February 7, 2013: Bake Off

      As is often the case with our Bake Off meeting, the discussion was fairly free ranging. because there are medical illnesses occurring in some of our loved ones lives, there was a discussion about illness. and episodes of reported miraculous cure. We physicians in the group also reminisced about our years in medical school, especially during the pre med "weed-out" course, organic chemistry usually taken during the sophomore college years.
     There was a brief discussion about the increased expectations that patients have in this day and age, due to frequ3ent self education about diseases. Paul commented that he was not afraid to tell a patient that he did not know an answer or did not know the diagnosis for a patient.
     It was felt that some patients get benefit from actually having a name put on their illness -- from actually achieving a diagnosis even if there is not a good outlook for their diagnosis.
     Someone recommended a book entitled: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. by Mark Haddon.  Here is a link where the story is summarized and annotated:  http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/the-curious-incident-of-the-dog-in-the-night-time/context.html

     Also here is a summary from Wikipedia on this book which won some awards.
"The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a 2003 mystery novel by British writer Mark Haddon. Its title quotes the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes in Arthur Conan Doyle's 1892 short story "Silver Blaze". Haddon and The Curious Incident won the Whitbread Book Awards for Best Novel and Book of the Year,^[1] the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book,^[2] and the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize.^[3]
The novel is narrated in the first-person perspective by Christopher John Francis Boone, a 15-year-old boy who describes himself as "a mathematician with some behavioral difficulties" living in Swindon, Wiltshire. Although Christopher's condition is not stated, the book's blurb refers to Asperger syndrome, high-functioning autism, or savant syndrome. In July 2009, Haddon wrote on his blog that "curious incident is not a book about asperger’s....if anything it’s a novel about difference, about being an outsider, about seeing the world in a surprising and revealing way. The book is not specifically about any specific disorder," and that he is not an expert on autism spectrum disorder or Asperger syndrome."

     There was some discussion of the behavioral characteristics of schizophrenic mental illness and also of Asperger syndrome. It is said that the recent event in the news in which a 5 year old boy was kidnapped from his school bus and held hostage in a bunker for 5 days. It was felt that probably the boy's Asperger's syndrome protected him somewhat from the trauma of the event. He was also allowed to take his medication during that time which would have helped. In some cases a schizophrenic could achieve a position of CEO of a company. The behavior characteristics of some schizophrenics who do not form close relationships well might actually help them in the performance of their duties in such a position. Such a person might not be as affected by the isolation of the position and by some of the duties for example firing people under them.