Book Review - Four Wives

It's never been hotter to be a housewife than now. The "desperate" ones are still chugging, ABC swaps them and "real" ones can be found in Orange County. Wendy Walker's rookie novel, Four Wives [WCF, Powell's, Amazon], introduces us to four new ones. This time they are from a very wealthy suburb in Connecticut and all with their own sordid tale to tell or in Love's case, run far, far away from.

Love Welsh, a fallen child prodigy and her three friends, a feminist father's rights/divorce attorney, an old money Zoloft addicted stay-at-home-mom and the epitome of the made-to-order suburban Barbie mom wrestle with the ups and downs of "perfect" suburban life. This indictment on suburban wives is a guilty pleasure sure to make you stay up far past your bedtime. Told from the perspectives of the wives (each chapter alternates) until one critical chapter where one husband takes the floor, four mysteries play out. Will the clinic use the fund raiser money for throw pillows or "controversial" matters? Who is Janie having an affair with? What happened that was so terrible that Love tried to kill herself as a teenager and still hasn't told her husband about? And how did the Ferrell baby really die? While the story lines are held together by the women's coffee chats, they do come crashing into each other on the day and night of the big fundraiser.

All the needed parts for a juicy romance novel are here, but with enough brains to not insult you.

One of Love's subplots deals with how the emotional toll wears her body down. There are a lot of "is it just in head?" moments, but honestly, how many of us haven't found ourselves in bed sick the day after a big project, final exams, or heaven forbid sick the day of a big presentation? The mind-body connection is explored, but gives an even hand to both the somewhat kooky ideas alternative medicine gives us and how Western flops around like a dying fish to explain something that doesn't have typical symptoms. There are also some wonderful exchanges between Love's mother, who is old-school in the way that men and women interact, and Marie who fights day and night with the patriarchy at large and within her own household and mind.

Walker paints some honest and hard pictures about the lives of women as mothers. The realization that you have failed as a mother, the immense workload that goes into being a stay-at-home mom, and negotiating the second shift for two income families. I should warn you that rape does play a part of two of the plotlines.

As a city-living mama who is already seeing the over-consumption mentality seep into four-year-olds' psyches, I had to laugh when one character decides that moving out of their country club loving suburb to New York City. As if the issues of entitlement and Juicy Couture evaporate once one crosses the river and lives in a diverse neighborhood. Otherwise this was a good addition to the ever growing mommy-lit genre and certainly a must for summer reading. Or for your upcoming trip to the Virgin Islands.

I eagerly await Walker's second novel.
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Disclaimer: The only payment I received for this review was the review copy of the book.
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Technorati tags: book review, Four Wives, Wendy Walker, feminism

To Twitter or not?

I tried Twitter a while back and hated it. I tried again and hated it. I just couldn't seem to understand why I needed to know when my BFF was taking a tea break. Or why she needed to tell me. Now I'm addicted to Facebook and I kinda get it. But seriously, what's the big deal with Twitter? Someone please tell me one good reason I should saddle myself with one more social network thingy that doesn't give back to me. I've begun to Digg, Digg, Digg and nada. At least some times I do get a wave of new readers Stumbling in. Blogrush is a dud for me. I feel like these "tools" are just a way for me to attend the cool kid party and wait for the cutie across the room to notice me and ask me to dance.

I read that many of y'all are Twittering and hitting pay dirt for it, but seriously, I just don't get it.

Boca Burger Give-a-way

Yesterday it was about 55 in Chicago. It was March 2nd. We've had one of the coldest & snowiest winters in years. Thus it felt like July for a bit. So it's not surprising that we thought about dragging out the BBQ and throw some food on there. When we left our house at 4 pm, we could smell that many of our neighbors had the same thought, but had actually done it.

While I haven't eaten beef in forever, I still like the smell of meat from a BBQ. I know, I know...don't lecture me. I don't get the urge to eat it, it's just the smell.

So...for all you vegans & vegetarians out there, it's time to start stocking up on Boca Burgers. You know you'll start to get invites to BBQs and sometimes friends just don't take us non-beef eaters into consideration. In order to help out, I'm offering SEVEN readers coupons for two free packages of Boca Burgers. That's right. FOURTEEN free boxes of Boca Burgers.

To enter:

1) Write a post on your blog about your favorite way of making Boca Burgers. Do you slather them in BBQ sauce? Are you a meat-eater who just loves the taste of Bocas? Tell the world and link back to this entry.

