Well, Mephisto, I have done my own web search, and discovered that the Christian Slater movie I was remembering was "Untamed Heart". Pretty close to "Wild at Heart" conceptually, but you'd never get home from the video store with the right movie. Sorry!!! Also starring Marisa Tomei and Rosie Perez, 1993. I keep a list of movies in my wallet that people have recommended to me, so that when all the movies I really wanted to see are gone I can catch up on a few more. Did anyone see this one?
I tend to like small movies that the world passes by that say something really special to me. Another one I would strongly recommend to everyone on earth, basically, because what is says is so universal, is "My Life", with Michael Keaton and Nicole Kidman, about a fairly young man who is diagnosed with cancer while his wife is pregnant with their first child.
Speculation abounds about the effects of the coming El Nino. It will also cause a warm winter in the Northeast!!! I think it will disturb all sorts of crop cycles. A good time to speculate on commodities. Thanks for dumping all your rain in California, incidentally!!!
Mephisto, personally I think that drug addiction in the wake of physiological pain is really complicated. Working in medicine, I have seen people who had never had any drug or alcohol problems whatsoever quickly become addicted to painkillers after major surgery. Surgery is such an assault on the spirit as well as the body and mind--I felt absolutely violated and butchered after mine, but I was ten and perhaps a little sensitive as a child, anyway--that it is all a little hard to sort out what's going on sometimes. I think the scientific world is not very knowledgeable yet about pain.
Interesting research I read recently seemed to support the idea that the body actually remembers pain when the brain is anaesthetized. In other words, experiments were done where some patients who were undergoing surgery had general anaesthesia. Another group had general anaesthesia, but local anaesthesia as well. This second group experienced less pain after surgery, and quicker healing. The theory is that the nerve endings themselves remember pain, even if the patient is totally unconscious, and the patient suffers more.
Other recent research shows that patients who are kept warm and cuddly, covered with blankets during surgery, do better postoperatively, and also there is quite a body of research which shows that patients who are medicated heavily--by American standards--in the postoperative period also heal faster.
You know, very young infants were historically not given painkillers at all until very recently. The perception by doctors was that they did not feel pain, or if they did, they did not remember it, and it did them no harm. Circumcision included!!! My little brother screamed so loudly we could hear him a block away. I don't think we even know what this can do to the psyche. Premature infants basically experience their tiny terrified lives as torture, hour after hour. This is very cruel, I think. I understand that part of the rationale here is that correct dosing is difficult on very little bodies, but I think a larger problem is that in mainstream Western medicine, doctors, nurses and other healthcare employees see so much pain that they become insensitive.
In any event, I am not surprised that the research shows that comfort and pain reduction and management are very important in the healing process. Any medicine woman, any mother, any nice old witch would instinctively know that!!! |
