This Is the Way to Celebrate Christmas

Presented without further comment:

In Hiroshima Peace Park, built to commemorate the victims of the first nuclear attack, there is a statue of a young girl holding a golden origami crane. On its base are inscribed these words: “This is our cry. This is our prayer. Peace in the world.” The memorial was built by the efforts of the classmates of Sadako Sasaki, the subject of that statue, who was only two years old when the United States dropped the nuclear bomb, code-named “Little Boy,” about a mile from where Sadako lived.

Ten years after Little Boy decimated Hiroshima, Sadako, like so many other Japanese children, came down with leukemia as a result of her exposure to radiation. The prognosis for anyone with leukemia in those days was “terminal.” There was no hope. A friend of Sadako’s, Chizuko Hamamoto, visiting her in the hospital, reminded the suffering girl of a Japanese fable; if one folded a thousand paper cranes, the gods would grant their wish. Then Chizuko picked up a gold-colored piece of paper and folded a crane, telling Sadako, “Here is your first one.”

Click through and read the whole story.

And just to drive the point home, check back on this post and this one.

Gabby Giffords

She opened her eyes. From NYT, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand describes the scene in her hospital room.

“We were telling her how proud we were of her and how she was inspiring the whole nation with her courage and with her strength,” Senator Gillibrand said. “Then Debbie and I started joking about all the things we were going to do when she got better. We were holding her hand, and she was responding to our hand holding, she was rubbing her hands and she was gripping our hands so we could … we knew she could hear and understand what we were saying, she moved her leg. we knew she was responding.”

And then, Sen. Gillibrand said, one of Ms. Giffords’s eyes started to twitch. (Her other eye was bandaged because it was damaged in the gunfire).

“Her eye is flickering and Mark sees this and gets extremely excited,” Sen. Gillibrand said. “He said ‘Gabby open your eyes, open your eyes,’ — he is really urging her forward, and the doctor is perking up.”

Sen. Gillibrand said that around 30 seconds later, “she finally opens her eyes, and you could tell she was desperately trying to focus.”

She described Mr. Kelly as “so happy,” and said that she and others in the room were crying.

“Mark says ‘if you can see me, give us the thumbs up,’” Sen. Gillibrand said. And instead of giving a thumbs up, Ms. Giffords raised her whole arm, and later reached out to touch her husband’s ring.


And a segment of the president's speech:



Thanks to Towleroad.

Double-Barrelled Help

Via Balloon Juice, among others, this from NYT:

Just weeks after Chris Goehner, 25, an Iraq war veteran, got a dog, he was able to cut in half the dose of anxiety and sleep medications he took for post-traumatic stress disorder. The night terrors and suicidal thoughts that kept him awake for days on end ceased.

Aaron Ellis, 29, another Iraq veteran with the stress disorder, scrapped his medications entirely soon after getting a dog — and set foot in a grocery store for the first time in three years.

The dogs to whom they credit their improved health are not just pets. Rather, they are psychiatric service dogs specially trained to help traumatized veterans leave the battlefield behind as they reintegrate into society.

Because of stories like these, the federal government, not usually at the forefront of alternative medical treatments, is spending several million dollars to study whether scientific research supports anecdotal reports that the dogs might speed recovery from the psychological wounds of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In dozens of interviews, veterans and their therapists reported drastic reductions in P.T.S.D. symptoms and in reliance on medication after receiving a service dog.

Veterans rely on their dogs to gauge the safety of their surroundings, allowing them to venture into public places without constantly scanning for snipers, hidden bombs and other dangers lurking in the minds of those with the disorder.

The part that really got to me was this, from the post at Balloon Juice:

While it’s not the focus of this article, these service dogs are helping rescue two sets of lost human souls. My dog guru in the Midwest helped start a different program to pair “throw-away” shelter dogs with… well, “throw-away” humans in the prison system, selected prisoners who earn a coveted slot for schooling as dog groomers and trainers. She thought that after twenty years of dog rescue, she’d be immune to horror stories, but it breaks her heart all over again to find out how many people have never known anything but coercion, force, and threats in their lives. Thank Goddess for dogs, who forgive.

I can't add to that.