2) Leave a comment with your blog link so I know where to find you.

3) Make sure that I can figure out how to contact you so I can get your mailing address. Don't leave it in the comments, k? I just need an email address for you.

4) What if you don't have a blog? You can leave your Boca story in the comments.

If I get more than 7 entries, I'll pick winners at random.

Good luck and thanks!

Technorati tags: Boca Burger, give-a-way

Interesting Articles: A Weekly Review of the "Big Five" Medical Journals

This is a collection of articles I have found interesting in the weekly editions of the "big five" medical journals: NEJM, JAMA, Annals, Lancet and BMJ (a few more journals are included occasionally). The review is a weekly feature of Clinical Cases and Images - Blog. Please see the end of the post for a suggested time-efficient way to stay up-to-date with the medical literature.

Venous Thromboembolism and Mortality Associated With Recombinant Erythropoietin and Darbepoetin Administration for the Treatment of Cancer-Associated Anemia. Charles L. Bennett at al. JAMA. 2008;299(8):914-924.

Erythropoiesis-stimulating agents (ESA) raise the risk of death among cancer patients by about 10%. The study also found a 57% increase in the risk of venous thromboembolism, a known side effect of ESAs. The findings raise concern about the safety of ESA administration to patients with cancer in addition to the concerns we already have about ESA use in CKD and ESRD patients.

Salivating for Knowledge: Potential Pharmacological Agents in Tick Saliva. Hovius JWR, Levi M, Fikrig E PLoS Medicine Vol. 5, No. 2, e43.

Tick saliva is a potential source for novel pharmacological agents that could be useful for clinical practice.

Lifetime Medical Costs of Obesity: Prevention No Cure for Increasing Health Expenditure. van Baal PHM, Polder JJ, de Wit GA, Hoogenveen RT, Feenstra TL, et al. PLoS Medicine Vol. 5, No. 2, e29.
Obesity prevention leads to a decrease in costs of obesity-related diseases but this decrease is offset by cost increases due to diseases unrelated to obesity in life-years gained. Obesity prevention may be an important and cost-effective way of improving public health, but it is not a cure for increasing health expenditures. Bottom line: people living longer cost more to health insurers.

Vasopressin versus Norepinephrine Infusion in Patients with Septic Shock. NEJM, 02/2008.

Low-dose vasopressin did not reduce mortality rates as compared with norepinephrine among patients with septic shock.

Cumulative Association of Five Genetic Variants with Prostate Cancer. NEJM, 02/2008.

Five Single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in this study and family history accounted for 46% of the cases of prostate cancer in the Swedish men studied. In conclusion, SNPs in 5 chromosomal regions plus a family history of prostate cancer have a cumulative and significant association with prostate cancer.

Survival after bilateral versus single lung transplantation for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: a retrospective analysis of registry data. The Lancet 2008; 371:744-751.

Bilateral lung transplantation leads to longer survival than single lung transplantation in patients with COPD.

Russia's next president needs to tackle health reforms. The Lancet 2008; 371:711-714.

Perspectives, Profile: Viktor Schultz: physician in a Russian municipal hospital. The Lancet 2008; 371:717.

A time efficient way to stay up-to-date with medical literature

"How do you eat in elephant? In small bites." The same rule probably applies to staying current with the ever expanding avalanche of medical literature. One can try the following approach:

1. Subscribe the to the RSS feeds of the 5 major medical journals (NEJM, JAMA, BMJ, Lancet and Annals) plus 2-3 subpecialty journals in your field of interest.


Medical Journals tab: A screenshot of iGoogle with RSS feeds from the major medical journals.

2. Read the journal on the day it is published online, for example, NEJM on Wednesdays.

3. Use text-to-speech to listen to articles you do not have time to read.

4. Listen to journal podcasts. Click here to subscribe the podcasts of the 4 major journals in iGoogle.

Related:
Make Your Own "Medical Journal" with iGoogle Personalized Page
Share iGoogle Tabs with Medical Journals, Podcasts and Gadgets
Annals of Internal Medicine Launches Podcast and Audio Summaries
Text-to-Speech Programs and Continuous Medical Education
Image source: OpenClipArt, public domain.

March 4th for Child Care & Head Start

TUESDAY, TUESDAY, TUESDAY...Get your lobbying fingers ready and let's fight hard for child care and Head Start. The National Women's Law Center (NWLC) has a campaign going on that we should all jump on.

