CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE: HEALING

The other side of the coin involves dealing with the legacies of abuse, sometimes years down the track. To survive child sexual abuse requires a belief in your ability to heal yourself, but when you are left with poor self-esteem, holding on to that belief is a huge challenge in itself. Anna, who was abused as a child by her uncle, has a long way to go. ‘I know I’m fat and ugly. That’s how I want it. I put the weight on deliberately because I don’t want to be attractive to men. The abuse happened from when I was nine until I was eleven and I just keep thinking I must have somehow been responsible for it. I still think everything that goes wrong is my fault. It’s strange you know, I feel as though all my feelings as a child were erased by what he did, and I have big chunks of my childhood memory missing.’

It is common for memories of sexual abuse to be blocked out. One way that memories can emerge is through an experience called a flashback. These are very different to the way you would remember something physically painful like a horseriding accident. Flashbacks are more than just memories or nightmares. They are vivid recollections of sights, smells, sounds, feelings. Survivors say a flashback can feel like they are actually in the middle of the experience again, yet sometimes they can’t be sure whether it is real because there may be no regular type of memory to rely on.

The effects of abuse will vary from person to person depending on your individual way of dealing with problems, how severe the abuse was, how much future contact you had with the perpetrator, how your family reacted to any disclosure, and your religious beliefs.

Kay says she sometimes feels like it all happened to another person. Although she is currently in a relationship with a man, she finds intercourse difficult. T hate anybody touching me, but I am slowly getting used to Tim because he is really patient and sensitive to when I’m feeling tense. When we start having sex I feel myself separating from my body, like I just tune out. I once heard about astral travel and I thought, “That’s how I feel about sex, like I’m floating above us watching it all from a distance.” One thing I will never get used to is semen. If I ever get any on me I stand under the shower for ages washing and washing. I can’t stand it, so we always use condoms. I don’t know how I’ll cope if we ever decide to have babies.’

This feeling when you are having sex — that it is happening to someone else — is one of the ways a survivor of abuse learns to cope. Others describe their genital area being divorced’ or ‘cut off from the rest of their body.

Now in his late twenties, Daryl was abused by his music teacher from when he was nine until he was twelve and he says he has been permanently turned off sex. ‘I was married for a while but I just found sex repulsive. I don’t want anything to do with it.’

When you consider the amount of damage that can be caused by sexual abuse, it is virtually impossible to repair it all on your own. It would be like cleaning up Florida after Cyclone Andrew with a mop and bucket and the best of intentions. It takes help. In the case of sexual abuse, that help can come from a number of sources — close friends, a lover who is able to earn your trust, or a sensitive and qualified therapist who can expertly guide a survivor through the painful process of working through the effects of the abuse.

That process means taking a look at how the abuse has affected your life in the past and what that means to you now. How has it influenced your attitudes towards sex? Has it interfered with your ability to form close and lasting relationships? Do you have trouble trusting another person? Do you feel worthless, dirty, ugly? Do you constantly put yourself down? Do you suffer from chronic stress-related illnesses?

Surviving sexual abuse means facing the memories so that you can get to know yourself better, then putting the abuse into perspective with the rest of your life. At first you might see yourself as a victim. As you work through the healing process, you start to feel like a survivor. Finally, you become a person to whom something terrible once happened. Then the ultimate goal … you learn to like yourself.
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CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE: PROTECT YOUR CHILD

Years ago, before anyone had a clue about the extent of child sexual abuse in the community, it seemed enough to tell a child not to go into public toilets alone and not to talk to strangers. Nowadays, armed with much more information, we realize that most of the threat is closer to home. Obviously parents can’t possibly keep an eye on their children every minute of the day. Apart from parents doing their best to keep a watchful eye, the best way to protect children is to show them ways of protecting themselves.

As our awareness of the problem has grown, we have had to figure out ways of arming children to defend themselves. When we think of self-defense, images of karate and tai-kwon-do classes spring to mind, but because of the very nature of sexual abuse a child cannot hope to be any match for a larger, stronger and more cunning adult. The first and perhaps the most important defense for a child is knowledge. This begins with knowing their rights as an individual — ‘I am the boss of my own body!’ — and then being told about sexuality and sexual abuse in a language they can understand.

