Electric Shock

Q: My wife has been treated for depression in a psychiatric hospital for over a month. She has shown a little sign of improvement on two different drugs for depression.Her psychiatrist has recommended electric shock treatment, but I have been unwilling to consent to such treatment because of the things I have read and heard about its side effects.How do you feel about the benefits and dangers of electric shock treatment?A: The use of electric shock (electroconvulsive treatment or ECT) has been limited by its undeserved poor reputation among the lay public who have the impression that it is dangerous and leads to brain damage.

The wind split one of our cherry trees in two, and since it was unlikely that the tree would survive, I cut it down and added it to a firewood pile, after I spent the better part of a morning getting our gasoline-powered chain saw to start and operate without stalling. There had to be a better way to saw trees and limbs, I thought. Then it occurred to me. Maybe I should try using an electric chain saw, because even though I was once dissatisfied with their power, it's been decades since I've used one, and saws have improved with time since they were first created by Perdix.

PRAGUE, Czech Republic -- The invisible hand of the market turns out to be no match for the strong arm of a cabbie, prompting the Czech Republic's free-market-worshiping economists to reconsider their year-old deregulation of taxi fares.One enterprising driver, according to reports, managed to charge his hapless passenger 8,500 crowns ($258) for a ride of less than a mile. Another drove up on the sidewalk and tried to run down a couple who complained of having been overcharged.Yet another furiously drove a passenger from his destination back to his point of departure when the passenger protested that the meter was running too fast.

The young theater ensembles around town haven't cornered the market on the edgy or the avant-garde. The Vagabond Players , more readily associated with mainstream (or at least near-mainstream) repertoire, is closing its 95th season with a decidedly offbeat item, "Abducting Diana," by Italian playwright Dario Fo, the 1997 Nobel Prize laureate for literature. It's a gutsy choice for the company, but the play, a combination of satire, farce and a dash of commedia dell'arte, seems to suffer in the translation.

A photographer was taken to Carroll County General Hospital after he apparently suffered an electric shock from his equipment at the Kmart store in Carrolltown Center in Eldersburg yesterday and fell against a wall.David Wilder, 50, refused treatment at the hospital for injuries suffered when he fell against a wall in the photo studio, a hospital spokeswoman said. The photo lab is a subcontractor of Kmart and Mr. Wilder is not an employee of the store, officials said.No one else was injured and the studio was closed until the cause of the incident could be determined.

Doctors were pursuing a textbook -- albeit, trial-and-error -- approach yesterday to restoring President Bush's normal heart rhythm, the last step of which could be delivering an electric shock to his chest if drugs fail to work, experts said.Shocking the heart is a low-risk procedure that doctors frequently elect to use when patients fail to respond to drug therapy, physicians said. And in most cases, they said, the technique works."In almost everybody like him who is in atrial fibrillation for the first time, [electric shock]

The last thing Jack Hubberman, 71, remembers is bending over to grab his luggage at Baltimore-Washington International Airport. His heart stopped. He collapsed. His wife, Jackie, screamed for help. US Airways flight attendant Judy Smith rushed over to help. When she learned that Hubberman had heart problems, she called for an automatic exterior defibrillator, tore open Hubberman's shirt and attached the machine's electrodes to his chest. She saved his life. "If they didn't have [the defibrillator]

The young theater ensembles around town haven't cornered the market on the edgy or the avant-garde. The Vagabond Players , more readily associated with mainstream (or at least near-mainstream) repertoire, is closing its 95th season with a decidedly offbeat item, "Abducting Diana," by Italian playwright Dario Fo, the 1997 Nobel Prize laureate for literature. It's a gutsy choice for the company, but the play, a combination of satire, farce and a dash of commedia dell'arte, seems to suffer in the translation.

The wind split one of our cherry trees in two, and since it was unlikely that the tree would survive, I cut it down and added it to a firewood pile, after I spent the better part of a morning getting our gasoline-powered chain saw to start and operate without stalling. There had to be a better way to saw trees and limbs, I thought. Then it occurred to me. Maybe I should try using an electric chain saw, because even though I was once dissatisfied with their power, it's been decades since I've used one, and saws have improved with time since they were first created by Perdix.

The last thing Jack Hubberman, 71, remembers is bending over to grab his luggage at Baltimore-Washington International Airport. His heart stopped. He collapsed. His wife, Jackie, screamed for help. US Airways flight attendant Judy Smith rushed over to help. When she learned that Hubberman had heart problems she called for an automatic exterior defibrillator, tore open Hubberman's shirt and attached the machine's electrodes to his chest. She saved his life. "If they didn't have [the defibrillator]

When Ellen Handler Spitz was 8 years old, her mother arranged for her visually attuned daughter to spend each Saturday in the studio of a local female sculptor. Though the child had access to modeling clay and tools, the sculptor left her alone. Side by side, each worked on her own projects. "I was allowed and even, as I realize now, expected to become completely absorbed in my work," Spitz writes in her new book, The Brightening Glance. When her mother arrived to pick her up at the end of each session, "her sudden appearance felt like an electric shock ... which I experienced rather like awakening from a daydream, when you cannot believe time has actually elapsed."