Access to child care and Head Start is vital to women's economic well-being and the ability of their children to succeed in school. The Bush administration’s proposed FY 2009 budget would continue the administration’s long-standing pattern of freezes or cuts to child care and Head Start. Under its proposed budget, 200,000 low-income children and their families would lose child care assistance, and 14,000 children would lose Head Start.

Call or e-mail your Senators and Representative and let them know that they must reject the President’s FY 2009 budget request for child care and Head Start and support more funding for these programs. To call your members of Congress, please dial 1-888-460-0813 and ask to be connected. To find out who your members are, search the NWLC directory.

To contact your elected officials and let her/him know how you feel, just use their handy dandy form. And while you are planning, post this action alert and get more people involved!

Technorati tags: NWLC, child care, Head Start

Book Review - The Baby Lottery

The sex, lies and disappoint that evolves in The Baby Lottery [WCF, Powell's, Amazon] happen not just between lovers (although there are a handful) but between friends. Jean, Charlotte, Ginny, Tasi, and Nan are college best friends who find themselves many years older and reacting to Charlotte’s decision to have a second trimester abortion in very different ways. Jane reacts intensely and in a last ditch attempt to salvage their friendship and her dream of motherhood, offers to adopt Charlotte’s baby. Tasi accepts Charlotte despite her flaws and emotionally abusive marriage. Is it abusive to request an alcoholic to behave herself? Each friend has to accept or reject Charlotte’s decision and decide what that means to their collective friendship. If Jean and Charlotte do break-up where does this leave the others? I think each of us have been in the middle of a friendship divorce and having to decide whose friend you are now.

Throw in aging parents (one with Alzheimer’s), a teenager testing boundaries, career changes, a marriage on the brink of divorce, and a convenient lover who becomes less available. This novel makes you consider how much respect can you lose with your best friend before you can’t be a friend? When is choice not a choice? How far are you willing to push your pro-choice views? What would you do?

Kathryn Trueblood weaves a wonderful tale of angst between these long time friends. Her no nonsense and straight forward style of describing her characters' lives is amazing. In the opening scene we meet Nan, an OB/GYN nurse who discovers that her pregnant patient's fetus has died.

Nan sits with her awhile before applying the prostaglandin gel to her cervix to get labor started. Josie is a moon-faced girl with chipped teeth and her hair in a ponytail. "This is just tough and unfair," Nan says, "any way you look at it."...But its six hours of labor. The woman has a cervix like a Goodyear tire. Half a day to dilate a few centimeters, then booming contractions for the last two hours. ...At first,Josie refuses the Fentanyk Nan offers..."Listen," she tells her when she is sure she has Josie's attention, "no one is going to feel any differently about you if you take the pain meds. You're already having to be braver than the rest of us will ever be."

One of my favorite passages is where Trueblood describes Ginny's writing schedule before she separated from her husband:

..She'd come up with elaborate plans for getting her novel written, but she kept failing at her own program. Get up at five AM, or write until midnight...she always ended up facedown on the mattress in her sweat pants on Saturday night. One evening after teaching, she leaned her head back before turning the key in the ignition and passed out in the university parking lot.

I think a lot of us can relate to that scene. That's why I liked Trueblood's writing style, it is fresh and comforting even through difficult conversations.This is a welcome addition to the intelligent mommy lit genre.

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Personal note: This book hit surprisingly close to home. I've had a bit of fertile guilt having gotten to know a few women who have "lost" in the baby lottery area where I got pregnant pretty easily. Sometimes it does feel selfish when I thank the Goddess each month for not being pregnant when others are praying for just the opposite.

Disclaimer: The only payment I received for this review was the review copy of the book.

Technorati tags: book review, Kathryn Trueblood, The Baby Lottery

BBC: Different Stages of Life

Listen to BBC programs about different stages of life:

Life as a Teenager

Life as an Adult

Life in Middle Age

Life in Old Age

Life after 80

BBC 4 has a streaming Listen Again page and a podcast directory. Subscribing is YouTube-style easy -- you can copy the URL directly, or subscribe via Google Reader/iGoogle or iTunes.

Related:
BBC Podcasts Are Worth Listening To
Four Stages Of Life by The Happy Hospitalist.
Image source: OpenClipArt.org, public domain.

Updated: 07/19/2008