The Florida Masochist

Sick of your husband?

Then you could have what psychologists in Japan term RHS. RHS stands for retired Husband Syndrome. My wife often suffers from this, usually if I spend too much time on the computer!

Open Post- Jo's Cafe

TOKYO -- Sakura Terakawa, 63, describes her four decades of married life in a small urban apartment as a gradual transition from wife to mother to servant.

Communication with her husband started with love letters and wooing words under pink cherry blossoms. It devolved over time, she said, into mostly demands for his evening meals and nitpicking over the quality of her housework.

So when he came home one afternoon three years ago, beaming, and announced he was ready to retire, Terakawa despaired."

'This is it,' I remember thinking. 'I am going to have to divorce him now,' " Terakawa recalled. "It was bad enough that I had to wait on him when he came home from work. But having him around the house all the time was more than I could possibly bear."

Concerned about her financial future if she divorced, Terakawa stuck with their marriage -- only to become one of an extraordinary number of Japanese women stricken with a disorder that experts here have recently begun diagnosing as retired husband syndrome, or RHS.

Terakawa developed stomach ulcers, her speech began to slur and rashes broke out around her eyes. When doctors discovered polyps in her throat but could find no medical reason for her sudden burst of ailments, she was referred to a psychiatrist, who diagnosed stress-related RHS.

Terakawa began receiving therapy from Nobuo Kurokawa, a physician who is one of Japan's leading RHS experts. Kurokawa coined the term in a presentation to the Japanese Society of Psychosomatic Medicine in 1991.

Kurokawa estimates that as many as 60 percent of the wives of retired men may suffer from RHS.

Hasn't a clue

Don't you like forecasters? They always predict the worst and they are almost always wrong. Then if you think about it, the media only publishes the most dire predictions or news. Just look at New Orleans.

Here we have UN health official predicting as many as 150 million people dying from Asian Bird flu. The low number this official predicts is 5 million. The low number is scary if accurate. Still I tend to agree with James Joyner, this UN official hasn't a clue.

Friday Special- Cafe Oregano

A new flu pandemic could happen at any time and kill between 5-150 million people, a UN health official warned.

David Nabarro, who is charged with co-ordinating responses to bird flu, said a mutation of the virus affecting Asia could trigger new outbreaks.

"The consequences in terms of human life when the pandemic does start are going to be extraordinary and very damaging," Dr Nabarro told the BBC.

"It's like a combination of global warming and HIV/Aids 10 times faster than it's running at the moment," Dr Nabarro told the BBC.

The UN's new co-ordinator for avian and human influenza said the likelihood that the Asian virus could mutate and jump to humans was high.

Because it has moved to wild migratory birds there is a possibility "that the first outbreak could happen even in Africa or in the Middle East", he warned.

The comments came as agriculture ministers from the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) endorsed a three-year plan to combat the spread of the virus, and pledged $2m to fund research and training.