To Your Good Health
By Paul G. Donohue, M.D.
Endometriosis
Questions
DEAR DR. DONOHUE:
I have some questions about endometriosis. I have
seen three doctors who think I have a case of it.
One doctor put me on birth control pills, but
they made me sick. Another wants to check if my
fallopian tubes are blocked. If so, I
couldn’t have any more children. Would I
have a painful pregnancy if I did? Is it a good
idea to try for more children? I have two now,
the last one six years ago. -- S.W.
ANSWER: The
endometrium (IN-doe-ME-tree-um) is the covering
layer of the uterus. Each month, during the
menstrual period, the endometrium is shed. Then
the uterus begins forming a new covering in the
event an egg is fertilized.
Sometimes pieces
of endometrium get to places they shouldn’t
be. They can pass through the fallopian tubes
into the pelvis, where they implant on ligaments,
ovaries, tubes or even the bowel or bladder. Like
the endometrium in the uterus, these transplants
respond to the monthly hormones. They cannot be
shed like the uterine endometrium. They stay
where they are and irritate structures they have
landed on, causing pelvic pain, pain during
intercourse and infertility if they have narrowed
the fallopian tubes.
The diagnosis of
endometriosis can be made with 100 percent
certainty when the doctor introduces a scope into
the pelvis and spots the displaced tissue.
For mild pain,
anti-inflammatory medicines can bring control --
Advil, Aleve and the like. For greater pain,
birth control pills often put an end to it.
Medicines that reduce the production of estrogen
are also quite effective. Surgery is another way
to treat endometriosis. Pregnancy just about
always relieves endometrial pain.
LETTERS from
a SELF-MADE
MERCHANT
to his SON.
by George Horace
Lorimer
First
published October, 1902
Being the Letters
written by John Graham, Head of the House of
Graham & Company, Pork-Packers in Chicago,
familiarly known on ‘Change as "Old
Gorgon Graham," to his Son, Pierrepont,
facetiously known to his intimates as
"Piggy."
No.5
FROM John Graham, head of
the house of Graham & Co., at the Union Stock
Yards in Chicago, to his son, Pierrepont Graham,
at Lake Moosgatchemawamue, in the Maine woods.
Mr. Pierrepont has written to his father
withdrawing his suggestion.
v
July 7, 189_
Dear Pierrepont: Yours of the fourth has the right ring,
and it says more to the number of words used than
any letter that I have ever received from you. I
remember reading once that some fellows use
language to conceal thought; but it’s been
my experience that a good many more use it instead of thought.
A business
man’s conversation should be regulated by
fewer and simpler rules than any other function
of the human animal.
They are:
Have something to
say.
Say it.
Stop talking.
Beginning before
you know what you want to say and keeping on
after you have said it lands a merchant in a
lawsuit or the poorhouse, and the first is a
short cut to the second. I maintain a legal
department here, and it costs a lot of money, but
it’s to keep me from going to law.
It’s all
right when you are calling on a girl or talking
with friends after dinner to run a conversation
like a Sunday-school excursion, with stops to
pick flowers; but in the office your sentences
should be the shortest distance possible between
periods. Cut out the introduction and the
peroration, and stop before you get to secondly.
You’ve got to preach short sermons to catch
sinners; and deacons won’t believe they need
long ones themselves. Give fools the first and
women the last word. The meat’s always in
the middle of the sandwich. Of course, a little
butter on either side of it doesn’t do any
harm it it’s intended for a man who likes
butter.
Remember, too,
that it’s easier to look wise than to talk
wisdom. Say less than the other fellow and listen
more than you talk; for when a man’s
listening he isn’t telling on himself and
he’s flattering the fellow who is. Give most
men a good listener and most women enough
note-paper and they’ll tell all they know.
Money talks - but not unless its owner has a
loose tongue, and then its remarks are always
offensive. Poverty talks, too, but nobody wants
to hear when it has to say.
I simply mention
these things in passing because I’m afraid
you’re apt to be the fellow who’s doing
the talking; just as I’m a little afraid
that you’re sometimes like the hungry
drummer at the dollar-a-day house - inclined to
kill your appetite by eating the cake in the
centre of the table before the soup comes on.
Of course,
I’m glad to see you swing into line and show
the proper spirit about coming on here and going
to work; but you mustn’t get yourself all
"het up" before you take the plunge,
because you’re bound to find the water
pretty cold at first. I’ve seen a good many
young fellows pass through and out of this
office. The first week a lot of them go to work
they’re in a sweat for fear they’ll be
fired; and the second week for fear they
won’t be. By the third, a boy that’s no
good has learned just how little work he can do
and keep his job; while the fellow who’s got
the right stuff in him is holding down his own
place with one hand and beginning to reach for
the job just ahead of him with the other. I
don’t mean that he’s neglecting his
work; but he’s beginning to take notice, and
that’s a mighty hopeful sign in either a
young clerk or a young widow.
