Sagas!

[delta_november]

I have always had a soft spot for the Icelandic Sagas, since I first read Egil's Saga in a stained-glass sunbeam in The Treehouse almost twenty years ago.  Yesterday, sitting in the ER, I read Kormak's Saga.  It does not disappoint, and I would suggest it to anyone looking to explore the roots of contemporary fiction

Comments

[probabilistic]

Interesting -- many of my socially conservative friends argue that no-fault divorce laws spelled the death of "traditional marriage" in the US. Curious where else they appear prior to modern Western civilization.

[delta_november]

I use the term "no-fault" a little flippantly. But essentially in the story a woman decides that the marriage isn't working out, and tells her husband "this is over" and leaves. This is generally accepted by the community. A little while later she sends her brother over to pick up her things (cash and jewelry) and this causes some friction with the ex

[probabilistic]

Yeah, by "traditional marriage" they're generally referring to something approximating the lifestyle of their grandparents' generation, which is pretty arbitrary. Personally I think the birth control pill had far more to do with the demise of "traditional" family structures than no-fault divorce did, but these discussions often ended in an "agree to disagree" situation.

[delta_november]

Of my four grandparents, two of them grew up in "broken homes". In one case the father abandoned the mother and child, and then re-married and had another family. In the other, the father came home from the First World War with shell-shock and drifted away. I don't know if legal divorces were obtained in either case, but the marriages were certainly over.

This is of course not a rigorous study of the whole generation, just a couple anecdotes connected to my family. But it makes me suspect that the Victorian and Edwardian ideals may not have been widely upheld.

[benicek]

Why are you in ER so often, dare I ask?

[delta_november]

My partner J suffers from recurring metabolic acidosis of undiagnosed origin. About once a month she will require 3-7 days of hospitalization with telemetry and IV potassium, magnesium and bicarbonate to get her blood chemistry under control. Then she's discharged until it happens again. Between episodes she's basically functional.

Outpatient investigation has been ongoing for more than a year, but it's a really odd case with no resolution yet.

[benicek]

That's strange and concerning. I assume some kind of renal problem has been their first avenue of investigation. I notice in my job that doctors will never say 'we don't know'. They just haven't found out yet.

[delta_november]

Yep, kidneys are obviously involved as they are supposed to maintain the electrolyte homeostasis, but nephrology can't see anything wrong with them. There's a host of other icky stuff, including GI bleeds and complete hearing loss, but the chain of causality is not clear.

All of the obvious things have been ruled out, so now we're just going through the "10 people in the world have this particular syndrome" one by one.