My First Entry in my Quivering Daughters Diary

Post originally published at UnderMuchGrace.com June 2010 as :

My First Entry in my Quivering Daughters Diary

Embarking on the Journey through Hillary McFarland's New Work 

"Quivering Daughters:

Hope and Healing

for the Daughters of Patriarchy"

I started out the day and kept checking the door to make sure that the "UPS man" had not escaped my attention, and maybe he came and left my book at the door without knocking.  Hopeful that my book might arrive yesterday, I checked the UPS tracking number that I'd received from the bookseller by email.  It was in Pennsylvania at 7:36AM , at least a ten hour drive away at that point, so I was sure that it would not arrive that day.  (I was excited and obsessed enough to actually go to the UPS website to see where the book was.  Am I nutz?  Rhetorical question.. Please don't send me emails.  We already know.) 

I'd made several trips down the stairs to check my doorway for the book by the time the knock came!  The only time I've ever been this excited about something coming in the mail has been when I received my Nursing Board results in the summer of '86, and I kissed the mailman when I opened the letter!  I also watched the mail like a hawk for my engagement ring that my husband sent via regular post from half-way across the country in '88.  (He didn't insure it, and it took over a week to arrive.)  Rather than kiss the UPS man today, to express my excitement and gratitude, I gave him a pretty little gift box of Choxie candy that I'd picked up at Target (on clearance, of course ;). 

I’d called Hillary on the phone, as we’d arranged in advance to open our packages while we had each other on the phone, acting like excited, silly school girls.

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Announcing Quivering Daughters!

Though I haven't seen the actual book yet, I just got word from Hillary McFarland that "Quivering Daughters" is now available to order online.  (I feel like a family friend, visiting a new mother, waiting to get a chance to hold the new baby after waiting so long to see the new little bundle of wonder.  How wonderful it is to think about who this new person God just brought into my life will be as I get to know them.)

Currently, Barnes and Noble has the best price, but Amazon also offers the book as well, and the selling prices seem to fluctuate for some unknown reason.  ???  Both sites offer free shipping for orders over $25, so why not order two books?

Addendum Note:  If you use a Discover Card and go through the Shop Discover page at the DiscoverCard.com website, at the time of this posting, you can earn a 10% Cash Back Bonus when you buy through Barnes and Noble.  The free shipping offer still also applies.

I haven't figured out how I'm going to go about making the offer, but I want to give away a few of the books to the readers here.

Probably in about a month, I will have figured out some creative way to have some kind of raffle or something.

Any ideas?

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How Lawyers Lie With Statistics

Vision Forum willfully distorted statistics related to the true morbidity and mortality associated with ectopic pregnancy.  Ectopic pregnancy still remains the leading cause of death of all pregnant women in the first trimester of pregnancy.  It accounts for 9% of all maternal deaths in all pregnancy-related deaths.  In the case of death of pregnant women which includes non-pregnancy related death (unrelated heart disease or car accidents, for example), ectopic pregnancy still accounts for 6% of deaths of pregnant women.  

Despite these statistics, Vision Forum and Samaritan Ministries insist that ectopic pregnancy does not pose a significant health risk to women.  They have offered that 60-100 cases of live births resulting from ectopic pregnancies have been documented, but I can find no such reference to this rate of frequency.  One rate of frequency of "one in 60 million" has been offered to describe the rate of such births, and many falsely understand this as a probability statement when the probability for such births is actually ZERO.  I believe that the publications produced on this topic also capitalize on frequencies, using them as probability statements.  In the absence of well-rounded data presenting all the statistics, both Vision Forum and Samaritan Ministries manipulate trusting readers to accept a dangerous view of a very serious medical problem experienced by women of childbearing age.  Ectopic pregnancy, a deadly threat to women, should not be viewed as a game of chance.

Note how attorneys alter the way they present information to juries in order to make statistics seem either more or less impressive.  It is my hope that the reader will come away with a greater appreciation for the language of medical statistics and how numbers can be used to deceive the unsuspecting.

Excerpts from

The Psychology of Numbers in the Courtroom: 

How to make DNA-Match Statistics Seem Impressive or Insufficient

South California Law Review, Vol. 74, p. 1275, 2001

(emphasis mine!)

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Why an Average Can Be Misleading and How To Get Number Savvy: Vision Forum Myths About Ectopic Pregnancy as a Prototype

 
 

... Why I take issue with the misleading nature of the “1 in 60 million” rate of ectopic pregnancies that result in live births as quoted by Vision Forum and Samaritan Ministries.  

