Newborn Never Going to Live Down 34-Hour Labor

S, enduring the first of thousands of uncomfortable recountings.

Chicago, IL, April 24 (AP) – S, an infant born early last week, is already dreading the lifetime of hearing about the discomfort and trouble he caused his parents in the day leading up to his birth.

“I can’t wait for it to kick in,” remarked the nine-day-old, grimacing at the thought, or possibly at nothing. “You’d think world events, or actually amusing things, would make better fodder for conversation, but no, it’ll be decades before discussion of my mother’s experience with me peters out.”

His mother is expected to regale friends and acquaintances with the 34 hours of labor preceding S’s delivery by suction in the wee hours of last Sunday. After the postpartum period, when talk of the labor and delivery is typical of any birth aftermath, the mother’s relatively unusual travails will continue to be described when she wishes to contribute to a conversation about childbirth, or when she wishes to half-jokingly explain her child’s tendencies or behavior.

S’s fears are well founded, says Columbia University cultural anthropologist Beth Nossentrik. “The difficulty of a labor and delivery is a reliable predictor of the number of times the experience will be brought up in conversation,” she explained in a telephone interview. “For each additional hour of labor, a mother can be expected to tell her story an average of eleven times per year in the first four years, with the number gradually decreasing – unless she subsequently has more children, in which case the number actually increases by two until four years after the last child is born.”

According to Nossentrik, other factors can add to the number of times the narrative is rehashed. In this case, she says the fact the labor went on that long without a Cesarean Section being performed has the potential to add anywhere from six to eight occasions for relating the story over the next two years, and twice per year on average after that.

Chicago-area family therapist Hedda Schrinker  concurs. “The statistics are pretty robust in that regard,” she said in an e-mail. “Mothers tend to want to share the unusual aspects of their childbirth experience. What I would also add is that the numbers tick up again slightly when she is about to become a grandmother, and do not really come down again,” unless she eventually suffers a stroke or other debilitating condition that removes her ability to communicate coherently.

S’s parents also feature the additional augmenting factor of friends in multiple far-flung places who will need the story repeated to them individually, as they will not be in position to hear it collectively. Shrinker has attempted to reassure S that his situation is not unique, and that many other perfectly dysfunctional parent-child relationships have weathered this sort of repeated rehashing.

“He kind of whined when I said that,” admitted Shrinker. “It reminds me of when I had my second daughter…” she began.

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Study Confirms: OK for Total Strangers to Touch Pregnant Women’s Bellies

The researchers did occasionally encounter data management trouble when multiple belly-touchers acted at once.

Cambridge, MA (AP) – Researchers at Harvard have found what they consider convincing proof that it is just fine for complete strangers to make unsolicited contact with the protruding midsection of a pregnant woman.

In a paper to be published next month in the New England Journal of Medicine, a team of physicians presents the evidence in favor of people you don’t know from Adam up and touching your pregnant belly. “It’s a life-affirming experience to encounter a mother-to-be, and the healthiest possible reaction is to invade the personal space of that mother,” said the lead researcher, Dr. Leonard Asperger. “Such women have already had several months to adapt to the notion that their bodies are not exclusively their own, and having complete strangers give them an appreciative pat or stroke is just the thing to bring everyone together in a warm moment.”

The study, which observed the social effects of 1,023 visibly pregnant women over the course of six years, cataloged over 4,000 individual incidences of stranger-belly contact. It found that invariably, the mood in the immediate vicinity of the contact improved, as indicated by the number of smiles and the increased heart rate of the pregnant woman. If the contact persisted more than a second or two, the cardiovascular benefits to the pregnant mother were even more in evidence, and if the mother’s romantic partner or sibling was present, those benefits extended even to them.

“The adrenalin increase associated with the touch of the stranger has myriad positive health benefits. The increased pulse can often help during gravidity, when many women experience drops in blood pressure,” the study says. “A consistent regimen of being in an environment where strangers feel welcome to touch the protruding abdomen can help in reducing the need for medication to combat the hypotension.”

According to the researchers, such locales include, but are not limited to, train stations, bus stops, waiting rooms, supermarket aisles and Park Slope, Brooklyn. They observed that the demographic most likely to touch a pregnant stranger’s belly was people over the age of 50. Approximately the same percentage of men and women could be counted on to engage in such impromptu contact.

Asperger intends to follow up the study with an investigation into the positive impact generated when strangers offer unsolicited criticism or advice regarding someone else’s parenting.