One man who was abused as a child said, ‘At the time I didn’t really know how wrong it was and in a way I felt worse about it years later. I had always been made to do as I was told, no matter what. I had this confusion about being obedient while doing something I felt really uncomfortable about.

Besides, I had no idea what “sex” was. My parents never talked to me about those things and I reckon if I had known what “sex” was, the abuse would never have happened.’

To a child, ‘sex’ usually means something to do with a mummy and a daddy making babies. This is where the more expanded concepts of intimacy and touching are so important. Children are able to understand what safe touching and unsafe touching mean by talking about different parts of their bodies and learning to recognize when they feel unsafe.

They are helped to identify when they might be in a situation of possible danger by getting to know their ‘early warning signs’. These are the feelings adults recognize as symptoms of anxiety, stress or panic: feeling sick in the stomach, headaches, butterflies in your stomach, wetting your pants, feeling shaky or sweaty, your hair standing on end.

Another aspect to learn is the difference between good secrets and bad secrets. Good secrets will make you feel happy, like birthday surprises. A bad secret will make you feel some of your early warning signs, particularly if you are threatened that something awful will happen if you do not keep a promise.

The next step is to help a child to have the confidence to talk about it and there is no doubt that this takes tremendous courage. Knowing there is a trusted adult who will understand what they are trying to say is the vital link in the chain.

As things stand at the moment, there is almost no incentive for a perpetrator to admit to abuse. The fear of criminal charges being laid and families (no matter how dysfunctional) being broken up actively discourages reporting. One suggestion has been to forget the criminal charges and push for mandatory counselling for the family. There is a lot to be said for getting away from the vindictive ‘witch-hunt’ approach. It may take months to get to court and convictions are rare. But whether charges are laid or not, the most important thing is that the abuse stops.

Even without a conviction, the process of reporting may shake the family into making some basic changes. Reporting a suspected case of child sexual abuse is obviously going to cause a massive upheaval in a family and the reactions are fairly predictable. If one or other of the parents has no idea that there is any abuse, they will naturally be shocked. The person accused of abuse may vigorously deny any allegations of wrongdoing and other members of the family can have a hard time believing that such a thing could be happening. Even in cases where the abuse is acknowledged, there are the ‘onlys’ … ‘It only happened a few times’, ‘I didn’t lay a hand on her; she only touched me’, or ‘It wasn’t intercourse, it was only fondling.’

There is likely to be a lot of anger at the interference in ‘family business’, to the extent that the family may close ranks and refuse to answer any questions. This means that not only the child but the whole family will need support and help to make the necessary changes.
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NITRATES AND NITRITES

IMMUNITY AND INFECTION

CHILD’S HEALTH/INFECTIOUS DISEASES: CHICKENPOX (VARICELLA) CLINICAL FEATURES

The incubation period for chickenpox is 2-3 weeks after contact. Symptoms tend to be much milder in children than in adults, so you may actually be doing your child a favour if you let him catch chickenpox! The illness usually starts with a general feeling of tiredness and lethargy, which is soon followed by the outbreak of a characteristic rash. At first this rash appears as red spots which develop into crops of small blisters over the trunk. These begin to appear soon on the rest of the body, and may occur even in the mouth, ears or on the genitalia. The blisters are extremely itchy, and new ones keep forming as older ones are scabbing over and drying up. Your child remains contagious until the last blister has scabbed over and the blisters are all dry. The scabs may take several weeks to fall off. The rash does not leave any scars unless your child scratches the blisters or scabs, or they become infected. The rash may be accompanied by a fever, which is usually more marked in adults.

In healthy children complications of chickenpox are unlikely, although they do occasionally occur. These include pneumonia and encephalitis. Children who have reduced immunity, such as those with cancer or those taking immunosuppressant medication, can suffer severe attacks of chickenpox and should be kept away from those who have it. Elderly people cannot get shingles from chickenpox, but children can develop chickenpox after contact with someone who has shingles.