 Start HERE for some prerequisite ideas about how we can easily fall into "lying with statistics."


Start HERE for an overview of Vision Forum's aberrant stance on Ectopic Pregnancy

Briefly backing up…

Vision Forum and Samaritan Ministries cited a physician who stated that the chance of a live birth from an ectopic pregnancy was “60 million to one.”  I suppose that’s not Vision Forum’s fault for republishing this information, but I do fault Samaritan Ministries for disseminating the related information regarding healthcare statistics.  As an entity involved in the procuring and payment of healthcare, they have a higher burden of responsibility to communicate accurate information to their membership.

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Means, Medians, and Modes: Vision Forum Definitely Works the Psychology of Numbers to their Advantage at the Expense of their Followers

... Why I take issue with the misleading nature of the “1 in 60 million” rate of ectopic pregnancies that result in live births as quoted by Vision Forum and Samaritan Ministries. 

Link HERE if you haven't read the previous posts pertaining to Vision Forum, Samaritan Ministries, and their dangerous views on ectopic pregnancy.

I suspect that until I get caught up and do at least a rough chi-square analysis to demonstrate how these calculations work, the probability is actually zero and the actual cases of live births may be more one in some obscene number that’s so big, it has no meaning.  That’s why the probability when calculating these odds is equal to ZERO.

Let’s start with Don Veinot’s blog article which also takes issue with Vision Forum’s position on ectopic pregnancy to demonstrate how such large numbers can become meaningless quickly.

From "The Crux," 17Jun10:

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Hey, Even I Lied With Statistics (By Accident!)

Ignorance, Stupid Error, and Willful Intent:  Vision Forum is still guilty of objectifying women and children

Christians often quote the Apostle Paul when he wrote to the Church at Rome that "God works all things together for good."  Today, I hope that my own error can be used for good, illustrating that statistics can be tough.  Though I am mortified and have sweat through two changes of clothing since I figured out what I did, I think that it illustrates a fine point in the discussion of how we can easily get turned around with statistics.  I hope that it demonstrates that we always have the option to "eat crow," and Winston Churchill once said that it makes for a more than adequate diet.  Where sin (missing the mark) abounds, grace does much more abound.  I hope that this is one instance where God can show His strength through my weakness and show glory through my shame (Ps 4:2).  This verse was of great comfort to me today:

If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness.

1 Corinthians 11:30-31

I expect that something similar to a portion of this post that now follows will appear on No Longer Quivering sometime in the near future, though I expand a bit more upon the subject here in my own corner of the internet.  If I had intended to be misleading from the start, I would have not included all of the numbers in the post where I first made the error!

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Why We Get Tricked Into Lying With Statistics: Conditional Probability, Ecotpic Pregnancy, and Confirmation Bias

Calling All Statisticians!

Please, somebody, HELP me figure out the probability of a live birth from a non-tubal ectopic pregnancy.

In the next couple of posts, I hope to explain briefly just why people fall into the trap of “lying with statistics” as one of the trappings of our humanity as we try to understand truth and the nature of things. I think the matter of figuring out the true probability of delivering a live birth from a non-tubal ectopic pregnancy can not only give the reader a glimpse into the science of understanding behavior (some areas of psychology and health depend and revolve around science and factual truth), but it can teach us something about “confirmation bias” or seeing only what we want to see in the world or a situation.

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Surgery for Tubal Pregnancy Deemed an Elective Abortion??? The Discussion of Vision Forum’s Fiat Raises More Questions

A Response to No Longer Quivering's
Vision Forum, Samaritan Ministries Take Extreme “Pro-Life” Position on Ectopic Pregnancies

In the name of “Right to Life” Quiverfull moms could lose their lives

Following the previous post about Vision Forum’s plans to advance their thesis regarding surgical treatment for tubal pregnancy before confirmed death of an unborn baby as the ethical equivalent of elective abortion, several insightful questions have been presented in different areas around the blogosphere including the NLQ Forum.  They are worth noting.

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How Vision Forum "Lies with Statistics" to Prove that They are Special to God: Women with Ectopic Pregnancy Consigned to Die

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Please see my post on the No Longer Quivering Blog concerning Samaritan Ministry’s support of the Vision Forum position on ectopic pregnancy, something Vyckie entitled, “Vision Forum, Samaritan Ministries Take Extreme “Pro-Life” Position on Ectopic Pregnancies.”

LATE NOTE:  For math geeks, please see my disclaimer at the bottom of the page.