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Study: Saying ‘Cancer’ Out Loud Causes Cancer

At left, healthy skin cells of a person careful never to say “Cancer” out loud. At right, the same tissue after the person has uttered the term. (OMG Images).

Atlanta, Ga (AP) – The Centers for Disease Control announced a the results of new research into the causes of malignant tumors today, and revealed the striking news that a principal factor in occurrence of the disease is whether or not the patient has uttered the word “cancer” out loud.

In an article to be published in next month’s New England Journal of Medicine, CDC researchers present data documenting about 4,500 cancer patients of various varieties. Of those patients, approximately 4,494 had uttered the word audibly sometime during their lives, and subsequently developed malignancies.

The discovery has both alarmed and excited oncologists and researchers. Forrest Forthetreez, the study’s lead author, said that if the study’s data are accurate, under current circumstances tens of millions of Americans are at grave risk for the disease. “But that’s only half the story. It also turns out that folk wisdom has been way ahead of medical research, and that there’s already a widespread practice to whisper the name of the disease, or not say it at all. My mother still calls it ‘that sickness.’”

Already, the CDC plans several follow-up studies. One will look at different types of cancer to determine whether the effect varies from one variety of the disease to another. A second study will look at populations that speak languages other than English to detect any variations in susceptibility associated with using terms from those languages. A third proposed study, which has yet to receive approval for funding, aims to look for the same effect with other diseases.

If further research substantiates the findings of the most recent study, says Julia Sartan, a Sloan-Kettering oncologist in New York, the obvious course of action is a publicity campaign to educate people as to the risks of uttering the word “cancer” at full volume. “There have been successful campaigns of this kind before,” she noted, citing efforts to get parents to vaccinate children, and anti-smoking publicity. “It can take years, but the impact on public health could be tremendously positive.”

“Also,” she added, “I want to see what happens when the preventive techniques are used in conjunction with the proven ‘knock on wood’ immunization procedure.”

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Soccer Player Incurs Actual Injury; FIFA to Develop Procedures

A player rehearses being “hurt.”

Zurich, Switzerland (AP) – After more than a century of players faking injury on the soccer pitch, last week a player suffered actual physical harm during a game, and neither the game officials nor the team personnel were prepared. In response, FIFA, the sport’s governing body, has promised to develop procedures in case such an incident happens again.

In a game between Barcelona and Juventus, Barcelona striker Alfonso Peña was attempting to wrest control of the ball from an opponent, and when the latter extricated himself successfully, Peña did as professional soccer players are trained to do: he fell down grasping his lower leg, hoping the officials would find the display worthy of an infraction for the opposing player.

However, through circumstances that remain unclear, Peña suffered a bona fide fracture to his left fibia, and has been sidelined for several weeks while the bone heals and he undergoes rehabilitation. Team officials have had to scramble to meet the player’s unexpected medical needs, as emergency treatment resources for professional athletes within the various FIFA member associations seldom extend beyond massage. Realizing that the situation lay beyond their capacity to address, the referees and Barcelona personnel had to summon an ambulance.

“This was new to us,” Alejandro Muñoz, the ambulance crew chief, was quoted later as telling a local newspaper. “When you get a call to treat someone at the football stadium, your first thought is that it’s some stupid fan who fell, or got injured in a fight – but a real, live, player getting hurt? It just doesn’t happen. It was all we could do to remember that he was genuinely hurt, and not to ask him for an autograph.”

FIFA President Sepp Blatter has promised an investigation, including the use of instant replay, to discover what exactly went wrong. “We do not yet know for certain whether the fracture occurred at the moment Peña went down, but that will be the preliminary focus of our inquiry,” he said in a statement released yesterday. Focusing on that moment makes the most sense, explained the statement, given that moments before, the player had been running, jumping and comparing his opponents’ mothers to women of ill repute, with no sign of impairment or discomfort. However, Sepp noted that no reasonable lines of investigation will be left unexplored.

He also said that he had assigned a task force to take the eventual results of the investigation and develop preventive procedures to ensure that an actual injury does not recur. “FIFA is not accustomed to having its players subject to rough treatment,” he noted.

Sepp declined to answer questions regarding the fate of Miskitas Tankakis, the Juventus player involved in the scrum with Peña. “Since we have not yet determined whether anyone in particular is to blame for this unprecedented event, it would be premature to speculate on any disciplinary measures to take against any possible guilty parties,” he told reporters earlier.

