FYI! Though Botox is currently associated with movie stars and others who wish to prevent signs of age and (horrors!) emotions from creeping over their visages, this was NOT the initial use of this powerful toxin. Botulinum toxin has been used for at least two decades to treat medical conditions, such as dystonia, hemifacial spasm, spasmodic dysphonia, post-stroke spasticity, etc. It can be an extremely useful treatment which avoids systemic side-effects of other, less effective oral medications. Ophthalmologists had it first, then we neurologists, THEN the plastic surgeons and "tupperware parties"! Only then did it turn in to a popular press item!

...don't go to Med school.

The kind of do-gooder stuff you want to do will not provide enough income to pay back your ginormous loans.

Plus, there is plenty of boredom and discomfort in med school.

I agree with previous posters....do whatever you want before you have kids. Once you have them, you must provide security, care, comfort, time, structure, love, etc. before you can even consider your own capricious whims.

Great post, Betty!

It is clear that these people spew vitriol because there is a profitable career in doing so, etc.

All this talk about 'pleasing your man' reminds me of a quote I saw in an unlikely place. The quote, "Feed them, f**k them and flatter them!" referred to keeping a husband happy. A cheerful motto that, naturally should apply to one spouse or the other, according to their various talents and has nothing to do with the Spitzer situation.

The speaker, according to her bio, was Julia Child who, by all accounts, had a long and happy marriage to someone who was very supportive of her career.

....and aside from secretly wishing I had thought of it first (I am also neurologist. I take care of mostly elderly persons and, since third-party payers like Medicare have decreed that actually talking to and treating patients is worth much less than performing a procedure on them, it isn't the most lucrative profession) I have another concern; during the pledge drive on my local PBS station, the announcer, in discussing this premium, started talking about how it can actually improve one's driving!

Now I realize they have to just chat to fill air time during these dratted pledge drives, but I am constantly having to convince patients that it is time to give up driving because of significant cognitive issues or delayed reaction times. This is already a difficult task and the last thing I need is for these same patients to think they can work on a computer program and keep driving! Yikes!

The 'baby boomer' generation is an enormous market for these things because we are all fighting the aging process with every fiber of our being. Exercising one's brain (and body) is a great idea. Selling the unproven concept that we can prevent Alzheimer's disease or furnishing an excuse to remain behind the wheel of a car when we might kill someone by doing so are bad ideas.

Even Lawrence Welk is probably safer!

By the way, if there were more NIH dollars going to fund research (say for cannabinoid derivatives in patients with AD, which have had interesting basic science findings but have not been confirmed in human studies, where it counts) instead of funding this horrid waste of a war, we could get a lot more non-pharma sponsored research done.

And quit ragging on MDs, please! Most of us are doing our best every day to provide the best possible care in the face of shrinking reimbursement and increasing pressure to see more patients faster; the Lucy and Ethel in the Chocolate Factory analogy presented in this NYT article is the perfect analogy for what we are fighting.

www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/fashion/06professions.html

I have never read so many Salon posts where people agreed with the article and other posters and offered helpful advice to one another! It's like a miracle!

Even 'ole Brightstar's post chimes in harmoniously.

Perhaps yogurt is the key to universal peace and harmony?

Seriously, I dutifully ate lowfat yogurt for years until I had the cucumber and yogurt salad at my local Persian restaurant in Chicago (Noon-O-Kabob....worth a trip to the Albany Park neighborhood). It took me months to figure out why this simple combination was so delicious....it was the full-fat yogurt.

I had no idea what a difference it made!

My dad was a narcissistic jerk, with psychiatric issues and was a terrible parent. My parents divorced when I was ten and we were expected to cook and clean for him while raising each other.

When he began to have difficulty living independently, we helped him move into a nice senior center in Phoenix and breathed a big sigh of relief....but not so fast! He met and married a rather bizarre drama queen half his age, with a gaggle of poorly raised kids (one was in jail) and, duh, no money. Horrors, we thought, what a mistake! She'll leave him high and dry!

He took all of his retirement money out of his account to buy them all a house. Shortly after this, he was diagnosed with lung cancer. He died within a year and she kept the house. However,it turned out that none of us regretted his choice in the end. This woman actually cared about him, for all of her (and his)shortcomings and gave him a loving place to spend his last few months, bestowing on him a genuine affection that most of his children would not have been able to muster. We all spent time visiting and helped out, etc., but were so grateful that she could provide the real warmth that we couldn't that we never begrudged her a penny (not that we ever had any expectations from this man anyway!)