehog in a parallel universe) and the platypus (an impossible river denizen with 4 webbed feet, fur, a beaver-like tail and a duck-like bill) lay eggs. Yes, a leathery sort of reptilian-looking egg out of which hatches a naked baby critter, called a puggle and just as cute as it sounds, which then locates milk-producing patches on its mother’s belly, which it then laps up while nestling close to her. This would be a good arrangement for humans, unless the egg was as big as the aforementioned watermelon, in which case, not.

Best of all options is the marsupial, I think. The joey (who thought of these names?) of the kangaroo, even the largest species, is about 3 cms long at birth. It exits the vagina or cloaca or whatever the kangaroo has after about a month of gestation, climbs up using its relatively well-developed forepaws, through the mother’s furry belly into the pouch, which takes about 3 minutes, attaches to a teat and stays there for 4-5 months, and then falls out of the pouch at about 6-10 months. That’s a birth! Of course it can come back in for some time after and can still suckle even if it has been evicted permanently, to make room for the next joey. Mum can even make 2 different kinds of milk, one for the new and one for the mature joey.

All marsupials do this, with variations on the theme. And I think, how much better is that? No pain, no blood, you can check on the baby whenever you want, even after the birth you can stuff the baby in in times of danger and run away, until it gets too big at least. This is what the Attachment Parenting types want, too! I guess a sling and a pouch are pretty similar.

But I digress; my beef is with the birthing process. And it’s not as if the new ‘improved’ versions in use today guarantee anything wonderful either. Compared with epidurals and vacuums and forceps and tears and cuts and caesarians- marsupials still rule.

I’ve had a word with G-d about it but She’s not listening, unfortunately, so I guess it’ll just be push push push, and that’s that. Bloody snake. 

A LANCE THROUGH MY HEART

I love the Tour de France; it would have to be the craziest, most gruelling event in the sporting calendar, and the most telegenic. It is riveting to watch and wonderful to listen to, with the calm and erudite commentary of Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen. To think of what these athletes must suffer as they travel day after day for 3 weeks, time trials and all, in boiling heat, rain, cold; through the Pyrenees and the Alps, the insane ascents and the even more mad and dangerous descents, riding 90km/hour down the mountains, protected by nothing but skin tight nylon and a dinky helmet; one wrong move and it’s kaput. The dangerous peloton with the jockeying for space, the attacks, the breakaways, the sheer courage and strength and stamina, it’s awesome.  I always want to slap the overexcited spectators for getting in the way, on more than one occasion causing riders to crash, not to mention the one time a dog ran across the road and the riders went down like dominoes.

So considering how difficult this event is and how competitive are the road cyclists, and how crazy the Europeans, in particular, are about road cycling, well, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to learn that there are those who use performance-enhancing drugs to get the winning edge. And considering the fact that Lance Armstrong won the Tour 7 times, which is also impossible, I shouldn’t be surprised to hear that he was one of the drug cheats. So I’m not surprised. But I am heartbroken.

Because Lance was always more than just a jock. Lance was a legend. And when you look at the story, well, yes, it did seem too good to be true. And it was.

When I read his first book, ‘It’s not about the bike’ I was moved by his story- alienated from is father, raised by his single mother, struck down by testicular cancer which spread to his bones and brain, undergoing surgery and searching for an oncologist who believed in him enough to try different chemotherapy, looking for a cure when popular medical opinion had given up- and the photos of Lance at his sickest, a bald,walking, scarred skeleton. It was an extreme sort of story of an extreme sort of person. A person who, frankly, came across as an asshole, but one you had to admire for his strength of purpose and resilience. Easy to admire, hard to like.

