Have you noticed yourself straining to hear people wearing masks? Me too. Every interaction I have these days feels exhausting. I worry about how hard this will be in the busy ER, and especially for my colleagues and friends with trouble hearing. Even without such hearing difficulties, lip reading is a critical part of speech processing …
The first time I had ever been present when a patient was in cardiac arrest, I was a medical student, spending a night in the emergency department of a small local hospital. An old woman was rushed in from home after she had fallen over at the dinner table; her heart had stopped – and maybe she had choked on something. It wasn’t clearly cardiogenic. But she was full code, …
A code in the time of COVID-19
I first became acquainted with Michael after another case manager I work with, a woman, reported the proprietor of the group home (sort of a boarding house, really), Miss Samantha, as she was known, and whom I knew slightly, said she wanted Michael out because of his sometimes bizarre behaviors, often frightening to her neighbors. Miss Samantha is a tall, white-haired woman of some dignity. Sort of Southern in her …
In social work, small actions make a big difference
One of the greatest health challenges in our lives is the phenomenon of burnout. It occurs when there is enough negative stress that persists over time. As many of us know, stress is an integral part of being human. It can be positive (an upcoming wedding or birth of a child) or negative (job loss or physical injury). At its core, stress is any physical, mental, or emotional factor, external or …
The connection between atrial fibrillation and burnout
An excerpt from Between Life and Death.
Harry’s request to exclude Susan, from this conversation about cancer diagnosis and options of treatment was quite unusual, especially given how close I knew the couple to be. However, since Susan’s gaze remained on the carpet, I had no choice …
Discussing end of the life care with a pilot
It’s mid-summer. Time for family vacations, camping trips, backyard barbeques with family and friends, all the great things we look forward to during those cold days of winter. However, where do most of us find ourselves right now? I’ll tell you where: In the clutches of COVID-19 and with no end in sight to its tyranny.
I’m a fairly well-educated individual and of sound mind and body (according to popular opinion), …
The loss of a paycheck is a major traumatic situation. The loss of life is worse.
This is the million-dollar question that I’ve been asked over and over again by distraught parents wanting to do right by their children.
Parents want to have their children stay home so they can keep them healthy and safe. At the same time, they are worried about the far-reaching consequences of them not being in school. School is not just about academics but also about social and emotional wellbeing. For some …
Should I send my child back to school? A letter to parents.
I held back my tears as I headed home that day from work. A sense of impending doom and fear of the future was clutching my heart, something like I have never experienced before. For the first time in my medical career, my mind was preoccupied with thoughts about my own safety and how it could be at stake. What had started off as a regular day at work, had …
What it’s like to be pregnant in a pandemic
A lifetime ago, when we first heard of a novel virus making the rounds in China, I was added to several physician groups on Facebook. The discussion surrounding the virus was academic; the distance made it easy to be objective, speculation on how severe it was, and how widely it would spread was casual and detached. Terrible what was happening in China. Those lockdown measures were so draconian. If only …
The virus takes and it takes. Physicians give and they give.
Walking into the COVID ward in the children’s hospital, those words seemed etched on an invisible wall, a wall that I wanted to choose to stay behind. It was a wall I could stay behind for the first couple months of the pandemic where multiple studies touted how children weren’t getting sick, and my hospital had seen very few mild cases of the virus in children manifesting from a fever …
“COVID doesn’t affect children.” You may want to rethink that.
I’m an obesity medicine specialist who is frustrated. I keep running into the same issue, and it’s time we start discussing the elephant in the room: the need we all have to show love and appreciation with food, especially sugar. It’s never been more problematic than it is right now. As our patients with obesity are sick and dying from COVID-19, we are honoring the front line workers caring for …
Stop honoring health care workers with sugary treats
Moderna’s stock price has continued to climb to record highs on the premise that their novel mRNA-based vaccine technology can take control of the spread of COVID-19. Since the beginning of January 2020 to the time of the writing of this article, the stock has increased by an astronomical 385 percent, based on preclinical and phase I data alone. Moderna, a vaccine-biotech company with no vaccines …
What are Moderna investors actually betting on?
As an oncologist, perhaps the hardest part I play is as witness. I am there to give a diagnosis that, more often than not, will alter someone’s life forever. For some, I see resignation—a sense that they’ve known something was wrong and that it’s what they thought they had. For others, I see an almost …
As an oncologist, this is the hardest role I play
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They say you only hurt the ones you love. In the age of COVID-19, this adage has, almost ironically, attained a new shade of truth. One-on-one contact is definitely a risk factor—but so is what social scientists call “group identities.”
Even in our highly individualistic society, it’s well-documented that people sort themselves into groups based on their individual identities, attitudes, values, and worldviews. These so-called “in-groups” might be as formal as a …
COVID-19 hurts the people closest to you: How group identities affect disease transmission
We’ve gotten used to a life of restricted menu options during this pandemic, an analogy that extends all the way to our treatment if we contract COVID-19. But there’s an item still on the list at most medical institutions, and if it strikes you as familiar, it should: It’s been around – and working – for more than a century.
Convalescent plasma therapy, in fact, is promising enough that it’s something …
Using plasma to fight COVID-19
Public health safety measures in the wake of COVID-19 have transformed health care into virtual medicine overnight. From psychiatry to surgery, all of the medical specialties have adapted technology-enabled virtual appointments. The support for health care providers has been pervasive in the past few weeks-from celebrity shout outs to presidential gratitude. It certainly is a daunting time to be a physician. As physicians remind themselves of their ethical duties enumerated …
The withdrawal of effective sexual offender treatment during COVID-19
As a nurse practitioner, I have the privilege of helping people achieve their health care goals. But in light of recent events surrounding social justice, I find that I am increasingly challenged in new ways. Ways that my training and likely other nursing or medical schools did not address. I have that uncomfortable feeling of being ill-prepared to address the ramifications of social justice on the health of my patients. …
Why clinicians should consider the power of prayer
It seems that adults need to be reminded and educated of the dangers life-threatening food allergies possess. If you think taunting people that have life-threatening food allergies occur only with very young children, you would be sadly mistaken. Case in point, comedian Jimmy Fallon’s in his recent sketch “Masculine Man Masks Commercial” states that his character’s masks “don’t have to make you look like a big sissy with a shellfish …
She was naked in her seclusion room — a padded cell — with her gown on the floor and drenched in her urine.
I was her nurse.
I gave her lithium.
She put the pill in her mouth and then spit it at me in my face. Then her tirade began:
“I’m Jesus. The FBI is watching us. The computer chip in my head said to kill, kill, kill you.
They’re watching me. They’re watching …
The genius within a schizophrenic mind
It’s scary. Like 9/11, we have a new reference point touching everyone on the planet: life before COVID-19 and life after. Regardless if you get it or don’t, the unknowns and secondary consequences are scary. Life before COVID was scary, too, minus the urgency.
Before COVID, we sensed the weight of living on a sick planet. We felt powerless to change the tide of forces affecting our lives for the worst. …
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