Peña himself has said he cannot judge whether Tankakis caused his injury. “I did the ‘wounded’ dance we always practice, but something felt wrong right after I landed,” he said during a radio interview on Friday. “I’ve never felt such pain in my life. We footballers aren’t used to pushing our bodies very far, so I had no idea what was going on. It’s a very delicate sport, football. We players are dainty.”

He said he only other time he ever felt pain anywhere close to the same intensity was seeing a matador get gored in the testicles fifteen years ago. “That still hurts when I think about it,” he said.

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You Could Use a Session or Two of Misguided Imagery

Careful. It took Luke Skywalker a long time to build this.

Recurring depression, huh? I’m sorry. You must be having a difficult time. I know you’ve been in and out of treatment for a while, and it’s not really my place to get involved in that, but have you ever considered misguided imagery?

A good misguided imagery facilitator can help you reach some real breakthroughs especially if you’re looking to make that depression stop recurring, and simply be there all the time, the way it should. I know a girl who saw this misguided imagery specialist, and wham! She was confused as hell in no time. Really took her mind off her terminal illness for a while. And my next-door neighbor shouts much more coherently at his TV set now, after he went through a whole series of misguided imagery sessions.

You’ve probably encountered something similar before, but in misguided imagery, instead of taking the client on an emotional, spiritual or psychological journey toward a better attitude or a solution, the therapist focuses on getting you to get hung up on the nitty-gritty, the mundane, the completely pointless, so you don’t have to go through the stress of worrying constantly about mounting bills, emotional trauma, dysfunctional relationships, whatever. That stuff doesn’t matter, anyway, not when there are countless images in the real world, not to mention in your imagination, of the British royal family, the Kardashians, and the latest developments in reality TV.

And the music – you might expect a meditation-like session would feature some music, and you’d be right – everything from bluegrass to country and back again, played at twice the normal speed. It helps the brain process the images faster, so you get more efficient at it. Practice makes perfect! You want that trusty brain preoccupied with following the in-your-face, repetitive, less-than-subtle art form so it doesn’t have time to devote to the sewer that your life has become. Imagine you’re somewhere else and you never have to come back! Maybe even a place like Heaven. They might even play country music there!

I’m no expert in therapy, I know, but I do know you have to watch out for the charlatans. You want to make sure the misguided imagery therapist knows what he or she is doing. That means no one from those highfalutin universities, no way. At those places, they beat the misguided everything out of the student in no time. You need a community college graduate, or better yet, a dropout, with plenty of exposure to the new-age world. Better yet, someone who goes in for conspiracy theories, or who professes deep mistrust of anything that’s been subjected to scientific testing.

I’m glad to provide this information; no, don’t thank me. You haven’t even tried it yet. After you do, let me know how it goes. In the meantime, I’ll be at work, making these pornographic rosary beads.

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I Before E, Except After Weird

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Guy Doctors Tout ‘Walk It Off’ Injury Treatment

Atlanta, GA (AP) – The Centers for Disease Control have released a new study buy guy physicians promoting a minimalist approach to the treatment of wounds, called “Walk It Off.”

The research, which began as an examination of sports-related injuries in May 2010, soon expanded to cover a guy-inspired approach to myriad health care issues. It looked at approximately ten thousand cases of guys in pain, and for each one, determined that urging the patient to walk it off, grin and bear it, suck it up, or similar non-invasive measures, proved most effective.

Conversely, forcing the patient to submit to the emasculating experience of placing one’s welfare in the hands of a “med-school weenie,” as the report called them, invariably results in a loss of manhood from which few recover.

As a result, the CDC will introduce a set of “Play Through Pain” procedures for the treatment of injuries suffered in the course of athletic activity, in the course of manly jobs such as construction, or in the course of standing around watching such activities. The study did no look at the effects of such a course of treatment on women, but it did note an increase in pain reported by patients when a woman touched the affected area, even when, just moments before, the patient admitted no discomfort in response to being whacked in the injured area repeatedly by teammates, coworkers or opponents.

The US military has already expressed interest in a planned follow-up study, as injured soldiers account for a hefty percentage of military medical training and treatment.

Republicans in Congress have welcomed the study, as it may allow them some ammunition in pushing for reduced government coverage of medical expenses under the health care package signed into law during the last legislative session. In the same vein, the Republican National Committee is set to announce tomorrow that it has commissioned a related study to measure the therapeutic effects of channel surfing, the health care savings implications of which are vast.

Little League coaches have hailed the results of the CDC study, saying that it validates what they have long advocated. “Man up, is what we say,” according to Sid Marcus, a Baltimore-area coach of middle school softball and football teams. “You don’t need anything more than maybe an ice pack if it’s really bad, but stop being such a wuss. You think Cal Ripken didn’t feel hurt every once in a while? Lou Gherig? No pain, no gain!”

