A late response

[Guest guest]

For a lot of reasons, I haven't read much of my e-mail for several days. So,

I'm just catching up and I'd like to address the whole thread on personal

medical news and other non-BPD reports.

To Kristi ( Costen) defense. There are days that I scroll rapidly

through my digest and scan the messages. Quite honestly, I think " What are

these people whining about? If they were living in my house! " (Especially

the days that I have to scroll through the same message 82 times because the

" reply " buttons has been hit without deleting previous messages, my personal

whine.) I love my Delete key that day.

Mental illness is a family disease. It effects everyone and in many

different ways. For parents, because of our " advancing years " , I think

medical becomes a greater issue. My son's BPD is worse on my physically than

when we though he was just a rebellious teen. Among those who are there, is

the one place that I feel like there is understanding - even when the

discussion is vaginal creams. People who don't live in Borderland, just

don't have the same reality that we do.

My husband & I recently completed NAMI's Family-to-Family class (if you

haven't taken it, you need to.) Most of us in the class developed a close

bond. I think because most of us were there because we have mentally ill

sons. One of the things we learned that wasn't in the textbook is that humor

is so important. We can make laugh at things about our family's that people

who don't have mental illness around just don't get. I think the same can be

said for physical problems we have.

A few in our class, however, remained guarded and that was o.k. too. One

lady was very quiet and usually sat by herself during dinner. One week she

came to class and had a bad cough. She passed it off as " something going

around. " Two weeks later, she died of cancer. All of us in our class felt

awful that we hadn't done more for her. On the other hand, had she shared

with us, we could have done more.

I don't know if it's the time change, change of seasons, or just a full

moon, but I've noticed on a couple of my other lists, threads of this kind

(someone commenting on " inappropriate " post and a barrage of responses) is

going on.

One of the problems with e-mail is that we can shoot of a reply so quickly

that we don't give it much thought. A suggestion or two, if I may. Go ahead

and write your response - get it off your chest - then save it instead of

immediately sending. Chances are by morning, you'll have forgotten about it.

If not, when you do get ready to send, you'll have a chance to look over

what you've written and see if you want to make changes. Use your delete key

more often than reply. And, I think we forget something our mothers' taught

us, " If you can't say anything nice, maybe you shouldn't say anything at

all. "