On the first day of my statistics class in college, the instructor held up a book that was not our assigned text, an old classic from the 1950s entitled “How to Lie with Statistics.”  Whenever he introduced a new topic, the instructor also presented an example of common mistakes made by many people, failing to appreciate the traps one can fall into when trying to prognosticate.  And my own research was good enough to have been the only undergraduate invited to present their research project at the Nursing Honor Society’s regional meeting in 1987.  And I continue to review data and participate in peer review within toxicology, having co-authored published research in this related field.  I’ve won two "Young Scientist" research awards as coauthor from TIAFT.  All that to say that I know a little bit about statistics -- particularly health care statistics after more than 25 years in the field.   I don't know that Vision Forum intends to lie with statistics, but they end up making classic and ignorant errors which results in the manipulation of their followers. (It might be an innocent result of confirmation bias.)   I think that their followers deserve informed consent.

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Plans for Upcoming Posts: The Twelve Steps, Dissociation, Triggers, Tubal Pregnancy, and So Many Books/So Little Time

 

A few months ago, I lost a great deal of data that I had on my old computer.  I’ve slept since then, and I don’t know if I remember what I wrote!  Among those posts, I’d developed a few more about cognitive dissonance.  I also had written a great post about how the Twelve Steps (when balanced with faith and study) can be a great framework for working through some of the problems we face when we are working through spiritual abuse or just through our ideas about why we believe what we believe.  But my computer crashed before I could get it posted online.

1.  Before I can get a chance to write about the topic in more depth, I wanted to point out a specific element of one of the Twelve Steps:

Step #3:  “We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.”

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Will You Die for a Cause, or Will You Live For One? Ectopic Pregnancy and Honoring Life: Part III of III

My Challenge to the Reader

  

A Response to the Invited Speaker List for Vision Forum’s 2010 Baby Conference

Note:  In the summer of 2008, Vision Form started a campaign to advance their idea that pre-emptive surgery for a woman with a tubal pregnancy constitutes murder of the unborn as an elective abortion.  Individuals who were outspoken or quoted in that discussion have been included as invited speakers at VF’s July Baby Conference (which will also host the famed Duggars of the TLC/Discovery Channel).  I believe that VF will use this vehicle to further advance what I find to be their very dangerous and distorted position concerning tubal pregnancy.

Please start with Part I  and  Part II.

Please note again that I cared for an unusual population of people when I dealt with obstetric (OB) cases in ICU.  I would imagine that only those nurses at that facility have seen the broad population of people in an underserved region of the country with the high acuity that the population that I reference.  It is not typical.   But I must ask myself, according to my causality and my faith, why did I have these experiences and what is my responsibility to the women who suffered and died?  What is my duty to those who lived due to miracles?  What is my responsibility to the husbands of the women I mention here who wept so sadly at their wives’ bedsides over the loss of both spouse and child?   What is my responsibility to the profession of nursing, something that is a holy calling for me?  What is my responsibility to all women?

I believe that I have been put in a very unique place to bear witness to the truth that some women die from peritonitis and sepsis if they don’t first hemorrhage to death following ruptured tubal pregnancies.  The medical profession respects their rights and is sometimes encouraged that people are willing to stand by their convictions, but the profession does not see them as martyrs.  I am here to bear witness about the pregnant women for whom I’ve cared as they struggled against sepsis. 

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Will You Die for a Cause, or Will You Live For One? Ectopic Pregnancy and Honoring Life: Part II of III

The Use of Utilitarianism to Prove Special Status before God at a Woman’s Expense

A Response to the Invited Speaker List for Vision Forum’s 2010 Baby Conference

Please start HERE with Part I.

During the Summer of 2008, Vision Forum declared that any pre-emptive surgical intervention for tubal pregnancies constitutes murder, if the surgery takes place before a confirmed fetal death. Tubal pregnancies present a definite problem in this way, because the medical profession does not specifically confirm fetal death --  because there is only one option for a woman with a tubal pregnancy. Life-saving surgery provides the only ethical option for the medical profession. Because no baby from a tubal pregnancy has ever survived, the doctor must save the life of the mother, and it would be drastically unethical to do otherwise. The pathology of the condition ends the pregnancy and risks the mother’s life, not the doctor who acts to rescue the woman. In this case, Vision Forum fails to honor the life of the woman in favor of death. By the time a woman knows that she is pregnant with a tubal pregnancy, the life of the unborn baby has already been critically compromised because of the conditions that have adversely affected its growth. Yet Vision Forum recommends “Watchful Waiting” in ALL cases of ALL ectopic pregnancy types. In cases where the baby stands a chance of survival outside the womb, even with a poor prognosis, I completely agree with “Watchful Waiting.” In cases of tubal pregnancy, however, I believe such behavior dishonors life and makes a mockery of wisdom in the very Name of Wisdom itself.