You’ve got to
handle the first year of your business life about
the way you would a trotting horse. Warm up a
little before going to the post - not enough to
be in a sweat, but just enough to be limber and
eager. Never start off at a gait that you
can’t improve on, but move along strong and
well in hand to the quarter. Let out a notch
there, but take it calm enough up to the half not
to break, and hard enough not to fall back into
the ruck. At the three-quarters you ought to be
going fast enough to poke your nose out of the
other fellow’s dust, and running like the
Limited in the stretch. Keep your eyes to the
front all the time, and you won’t be so apt
to shy at the little things by the side of the
track. Head up, tail over the dashboard -
that’s the way the winners look in the old
pictures of Maud S. and Dexter and Jay-Eye-See.
And that’s the way I want to see you swing
by the old man at the end of the year, when we
hoist the numbers of the fellows who are good
enough to promote and pick out the salaries which
need a little sweetening.
I’ve always
taken a good deal of stock in what you call
"Blood-will-tell" if you’re a
Methodist, or "Heredity" if you’re
a Unitarian; and I don’t want you to come
along at this late day and disturb my religious
beliefs. A man’s love for his children and
his pride are pretty badly snarled up in this
world, and he can’t always pick them apart.
I think a heap of you and a heap of the house,
and I want to see you get along well together. To
do that you must start right. It’s just as
necessary to make a good first impression in
business as in courting. You’ll read a good
deal about "love at first sight" in
novels, and there may be something in it for all
I know; but I’m dead certain there’s no
such thing as love at first sight in business. A
man’s got to keep company a long time, and
come early and stay late and sit close, before he
can get a girl or a job worth having.
There’s nothing comes without calling in
this world, and after you’ve called
you’ve generally go to go and fetch it
yourself.
Our bright young
men have discovered how to make a pretty good
article of potted chicken, and they don’t
need any help from hens, either; and you can
smell the clover in our butterine if you’ve
developed the poetic side of your nose; but none
of the boys have been able to discover anything
that will pass as a substitute for work, even in
a boarding-house, though I’ll give some of
them credit for having tried pretty hard.
I remember when I
was selling goods for old Josh Jennings, back in
the sixties, and had rounded up about a thousand
in a savings-bank - a might hard thousand, that
came a dollar or so at a time, and every dollar
with a little bright mark where I had bit it - I
roomed with a dry-goods clerk named Charlie
Chase. Charlie had a hankering to be a rich man;
but somehow he could never see any connection
between that hankering and his counter, except
that he’d hint to me sometimes about an
heiress who used to squander her father’s
money shamefully for the sake of having Charlie
wait on her. But when it came to getting rich
outside the dry-goods business and getting rich
in a hurry, Charlie was the man.
Along about
Tuesday night - he was paid on Saturday -
he’d stay at home and begin to scheme.
He’d commence at eight o’clock and
start a magazine, maybe, and before midnight
he’d be turning away subscribers because his
presses couldn’t print a big enough edition.
Or perhaps he wouldn’t feel literary that
night, and so he’d invent a system for
speculating in wheat and go on pyramiding his
purchases till he’d made the best that
Cheops did look like a five-cent plate of ice
cream. All he ever needed was a few hundred for a
starter, and to get that he’d decide to let
me in on the ground floor. I want to say right
here that whenever any one offers to let you in
on the ground floor it’s a pretty safe rule
to take the elevator to the roof garden. I never
exactly refused lend Charlie the capital he
needed, but we generally compromised on half a
dollar next morning, when he was in a hurry to
make the store to keep from getting docked.
He dropped by the
office last week, a little bent and seedy, but
all in a glow and trembling with excitement in
the old way. Told me he was President of the
Klondike Exploring, Gold Prospecting and
Immigration Company, with a capital of ten
millions. I guessed that he was the board of
directors and the capital stock and the exploring
and the prospecting and the immigrating, too -
everything, in fact, except the business card
he’d sent in; for Charlie always had a gift
for nosing out printers who’d trust him.
Said for the sake of old times he’d let me
have a few thousand shares at fifty cents, though
they would go to par in a year. In the end we
compromised on a loan of ten dollars, and Charlie
went away happy.
The swamps are
full of razor-backs like Charlie, fellows
who’d rather make a million a night in their
heads than five dollars a day in cash. I have
always found it cheaper to lend a man of that
build a little money than to hire him. As a
matter of fact, I have never known a fellow who
was smart enough to think for the house days and
for himself nights. A man who tries that is
usually a pretty poor thinker, and he isn’t
much good to either; but if there’s any
choice the house gets the worst of it.
I simply mention
these little things in a general way. If you can
take my word for some of them you are going to
save yourself a whole lot of trouble. There are
others which I don’t speak of because life
is too short and because it seems to afford a
fellow a heap of satisfaction to pull the trigger
for himself to see if it is loaded; and a lesson
learned at the muzzle has the virtue of never
being forgotten.
You report to
Milligan at the yards at eight sharp on the
fifteenth. You’d better figure on being here
on the fourteenth, because Milligan’s a
pretty touchy Irishman, and I may be able to give
you a point or two that will help you to keep on
his mellow side. He’s apt to feel a little
sore at taking on in his department a man whom he
hasn’t passed on.
Your affectionate
father,
John Graham.
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