I believed that the chemo had remade him into something more than human, a physical freak. I didn’t dream that a person with this sort of medical history and this sort of ferocity and dedication to living, would take performance-enhancing drugs. HGH (growth hormone) could have easily triggered any residual tumour growth. Testosterone- in a person with one testicle? Couldn’t that cause it to atrophy? EPO- well, I don’t know that EPO would have damaged him, but still, I naively thought, along with millions, that he would not be so reckless as to take these drugs. So we are all dupes. And there is also now this whisper that, since he was doping before the cancer diagnosis, could the drugs have actually triggered the cancer? (I don’t know enough to comment, but I think probably not, or else there would be heaps more athletes with cancer, no?)

What’s also so awful is the cover-up, involving bullying and intimidation of other riders and apparently, his wife at the time. So he was even a bigger jerk than I had originally thought.

But he is still a great athlete, and so are all the other drug cheats. Landis and Leipheimer and Contadore and all the guys that got caught, and so many who weren’t. They are all great athletes, but they succumbed to the ethos of ‘Cheat or be cheated.’ They made a wrong choice. And now we scorn them.

And the ‘Livestrong’ foundation and those sexy yellow bracelets (which unfortunately spawned dozens of other bracelets so the meaning was kind of lost) and the millions of dollars raised for cancer research- should we scorn that too?

I won’t stop watching the Tour, and I hope Phil Liggett won’t stop commentating, although he must be devastated beyond all measure, as he was Armstrong’s most staunch defender. I want to think that this upheaval will shake out all the cheating athletes and doctors but I fear it won’t. They talk now about ‘the Armstrong years’ as if those were the worst years of doping, but were they? Is it better now? Who really knows?

So Lance couldn’t be a role model; then let him be a terrible cautionary tale. Disgraced, stripped of his victories and sponsorships, a fraud. A great athlete whose arrogance and hubris led to his downfall; the legend has become a cliché.

Cadell Evans better be as clean as they all say he is, or I don’t know what I will do. There’s only so much disappointment I can endure.

NO TIME

It’s been a while since I posted and you can thank blame Yom Tov, mainly. Well, Shabbos- yom tov-Shabbos-yom tov-Shabbos-yom tov-Shabbos, to be precise. I was cooking and baking like a fiend. And then catching up on the backlog of patients, and then on the backlog of paperwork that this creates. And then. AND THEN. My housekeeper couldn’t come because her husband is sick. So for the next week or two my life will suck. It’s no wonder there are so few women who have made their mark on history! It’s because they can’t get out of the bloody kitchen and laundry.

Yeah, yeah, tell me how my husband and 2 visiting sons should be doing all this alongside me, like a Soviet revolutionary poster minus the hammers and sickles. But they are used to a magic fairy housekeeper who keeps things spotless with a wave of her shmatteh and solvent spray. Still, it is kind of sweet to witness my husband’s pathetic attempts to help. ‘Where is the on button for the washing machine? What’s this hole for? The detergent? Where’s that?’ etc.

I can do all this stuff when I have to but I really dislike ironing. Well, in actual fact, I don’t mind all aspects of laundry compared to, say, cleaning toilets. But ironing is particularly frustrating in that, if you get the setting wrong, you either singe the shirt or it looks like you ironed it with a cabbage for all the difference made to the creases. At least I don’t leave bits of melted black gunge on the shirts like I used to  (like my kids do) after destroying the sole-plate of the iron by nuking some synthetic fabric.

But sooner or later I am screaming at the iron, (as I do all malevolent inanimate objects, refer to previous posts) because there’s one thing worse than not ironing out a crease; it’s ironing IN a crease. There’s something in the shirt that trips up the iron and bang, a concertina. But in between my raving and cursing and insane muttering, I ironed 8 white shirts in about 20 minutes yesterday (Sunday) (after cleaning up after the family brunch and getting very cross with some grandchildren who, under my trusting and patchy supervision, had managed to turn a collage-crafting session into a fingerpainting-with-PVA-glue session. But I digress.).

And there is a feeling of quiet triumph surveying these now-docile shirts on their hangers. But the next lot, I’m taking to the damn dry cleaner.