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Will You Die for a Cause, or Will You Live for It? Ectopic Pregnancy and Ideas about Honoring Life: Part I of III

A Response to the Invited Speaker List for Vision Forum’s 2010 Baby Conference

Note:  In the summer of 2008, Vision Form started a campaign to advance their idea that pre-emptive surgery for a woman with a tubal pregnancy constitutes murder of the unborn as an elective abortion.  Individuals who were outspoken or quoted in that discussion have been included as invited speakers at VF’s July Baby Conference (which will also host the famed Duggars of the TLC/Discovery Channel).  I believe that VF will use this vehicle to further advance what I find to be their very dangerous and distorted position concerning tubal pregnancy.

My Personal Perspective

I no longer work as a nurse in intensive care, but I did so for many years.  While my husband was still in graduate school and on a meager stipend, we lived in a very depressed community with a high indigent population in the heart of the Bible belt.  Even after 25 years of experience as a nurse, I have yet to see such physically sick, fragile people as I did in that town.  The hospital was at a medical school, and the medical director of the ICU where I worked piloted and tested experimental equipment in clinical trials.  Dying people were sent to us for enrollment in these trials as the last possible measures that might save their lives.  Between the poor health of the population we served and the numbers of people that were flown in from outside the state – from places like Baylor and big city hospitals in Dallas – we saw the sickest of the sick.  Doctors who could do no more for their dying patients would send them to us.  So my experiences there at this hospital are not typical, and I saw conditions and did procedures there that many critical care nurses only read about in books.  I saw the worst of the worst of the worst-case scenarios.  That must be noted.  But, regardless, I still saw them.  And we saw many good outcomes that I consider miraculous.  That definitely should also be noted.  But the bad outcomes haunt me still.

I didn’t work in obstetrics (OB), but we received so many OB cases while I worked there, the hospital decided to open their own OB ICU.  I even helped to train those nurses in the care of critical patients.  To some extent, a predictable number of things tend to happen to critically ill pregnant women, just because of the nature of things.  We generally saw hypertensive patients, commonly called toxemia.  And we saw some other more terrible things resulting from sepsis, infection in the blood stream, something that occurs with the peritonitis that follows a ruptured fallopian tube resulting from ectopic pregnancy.  We saw other pregnant women for other critical conditions, and I cared for patients and families as they worked through the decision-making process about what to do and what was ethically right to do.  These decisions do not come as light matters for either patient or doctor, and the outcomes are not always good, even when the most virtuous decisions are made.  Care is often delayed while people try to make the best decisions, and the women often suffer the consequences.  I recall vividly in images that I wish I could wipe from my mind of two different husbands, weeping at the foot of the bed of their wives who were comatose after valiant efforts were made to save their babies.  In both these cases, the babies died and the mothers would likely never regain consciousness.

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Physical Illness and Fatigue after Spiritual Abuse

I’ve had the honor of speaking and corresponding with many new and old friends of this blog recently, and nearly all of them have problems with fatigue and health issues. Though it is difficult to make any kind of assumptions about how many people who leave patriarchy in particular suffer with health problems like fatigue and auto-immune problems, PTSD researchers do know that this population suffers Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and that people with PTSD have higher incidence of certain types of stress associated health problems. This subject has been on my mind over the past few weeks for several reasons.

I have explored physical illness and fatigue after spiritual abuse on this blog in times past and also within the Epilogue of the soon to be released book, “Quivering Daughters” by Hillary McFarland. The topic is somewhat ubiquitous in the discussion of trauma, so I don’t think in terms of one definitive reference for the connection between health and emotion. In Hillary’s new book, I do quote the new and very strong research linking non-physical child abuse with two chronic health problems, but you’ll have to read the book to learn more! The subject is one that deserves more attention, and though I am not prepared to delve into it that deeply at the moment, I wanted to draw attention to something I noticed that addresses this topic.

Upon reviewing the information on Borderline Personality Disorder for posts on the (now renamed) Enmeshed for Jesus blog, I found a section in “Understanding the Borderline Mother” concerning stress related or somatic illness. The author, Christine Lawson, briefly addresses the subject and thought I would make note of it here while I was “in the neighborhood” in my mind and amongst my books.

Note that the Lawson wrote her original work before the advent of the technologies that now prove physiologically that physical illness is formally and strongly connected to covert abuse as well as the longitudinal research studies that we now rely upon for this information.

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