The CDC also announced that it will study the beneficial effects of administering locker-room wedgies and snapping the underwear waistbands of puny students.

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AMA Says Not Calling to Cancel Your Appointment Causes Cancer, AIDS

Chicago, IL (AP) – The American Medical Association, the nation’s oldest and largest professional group for physicians, released new recommendations for patients, under which failing to call to cancel an appointment the patient knows he will miss is a risk factor in cancer and other horrible diseases.

Jeremy A. Lazarus, the president of the American Medical Association, told reporters at a press conference that the organization felt compelled to issue new recommendations after a review of statistics showed a dangerous disregard on the part of patients for the physicians and other patients.

“It’s not only cancer,” Lazarus warned. “Failing to give a reasonable amount of warning that you’re not going to show up to your appointment not only puts you at risk of enmity from doctors and fellow patients; it also means you’re more likely to contract, uh, cancer, herpes, syphilis, measles, smallpox, AIDS, meningitis, and it makes you, uh…yeah, it makes you seven times more likely to catch a bad case of the flu.”

He also pointed to data showing that people who neglected to inform their doctor they would be missing the scheduled appointment were twice as likely to be bludgeoned to death by other patients using rolled-up copies of U.S. News and World Report from the waiting room.

It is unclear what percentage of Americans are no-shows for medical appointments, but the AMA released data regarding the populous states of California, New York, Texas and Florida, showing that of the approximately 19,000 missed appointments in 2011 in those states, nearly 40% were not preceded by a phone call or message alerting the medical practice or staff of the impending absence; of those patients, the AMA eagerly anticipates upwards of 80% will suffer mightily from gonorrhea, mumps, shingles, lupus, sexual dysfunction, gastric ulcers, and several other diseases they haven’t thought of yet.

“Calling ahead is one of the pillars of preventive medicine, which is what modern patient care is all about,” says Stephanie Siegel, a cardiologist at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York. “In the early years, physicians would focus more on treating existing conditions, but over the last century, we’ve shifted, fortunately, to a greater focus on preventing things from going wrong in the first place. Patients who disregard the basics of avoiding the risks have only themselves to blame” when a truck full of infected needles falls on them from a rooftop, she noted.

Patient groups welcomed the new AMA guidelines, praising the calling-ahead provision as a life-saving measure. “This AMA recommendation is an important step in making the period before a scheduled medical visit a safer experience for everyone,” said Nancy Davenport-Ennis, Co-Founder and CEO of the Patient Advocacy Foundation. “It’s been a long time coming, and unfortunately, too many patients have been ill-informed regarding the long- and short-term dangers of not calling ahead, but with the American Medical Association’s unequivocal stance on the matter, we can now work on actually getting people the care they need when they need it, assuming they prefer not to come down with dysentery, Huntington’s Disease, multiple sclerosis, hypertension and maybe even a nasty case of flesh-eating bacteria.”

The AMA guidelines are not unprecedented in the industry. Just last year the American Dental Association issued similar recommendations, focusing instead on lateness. Patients who arrived less than five minutes before the scheduled appointment time were six times as likely to suffer jabs in the gums from sharp implements.

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Study: Everyone Who Eats Vegetables Dies

Atlanta, GA (AP) – The Centers for Disease Control have completed a one-hundred-thirty-year study on diet and mortality, and have concluded that people who consume fruits or vegetables in any form, at any time, will die.

The study examined the lives and habits of forty million Americans as young as two months old and as old as one-hundred-sixteen years of age. The researchers checked for the presence of even the slightest amount of vegetable matter in the subjects’ diets, including leafy greens, root vegetables, and fruit.

The CDC will publish its findings in the December issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. The study is expected to wreak havoc with government dietary and nutrition recommendations.

“It’s like a bucket of cold water in the face,” said Beth Hirschhorn, New York nutritionist and author of Seven Servings a Day. “With the data in our face for literally decades, the entire healthcare and dietary industries have dropped the ball, big-time.”

Wallace Lehmann, a physician at the Cleveland Clinic, agrees. “The field of medicine has focused so much in recent years on treating specific symptoms that we’ve lost sight of the larger picture. And in that picture, tens of millions of people are dying every year.”

Although the study authors urge caution, they acknowledge the overwhelming evidence will prompt a radical reevaluation of prevailing dietary sensibilities. “I’d recommend waiting for further study, but the fact is, no one has found anything that would sever the vegetable-death link,” noted Mort Ality, the lead researcher.