Raymond Louis Walston, who lost his heart to the Big Top as a child growing up in East Baltimore and spent the rest of his life as a magician and clown bringing smiles and laughs to children of all ages, died of lung cancer June 4 at Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care. He was 81 and had lived in Essex and earlier in Fort Howard. Mr. Walston, who was born in Baltimore and raised on North Potomac Street, was a graduate of Patterson Park High School. He served with the 80th Infantry in Europe during World War II, where he attained the rank of sergeant and was decorated with a Purple Heart.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Sometime during his imprisonment, maybe when he was hung naked with his arms tied behind him and guards were beating him, Salah Abdul-Kareem was as good as dead. This is known only because he is alive. He speaks softly, slowly, nervously. When he reaches for the most painful memories, his hands tremble as if a residual shock is passing through them. Sometimes when he talks he looks intently at a spot only he can see, as if viewing a film clip of the memory he is relaying.

The last thing Jack Hubberman, 71, remembers is bending over to grab his luggage at Baltimore-Washington International Airport. His heart stopped. He collapsed. His wife, Jackie, screamed for help. US Airways flight attendant Judy Smith rushed over to help. When she learned that Hubberman had heart problems she called for an automatic exterior defibrillator, tore open Hubberman's shirt and attached the machine's electrodes to his chest. She saved his life. "If they didn't have [the defibrillator]

The last thing Jack Hubberman, 71, remembers is bending over to grab his luggage at Baltimore-Washington International Airport. His heart stopped. He collapsed. His wife, Jackie, screamed for help. US Airways flight attendant Judy Smith rushed over to help. When she learned that Hubberman had heart problems, she called for an automatic exterior defibrillator, tore open Hubberman's shirt and attached the machine's electrodes to his chest. She saved his life. "If they didn't have [the defibrillator]

PRAGUE, Czech Republic -- The invisible hand of the market turns out to be no match for the strong arm of a cabbie, prompting the Czech Republic's free-market-worshiping economists to reconsider their year-old deregulation of taxi fares.One enterprising driver, according to reports, managed to charge his hapless passenger 8,500 crowns ($258) for a ride of less than a mile. Another drove up on the sidewalk and tried to run down a couple who complained of having been overcharged.Yet another furiously drove a passenger from his destination back to his point of departure when the passenger protested that the meter was running too fast.

ANGEL DUSTFaith No More(Slash/Reprise 26785)If what you know about Faith No More extends no further than hits like "Epic" or "Falling to Pieces," odds are that "Angel Dust," the group's third and latest album, will come as something of a shock. Sure, the album has its share of pop smarts, and does a nice job of selling the metallic majesty of "Everything's Ruined" or the rap-edged momentum of "Be Aggressive." But it's also full of all kinds of instrumental weirdness, from the semi-industrial grind at the start of "Malpractice" to the warped waltz that introduces "RV."

Raymond Louis Walston, who lost his heart to the Big Top as a child growing up in East Baltimore and spent the rest of his life as a magician and clown bringing smiles and laughs to children of all ages, died of lung cancer June 4 at Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care. He was 81 and had lived in Essex and earlier in Fort Howard. Mr. Walston, who was born in Baltimore and raised on North Potomac Street, was a graduate of Patterson Park High School. He served with the 80th Infantry in Europe during World War II, where he attained the rank of sergeant and was decorated with a Purple Heart.

A photographer was taken to Carroll County General Hospital after he apparently suffered an electric shock from his equipment at the Kmart store in Carrolltown Center in Eldersburg yesterday and fell against a wall.David Wilder, 50, refused treatment at the hospital for injuries suffered when he fell against a wall in the photo studio, a hospital spokeswoman said. The photo lab is a subcontractor of Kmart and Mr. Wilder is not an employee of the store, officials said.No one else was injured and the studio was closed until the cause of the incident could be determined.

DAY AFTER DAY, for 78 days, Ines Consuelo Murillo was tortured by a secret Honduran military intelligence unit called Battalion 316.Her captors tied the 24-year-old woman's hands and feet, hung her naked from the ceiling and beat her with their fists. They fondled her. They nearly drowned her. They clipped wires to her breasts and sent electricity surging through her body."It was so frightening the way my body would shake when they shocked me. They put rags in my throat so I would not scream," she said.