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YOUR MARITAL HEALTH/WIVES’ SEXUALITY: “ORGASMIC DYSFUNCTION”

Orgasmic denial was replaced with orgasmic obligation, and capacity was mistaken for requirement. Women were no longer to be made love “to” but to be made love “for.” The female sexual-response cycle was seen as separate in many ways from the male’s, totally devoid of a refractory period, and dependent on much more general, romantic stimulation than the male’s. Women were now seen as intensely responsive, multiply orgasmic sexual athletes who, once appropriately and rigorously stimulated, lost all control, succumbing to their unlimited “carnal lust.” Men had to learn, according to the third perspective, to harness this infinite lust through clever stimulation, self-control, timing, endurance, and the patience to wait for the emergence of this special sexual capacity. Why they were no longer sexual objects to be used and abused, women were now to be “handled with care,” erotic puzzles to be solved by liberated men.

Women were never seen as prematurely orgasmic. Indeed, there was no limit to their sexual capacity. Only men “came too soon.” Women were seen as having “orgasmic dysfunction,” as not having orgasms or not having enough or intense-enough orgasms. Men, of course, were always easily orgasmic. In fact, they were seen as too easily orgasmic in comparison to these sexual women whose orgasmic threshold was high and required intense, generalized, and prolonged stimulation in order for “the force” to be released.

For men, the female orgasm became a goal. For women, it became an assignment, a signal of the effectiveness of their male partner. Even though many women talked privately of the fact that orgasms were highly subjective and that sometimes they were totally irrelevant to sexual fulfillment, they knew they had better have them if sexual relationships were to flourish. Group therapy for women was offered, “orgasm groups” helping women to find the way to their inner sexual potential. If men had their orgasms too soon, women tended to take too long. While men put desensitizing creams on their penises to numb themselves, women sought “sexual inventions” for easy orgasmic release. They discovered a magical spot that could help with all of this. After all, we were now living in a pushbutton culture, so why not look for the female sex button? Men didn’t need one, because they were turned on all the time anyway, but it seemed important to look for the female “on switch.”

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TRUE HEALING – PRACTICAL ADVICE/DETOXIFICATION PROCESS: OXYGEN THERAPIES – OZONE TREATMENT

Ozone (03) is a very active form of oxygen. It exists naturally in the atmosphere – it is created from molecular oxygen (02) by the UV rays from the sun. Ozone is the essential ingredient of fresh air. Ozone is unstable: it breaks down into oxygen after only a few minutes at room temperature (25 deg C), but its supplies are continuously updated using the UV energy from the sun. High in the mountains there is a lot of ozone in the air. We can create ozone in our home, by yet again imitating the ways of nature: using a quartz lamp to generate UV rays. Because ozone is so active, it neutralises (by oxidisation) all odours very effectively. Breathing air, with the concentration of ozone similar to that in the mountains, is quite beneficial. Be careful not to exceed natural concentrations of ozone in the air you breathe. Your body will give you a warning if you are doing so: dryness of the throat and/or discomfort in your lungs. Do not ignore it.

Do not ever breathe ozone produced using a high voltage arc. Such ozone is initially very hot and it is so active, that it reacts with the nitrogen in the arc plasma, creating nitrogen oxides, which are quite toxic. The air around a high voltage arc contains not only ozone, but also nitrogen oxides, which are dangerous.

“Cold” ozone, generated at low room temperature by an UV quartz lamp is safe. Such “cold” ozone is naturally produced in the atmosphere by the activity of the sun and is an essential ingredient of fresh air.

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MIGRAINE – MIGRAINE HEADACHES

Migraine headaches rarely last beyond one day and, if not relieved with drugs, may go once the person goes to sleep. Where the headache persists for days, it is usually initially a migraine which develops into a tension headache and the sufferer has difficulty separating them.

Ergotamine is a drug which constricts the arteries and is the treatment of choice for most vascular headaches. These drugs are often combined with an antihistamine to stop nausea and vomiting.

They must be taken at the onset of the migraine so as to abort an attack.