Ality noted that, ironically, scientists had long disparaged one of the oldest indications of fruit as a killer: the Bible itself identifies the consumption of fruit as the very source of human death. “We’re still scratching our heads at that one,” he said.

This is not the first such research of its kind, but the CDC study is by far the most wide-ranging and comprehensive. A 1949 Canadian analysis found a strong link between Brussels sprouts and death before the age of 124, but no follow-up was conducted until 1966, when the research was expanded to include carrots in both raw and cooked forms, with statistically identical results. That study found no difference in death rates between eaters of raw vs. cooked greens.

Health food.

Already, soft drink manufacturers and animal product marketers have seized upon these results to their advantage. The American Pork Farmers Association and The Beef Council released a statement today that their new publicity strategies will stress the relative health benefits of bacon, ham, beef and other forms of mammal meat, noting that the carnivorous diet has never looked like a better choice, considering the alternatives.

The Coca Cola company is expected to tout its roster of artificial ingredients, and fast food outlets such as McDonalds, experts anticipate, will likely remove the token tomatoes, lettuce and other vegetables from its standard burger toppings, instead only including them upon request.

Animal rights advocates and promoters of vegan or vegetarian lifestyles will have to reassess the merits of their health-based arguments, admitted Carrie Ohn, President of Meat Is Murder. “Our position has not changed,” she said when reached by telephone. “We will simply have to appeal to other sensibilities than health.” She conceded she did not know what she would eat, considering that nuts, seeds and other fruit were also shown by the study to be associated with every manner of human demise, including asphyxiation, car accidents, cancer and immune disorders.

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Classic Thag, November 2010: Give Birth and I’ll Sue You

Originally posted November 24, 2010.

Subject: Infant Smith v Mr. and Mrs. Smith

If it please the court:

I am writing on behalf of my client, Infant smith, who seeks redress on the following counts:

As Exhibit A demonstrates, my client was clearly happier in his previous quarters, as the lack of reality tv indicates.

1. On 20 October of this year, at approximately 4 p.m., Mrs. Smith knowingly and deliberately separated my client from his source of nourishment, warmth and safety, into an unspeakably harsh environment. Although my client continuously expressed his opposition to this course of action, Mrs. Smith proceeded to expel my client from the premises he had occupied for nine months.

2. While this was happening, Mr. Smith, rather than provide assistance, encouraged Mrs. Smith to continue her actions.

3. In addition to encouraging Mrs. Smith in her mistreatment of my client, Mr. Smith himself seized a pair of shears and severed my client’s metabolism from its source.

4. As a result of Mr. Smith’s act of vandalism, my client, accustomed to receiving oxygen to his cells directly, must inhale a mixture of gases through an untested and immature respiratory apparatus. This mixture of gases has been shown to contain countless pathogens and harmful substances.

5. As a further result of Mr. Smith’s vandalism, my client, accustomed to having nutrients fed directly into his bloodstream, must engage in a humiliating act called “feeding” in order to obtain nourishment: he must hold his mouth a certain way against a very specific part of Mrs. Smith’s anatomy, and repeatedly use his mouth to try to stimulate Mrs. Smith’s endocrine system to produce a substance for my client to ingest. The effort and discomfort involved in both extracting sufficient quantities of this substance and converting its components into physiologically useful materials takes a physical and emotional toll, causing my client to be perpetually tired, upset and uncomfortable.

And as you can see, he is clearly in distress during the procedure.

6. Moreover, whereas before his expulsion my client could efficiently dispose of his metabolic waste products through his circulatory system, he is now forced to expel much of the waste through his own anus, which can irritate his sensitive skin. He lies at the mercy of his abusers in this respect, as well, since only they posses the wherewithal to clean the area. My client’s immature muscular system simply lacks the capacity to address this need, foisted upon him by the defendants.

7. The harsh lighting and unfamiliar, loud sounds of my client’s unwanted new environment further contribute to his discomfort and displeasure.

8. In his rightful environs, my client had no need for garments, but now risks exposure to extremes of heat and cold, not to mention the fundamental violation of his human dignity inherent in that exposure. Here, as well, my client lies at the mercy of his victimizers, as they alone decide if, when and how to garb my client. In addition to the obvious humiliation this engenders, my client has no say in the sartorial selection process.

If it please the court, my client therefore requests his immediate restoration to his previous abode, under the same conditions to which he became accustomed over the course of his entire existence.

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