Conditions and Diseases

Physicians writing on KevinMD about the diseases they treat and the people who have them: cancer and its screening arguments, pain and the drugs that treat it, diabetes and the obesity argument, mental illness and who gets treated for it, and the decisions at the end of a life. Five maintained records draw on this archive: Cancer: what physicians say, in their own words, Opioids: what physicians and pain patients say, in their own words, End of life: what physicians say, in their own words, Diabetes and obesity: what physicians say, in their own words, and Mental health: what psychiatrists and physicians say, in their own words.

Preventing COVID-19 transmission and the art and science of barriers

Lawrence Hurwitz, MD

April 25, 2020

“Good fences make good neighbors” is a memorable and salient line from Robert Frost’s poem, “Mending Walls.” While the context of its meaning is a plea for the importance of privacy, it is a useful phrase for the COVID-19 pandemic as we all try social distancing as our physical defense and protective barrier from the Coronavirus. Six feet away from one another and swathed with a nose and face-covering mask …

When an army has insufficient personal protective equipment, they don’t go in the line of fire

Anca Matei, MD

Conditions and Diseases

April 25, 2020

The work of health care workers is not luxurious in the best of times. It is always risky and physically and mentally demanding. In a pandemic, it is outright dangerous. Our front liners during COVID-19 will suffer unimaginable physical and mental harm as they bravely respond to this health crisis. The casualties of COVID-19 will include not only those who get sick and die, but also those who watch them …

The hidden ventilators in America

Ian M. Kahane, MD

Conditions and Diseases

April 25, 2020

Your town has more than enough ventilators if you know where to find them. Tens to hundreds of vents are sitting in almost every neighborhood in America, but are being utilized incorrectly. Throughout the nation, there are facilities known as LTACs, which stands for long term acute care facility. These facilities are utilized for a broad array of patient care, but almost everyone falls into three categories: the first patient …

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The hidden ventilators in America

How do you grieve when you are still mourning?

Julie B. Trivedi, MD

Conditions and Diseases

April 24, 2020

Moving so quickly.

Round and round.

Head turning, trying to keep track.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5 … faster and faster

Losing count.

My head spins.

A doctor, Indian, like me.

A friend, my age.

A mother, could be my own.

No time to grieve.

I kept a list of your names. So I could continue to honor you, your memory, when life slowed down just enough so that my heart had time to process.

The memory is clear. I was …

A physician mother embraces the power of “and” during the pandemic

Rachel E. Hines, MD

Conditions and Diseases

April 24, 2020

I struggle for words to describe life in the season of COVID-19. Depending on the day, I need at least a few adjectives: “peculiar,” “fine, all things considered,” “terrifying.” “Joyous” and “anxious” certainly make odd bedfellows in my brain.

As a mother and physician living this new reality, I’ve been extra thankful for Irene, who taught me the power of “and.” Irene is a clinical psychologist who was tasked with helping …

A hidden alcohol problem: a social worker’s story

Raymond Abbott

Conditions and Diseases

April 24, 2020

Philomena was the youngest child in a large Irish family. She grew up in a place called Kilquane, about ten miles from Dingle town in the Republic of Ireland. At about age three or four, she contracted measles, which settled in one eye, and that eye had to be surgically removed. That surgery was a botch job, and the artificial eye she was given never fit properly. All of this …

Can COVID-19 be tragically beautiful?

Lydia Boyette, DO, MBA

Conditions and Diseases

April 24, 2020

I pondered this question as I reminisced over the past few weeks. I grappled with these thoughts almost every moment as I have witnessed the world respond to this pandemic, the novel coronavirus: COVID-19.

After my shift ended during my trek from the hospital to the parking lot, I called my parents. On Leap Day, I had this conversation.

“Lyd (my nickname that …

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Can COVID-19 be tragically beautiful?

Conversations with 3 COVID-19 survivors

Earl Stewart, Jr., MD

Conditions and Diseases

April 24, 2020

The ability to exam patients nowadays is supremely limited due to virtual conferencing platforms being used more and more to see patients in our office. My office is now different. We hear so much about death on social media sites, the news, and in readable periodicals that we forget that some of our patients who contracted the novel coronavirus live. Not only do they live, but they also survive. And …

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Conversations with 3 COVID-19 survivors

Why I feel grateful to be a physician today

Blake McKinney, MD

Conditions and Diseases

April 23, 2020

Doctors today can help more people, and prevent the spread of disease more effectively through communication, than we ever could by seeing patients one-at-a-time in person. I have realized that instant human connection through technology makes us more powerful and faster than a virus.

