Embedding, Congress Skipping Town

Preview For Sunday 091210

Hey folks,

Happy Sunday to you. Glad you could stop by. This IS the OPNTalk Blog, and I AM your Provocateur of thought himself, Peter Carlock.

Did you catch this? You know that the Democrats KNOW that they are in trouble when you see a story like this. Short and sweet.

House, Senate May Leave Town a Week Early By Steven T. Dennis and Jessica Brady
Roll Call Staff Sept. 10, 2010, 12:20 p.m.

House and Senate Democratic leaders are seriously considering adjourning a week earlier than planned — at the end of the month — to allow their vulnerable Members more time to campaign, several aides told Roll Call.

{Laughing}They skipping out. Truthfully, I'm glad. They can do any more damage if they are not here. {Smile}

Anyway, coming right up today? A SHORT version of the Big Sunday Edition. I have a Pirate Fest to go to in just a little bit. Joshua is looking forward to it. Remember, you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Tom Sullivan Radio Listener's Club, and as always, the Email is opntalk@gmail.com

The Cost Of Eating Healthy
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IWA For Sunday 091210

Did you catch this? This is just disturbing to me. Just read. Here it is. Parent Dish - Self-Injurying Teens Find a Bizarre New Extreme by Tom Henderson (Subscribe to Tom Henderson's posts) Sep 10th 2010 12:20PM

They cut themselves, burn themselves, starve themselves, gorge themselves, choke themselves and get high off everything from alcohol to aerosols.

Sooner or later, you would think, teenagers would run out of ways to destroy themselves.

Nope.

Business Week reports kids are now using themselves as human junkyards, embedding foreign objects under their skin.

According to Business Week, a 16-year-old girl recently showed up in an emergency room with 20 odds and ends -- including paper clips, pencil lead and even a pair of eyeglasses -- inside her body.

She reportedly put them there here in an excruciatingly painful process call "self-embedding."

William Shiels, a pediatric interventional radiologist at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, tells Business Week kids don't want to kill themselves. They just want to hurt themselves. Horribly.

The act is similar to cutting, burning and other forms of self-mutilation, and many teens, he says, are ashamed of what they're doing and try to conceal their behavior.

In the upcoming October issue of the journal Radiology, Shiels and other researchers report that between 13 and 23 percent of American teenagers hurt themselves on purpose.

Researchers looked at 600 people of all ages who went to the hospital to have foreign objects removed from their bodies. They found 11 patients -- or 1.8 percent -- had put the objects there deliberately. They were all teenagers ages 14 to 18, and nine of them were girls.

All 11 teens suffered from some kind of psychological disorder, including depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, borderline personality disorder or post-traumatic stress disorder.

"One girl told us it's easier to deal with physical pain than the emotional pain in her life," Shiels tells Business Week. "The reason they cut and embed is an effort to relieve their internal pain, the pain that's inside."

Removing embedded objects can be difficult, Shiels adds. Surgeons often try to pinpoint the objects with ultrasound and remove them with tiny forceps, rather than resorting to more cutting.

"They have emotional pain already," Shiels tells Business Week of the kids. "They are already embarrassed and ashamed that they are hurting themselves. Leaving a large scar can degrade their self-image and complicate things worse. The beauty of doing this minimally invasive procedure, with a scar that is the size of a freckle, is that we don't add more emotional scars to these children."

Dr. Niranjan Karnik, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience at the University of Chicago Medical Center, concurs with Shiels, also telling Business Week kids who self-inflict wounds are not trying to kill themselves.

Indeed, he says, they engage in self-destructive behavior to avoid suicide.

"Self-injury is almost like a pressure valve for them," Karnik tells Business Week. "Without it, you have to ask, 'What is that kid going to do now?' We have to work with them to give them better strategies to relieve their stress and anxiety."

If your kids are showing ANY signs that there may be something wrong. TRY to do your best to get involved. Be right back.
Peter