Ordinary analgesics, even strong ones, are of little use in relieving migraine. The stronger narcotic drugs like morphine and pethidine should be used with extreme caution.

If the attacks are infrequent, taking an ergota-mine preparation to relieve the attack is all that is necessary. More severe or frequent attacks usually require the use of one of the preventive drugs taken on a regular basis, usually for many months.

Some cases resistant to other measures do well with manipulation of the neck, hypnosis or acupuncture.

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CARPAL TUNNEL SYNDROME – GENERAL INFORMATION

It is common in pregnancy and here it is believed to be due to swelling of the nerve and the overlaying band of ligament as part of the general retention of fluid in the body which may occur in pregnancy.

It may be relieved if the pregnant woman takes a diuretic; a drug that washes fluid and salt from the body. The symptoms are usually relieved following delivery.

Carpal tunnel syndrome causes pain in the hand and fingers, but this pain may spread up the forearm as well.

Pins and needles and numbness may affect the hands and fingers. The fifth finger is never involved because of its different nerve supply.

Patients may be unaware that the little finger is not involved and claim that their symptoms involve the whole hand. But when they are made aware of it and they take particular note, they will find that this finger is spared.

That is a very important point in making the diagnosis. Pressure on the nerve in the neck will usually involve all five digits. Sometimes weakness and inco-ordination of the muscles, particularly those of the thumb, may be part of the problem.

The pain appears to be worse following use of the hand but it also commonly comes on at night and may wake the person in the early hours of the morning. It is usually relieved by hanging the hand down over the side of the bed.

In mild cases the use of one of the antiinflammatory drugs to relieve the inflammatory swelling of the nerve in the tunnel may produce relief. This is often combined with the taking of a diuretic to reduce fluid retention.

If these simple measures do not work, it is worth a trial of applying a plaster of Paris splint to the wrist to be worn only at nights.

Nerve conduction studies will confirm the diagnosis. Where conservative measures fail, operation gives excellent results.

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CHILDREN’S MENINGITIS: PRECAUTIONS AND TREATMENT

Precautions

• The unnecessary use of antibiotics for an upper respiratory tract infection may mask the onset of meningitis.

• A child who is suffering from exhaustion or extreme weakness, and who has fever and a stiff neck is in danger and should be taken to a medical facility immediately.

Medical treatment

Your doctor will take the child’s complete medical history and perform a thorough examination. The doctor will then order a spinal tap. Spinal fluid will be examined for cells, bacteria, and abnormal chemical components. This is the only way to differentiate between meningitis and encephalitis (inflammation of the brain), which is also a life-threatening disease. The doctor will also require cultures of the spinal fluid, blood, and nose and throat mucus. Immediately following the spinal tap and cultures your doctor will administer intravenous fluids and antibiotics. If the infecting organism is unknown, the doctor may put the child on two antibiotics at the same time. If the meningitis turns out to be caused by a virus, no antibiotics will be used, since viruses do not respond to antibiotics.

If your child has been in contact with a person with meningococcal or Haemophilus influenzae meningitis, your doctor may choose to administer penicillin, sulphonamide, or rifampin by mouth prevent your child from developing meningitis.

Vaccines against meningococci, pneumococci, and Haemophilius influenzae are available, but they are still in the experimental stage and not currently recommended for general use.

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Related Posts:

• CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE: HEALING
• CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE: PROTECT YOUR CHILD
• NITRATES AND NITRITES
• IMMUNITY AND INFECTION
• CHILD’S HEALTH/INFECTIOUS DISEASES: CHICKENPOX (VARICELLA) CLINICAL FEATURES
• YOUR MARITAL HEALTH/WIVES’ SEXUALITY: “ORGASMIC DYSFUNCTION”
• TRUE HEALING – PRACTICAL ADVICE/DETOXIFICATION PROCESS: OXYGEN THERAPIES – OZONE TREATMENT
• MIGRAINE – MIGRAINE HEADACHES
• CARPAL TUNNEL SYNDROME – GENERAL INFORMATION
• SELF-HELP PREVENTION: HEAT RASH (PRICKLY HEAT) AND HEATSTROKE