Conditions

Couples counseling: Understanding conflict and building intimacy

Conditions
May 25, 2024

Situations that trigger a call for assistance with couples counseling are generally described as a need for improved communication, chronic conflict, lack of physical or emotional intimacy, or a desire to better understand the impacts of past trauma. Therapeutic work can evolve into tackling more specific long-standing disappointments in emotional and physical intimacy. Disconnection is often exacerbated incrementally by increased responsibility with children, aging parents, and cultural differences, among other …

Read more…

Eye dryness, insomnia, and more: hidden signs you’re in perimenopause

Conditions
May 24, 2024

I am 47 years old and was today years old when I realized I have been going through perimenopause for the last four years. It is only with a retrospective lens that I can review my last four years and pick up intermittent symptoms or even just mild nuisance-level symptoms that I can say are likely from perimenopause.

What is perimenopause? Perimenopause is the transition stage before reaching menopause, which is …

Read more…

Pain management for Black patients and painful realities

Conditions
May 23, 2024

This piece is inspired by my recent patient encounter. Within the past week, I received a call from the ER to admit a 29-year-old African-American female whom, for the sake of this essay, I will call Keisha. Keisha presented with severe lower abdominal pain and was found to be in hypertensive crisis. Her systolic blood pressure consistently was in the upper 200s. It turned out that the young lady suffered …

Read more…

Healthy hierarchy for patient safety, experience, and staff wellbeing

Conditions
May 20, 2024

The hierarchy must be healthy to achieve critical outcomes in patient safety, patient experience, workforce health and wellbeing, and cost-effectiveness.

In a healthy hierarchy, staff must have the right skills, education, and experience to direct and carry out clinical and care-related tasks. Clear lines of communication, roles and responsibilities, policies and protocols, and scope of practice are all important. We can think of such things in terms of the structure. We …

Read more…

The first time I walked again after a spinal cord injury

Conditions
May 19, 2024

Once upon a time, I’d imagined myself the Lone Ranger physician, self-sufficient and incapable of weakness, and when I had my spinal cord injury in 2008, I really felt alone, in the negative spiral of a victim mindset, my own worst enemy and in a dark space where my idea of myself felt entirely lost.

Then, one day, in December 2009, I heard about a center for spinal cord injury recovery …

Read more…

Secret support for this family caregiver  

Conditions
May 19, 2024

Last month, while spring cleaning my home-based office, I faced off with a bookshelf full of past writing journals.

Get rid of them (I coaxed myself). Whatever you wrote here is history now.

My inner packrat resisted. Couldn’t I just box them up and move them to the basement to join all those other journals that, together, chronicle my three-plus decades of living in the United States?

One gray-covered notebook with pink post-it …

Read more…

Breaking the stigma with science

Conditions
May 18, 2024

Oxford Dictionary defines stigma as “a mark of disgrace associated with a particular circumstance, quality, or person.” In other words, it’s a state of being in shame. One of the most influential thought leaders in shame is Brene Brown. She describes shame as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging. We feel like something we have experienced, done, …

Read more…

Autoimmune disease? You’re more likely to get heart disease. Here’s why.

Conditions
May 13, 2024

The prevalence of coronary artery disease (CAD) and stroke is increased in patients with chronic inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA) or systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). These are also known as IMID: immune-mediated inflammatory diseases. Rheumatic IMIDs, including rheumatoid and osteoarthritis, are associated with multiple cardiovascular issues with an enhanced cardiovascular risk, including premature coronary artery disease. Lupus can also increase coronary artery disease because of the elevated chronic …

Read more…

Overcoming disparity in access to uterine artery embolization

Conditions
May 12, 2024

Uterine fibroids are a common condition that affects up to 7 in 10 women. While some fibroid patients live with the condition without serious issues, many suffer from disruptive symptoms, such as heavy menstrual bleeding, pelvic pain, and infertility, which make it difficult for them to go about their daily lives.

Treatment options are broad and include medical management, hysterectomy, myomectomy, uterine artery embolization (UAE), endometrial ablation, and magnetic resonance-guided focused …

Read more…

Eating our way to the next pandemic

Conditions
May 12, 2024

The Texas Department of State Health Services reported the first case of H5N1 avian influenza in a human who contracted the virus not from a bird but from an infected dairy cow. The next pandemic could be around the corner, and the food we choose to purchase (or not to purchase) is playing a role in its development.