I began my career as a physician in the pre-iPhone era. The only way for the sick to seek medical advice was to …

Every time you congregate with someone from outside of your home, you are potentially responsible for deaths

Nina Shapiro, MD

Conditions and Diseases

April 23, 2020

My husband and I have always relished being in the thick of it, “in the trenches,” we would say, at our hospital. He is a head and neck cancer surgeon, and I am a pediatric otolaryngologist (ear, nose, and throat specialist for children). Working at an academic tertiary/quaternary care center in a major city, with over five decades of experience combined under our belts, we feel as though we’ve nearly …

We need to stop making this public health emergency political

Mackenzie Carlson and Jane Salutz

Conditions and Diseases

April 23, 2020

What a bag of mixed emotions these last few months have been in the face of COVID-19. I’ve watched my community doubt the seriousness of COVID as it reached the U.S., been pulled from my clinical rotations and stood in solidarity with other medical students as we brainstorm how to serve our community in this trying time, celebrated with my colleagues as we called for social distancing and effectively flattened …

It’s time to honor those who died from COVID-19 by sharing their stories

Susan Shannon, RN

Conditions and Diseases

April 23, 2020

As of this moment, 40,265 Americans have died. They loved their families and friends. They had hopes and dreams. They were moms and dads, daughters and sons, grandmas, and grandpas. They meant something to somebody. Their deaths are barely acknowledged by anyone. They exist as statistics.

This is a frightening time we live in. We are in survival mode. Our world has become very small. We cling to our immediate family. …

If we return to normal in medicine, have we lost the lesson of the pandemic?

Stephanie Wellington, MD

Conditions and Diseases

April 23, 2020

My energy has been bottled up. It’s not just over the past few weeks during this pandemic. It has been bottled up and backlogged in some areas of my life for decades.

The recent turn of life events has just made it even more glaring and evident to me. It forced and demanded that I do something about it.

The traffic jam of my energy manifested itself in procrastination and putting things …

Physicians just want respect in the time of COVID-19

Rebecca Elia, MD

Conditions and Diseases

April 23, 2020

After speaking, working, and coaching with hundreds of physician moms, guess what their #1 request at work is. Guess. A pay raise? More vacation time? Adequate maternity leave? Any maternity leave? Hint: Now, for the first time in my many decades as a physician, I am hearing the same request from white male physicians who have long since completed their training.

Another hint: Look at the title. No, nothing about me …

How small acts of kindness can inspire others during the pandemic

Sonia Qadir, MD

Conditions and Diseases

April 23, 2020

When the pandemic hit New York, I was lucky to have enough PPE to prepare myself, and my staff, for what was to come. After the 2014 Ebola scare, I stocked up on N95 masks, gowns, gloves, and face shields; I knew that should anything with even the slightest semblance to that crisis occur once more, I needed to be prepared. When the owner of Acutis Labs informed me that …

A Los Angeles response to the pandemic

Alexander Connelly, MD

Conditions and Diseases

April 23, 2020

Introduction

We are doctors. We were trained to heal, to bring relief, and on occasion, to guide patients and families through end-of-life challenges. Unfortunately, with the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, places such as Italy have had to suffer from needing to make life-and-death decisions for patients simply due to insufficient resources. In Los Angeles, it seems that we are on-track with preparation for the COVID-19 surge …

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A Los Angeles response to the pandemic

Capitalizing on what we know from other pandemics, with a little help from Major League Baseball

Cory Michael, MD

Conditions and Diseases

April 23, 2020

Before the age of modern understanding and drug development, HIV sparked fear, anxiety, and panic throughout the country. My eighth-grade science teacher was the first to teach me about HIV, a virus that makes so many mistakes in replicating itself that it confuses the host’s immune system with its mutations. So fascinated by this bizarre product of biology, I knew then that I wanted to study viruses. I read all …

A pediatrician’s tips to help you and your family during the coronavirus pandemic

Johanna Vidal Phelan, MD, MBA

Conditions and Diseases

April 22, 2020

The coronavirus has certainly served to manifest our shared humanity and vulnerability. As parents, many of us are facing substantial challenges in providing for our families, as we struggle to help our children with their schoolwork, all the while hoping we can return to some semblance of normalcy soon. To continue to provide the security and love our children need in order to thrive in our homes, we must also …

Going to McDonald’s in the coronavirus era

Raymond Abbott

Conditions and Diseases

April 22, 2020

In the coronavirus era, I go most days to our neighborhood McDonald’s, where I purchase a cup of coffee and take it outside to a patio area where I sit and eat peanut butter crackers which I carry with me.

Today as I stood in a short line inside the facility, with persons standing the approved distance from one another, of course, an older man came up behind me and tapped …

The Hippocratic Oath versus my oath as a mother

Poonam Merai, MD

Conditions and Diseases

April 21, 2020

I recited the Hippocratic Oath many years ago as I donned my new white coat and made a commitment to serve humanity through the practice of medicine. That zeal to help others continued through a vigorous residency and fellowship. As life was put on hold to pursue that dream of becoming a doctor, the brakes were lifted after training as I got married and had two children. Soon, instead of …

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