As we saw with the COVID-19 pandemic, viruses can undergo mutations rapidly, …

Read more…

Long COVID and your brain: the effect of virus and vaccines

Conditions
May 12, 2024

A bunch of symptoms, which may persist many months or even years after an acute COVID infection has cleared, have been described in the medical literature with increasing frequency since the onset of the pandemic. This constellation of findings has been dubbed “long COVID.” Long COVID’s effects on the brain, in particular, have certainly been in the news, and it’s also been popping up in the medical literature. So, what’s …

Read more…

The dichotomy of patient health literacy

Conditions
May 11, 2024

“You sure know a lot about your condition.”

Many patients with long-term illnesses have heard this. When it comes from a medical professional, it’s never a compliment. It’s a statement that is usually, at best, laced with disapproval.

The thing is, patients like me, who have long-term complex conditions, are encouraged to know a lot. As someone with CVID and other issues, I’ve attended seminars and patient Q&As with immunologists. There’s a …

Read more…

Growing up with diabetes

Conditions
May 9, 2024

An excerpt from Sugar Free.

“What do you want to do?” Ginny said.

“Chinese jump rope.”

“Tilly, you always want to play Chinese jump rope,” Renée said.

“So?” Tilly said.

Renée didn’t have an answer to that.

They let Tilly go first. Renée and Ginny faced each other, put the large elastic loop that was the jump rope around their ankles, and backed up until it was taut.

“What happened to you?” Tilly said to Ginny. …

Read more…

ADVERTISEMENT

Health care in turmoil: costs, shortages, and pandemic strains

Conditions
May 8, 2024

Health care in the United States is in a state of turmoil. Many Americans are struggling to pay for health care. Even if they have health insurance, many have to pay high out-of-pocket copayments and, in the end, feel that what they do pay for is not worth the cost.

As a result of the COVID pandemic, many health care workers faced mounting mental health crises from burnout, physical and mental …

Read more…

Mental health treatment plan goals: Setting providers and patients up for success

Conditions
May 7, 2024

Treatment plans are crucial to a behavioral health practice as they can help improve client outcomes. Setting mental health treatment plan goals and objectives is a crucial aspect of the process, and providers and their clients need to work together in identifying long-term therapy goals. They should also communicate openly about the objectives used to achieve these goals.

The concept of SMART goals can be valuable here. SMART stands for Specific, …

Read more…

Virtual rehabilitation of central sensitization syndromes

Conditions
May 7, 2024

Modern medicine often fails to effectively manage complex chronic conditions. Physicians are often constrained by tightly packed clinic schedules, leaving only brief windows of time for each patient encounter. While this setup may allow for basic diagnosis and treatment planning, there is scarcely enough time for comprehensive patient education, let alone providing the necessary support, guidance, and empowerment that complex patients need.

Fortunately, the post-pandemic surge in telemedicine has brought fresh …

Read more…

Science supports it and patients want it: Bringing whole-person care to cancer treatment

Conditions
May 1, 2024

Patients, as the primary stakeholders in their own well-being, are increasingly showing a profound interest in holistic approaches to cancer care that extend beyond traditional medical treatments. Growing evidence supports this interest, showing that some whole-person and integrative approaches can improve quality of life and survival outcomes. Oncologists’ attitudes are shifting in the same direction, though with less urgency than our patients’.

We recently conducted parallel surveys of oncologists …

Read more…

Empowering patients to discuss sexual health

Conditions
April 30, 2024

I’m sure you can picture it. You’re sitting in an exam room wearing a paper gown, waiting for your health care provider to walk in the room. There are a few colorful posters on the wall about flu season, health screenings, and a discount prescription program available to patients. But all you can think about is the conversation you’re about to have. Will they bring it up? Will you ask? …

Read more…

From doctor to patient: my Sjogren’s journey and a challenge to colleagues

Conditions
April 28, 2024

As physicians, we are trained to dissect symptoms and to hunt for a diagnosis. But my own journey with Sjogren’s, like my patients’, wasn’t a textbook case. It was a puzzle with pieces scattered over decades, ignored or dismissed at each turn, including by myself.

There’s the college student, fearing the agony a simple meal might bring, never dreaming of asking why. The med student, convinced of an impending heart attack, …

Read more…

129
pages