It might seem odd to write about what high-weight patients would like when they meet with their doctors. Don’t they want what every patient wants? The answer is yes, but the fact is, they often don’t get it due to implicit anti-fat bias among health professionals.
In my 30-plus years of practice as an eating disorders therapist, I’ve heard the same laments from high-weight clients: Doctors only want to talk about …
A patient, let’s call him Jay, came to me refusing a leg amputation. He had open sores that were necrotic, foul-smelling as if he had been neglected for a long time. At his consultation, he fought with every cell of his being, refusing to lose his leg as his uncle did. He wanted a second opinion on whether or not his foot could be saved.
Traditional insurance-based medicine has …
“If your shoulder were really injured, that maneuver would make you scream in pain,” he told me confidently.
My husband and I recently established care with a new family doctor. I was frightened and scarred from a long history of medical gaslighting that still tightens my throat whenever I meet a new physician.
Will this doctor believe me? Will he understand?
Years of dismissal made me wary of a new start, but we …
Five days before this story begins, where everything is upside down, and the end is the beginning.
Me, standing in my PICU, slowly approaching that cradle, then removing the medication, one by one, turning off the syringe pumps. Saying out loud the number of milliliters passed, where that line is trapped, that little division between the professional and me, the person.
Where I stopped being a doctor and became a woman holding …
There are many topics on which I cannot claim to be an expert. I cannot solve the issue of gun violence, I don’t know what will “fix” the current societal crises, and I have no idea what will happen in the future regarding climate change.
There is one topic that seems to be coming up with more frequency and regularity, and I am qualified to speak on that. The shortage of …
He was a tall, healthy psychiatric technician, experienced in his line of work. He was a CNA but wanted more. He wanted to help heal the troubled, forgotten, and neglected — behavioral health was his niche.
He would lead the way with therapy sessions in this group every day. This was Intensive management: the intermittent home for the paranoid schizophrenics, bipolar, and MDD.
They came in all shapes and sizes — wealthy, …
In a published statement in JAMA Network on May 24/31, 2022, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force found that there was insufficient evidence for screening for primary open-angle glaucoma in adults. They could not find a way to balance harms versus benefits for screening in general. But is this reasoning faulty?
It is well known that Black and Hispanic populations suffer a greater incidence and severity of glaucoma, …
One day, working as a floater PT, I walked into the rehab gym, and every single therapist looked at me with the same pitying expression. The rehab manager took me into her office.
“I’m so sorry to put you in this position. One of your new patients today is a really large man. His BMI is 103. It took 12 people to move him from the stretcher into the bed last …
An excerpt from The Paper Tiger Syndrome: How to Liberate Yourself from the Illusion of Fear.
Your Original Blueprint is the part of you that knows abundance is your natural state. It’s the inner voice, which says, I am full. I am satiated. I am content. I am peaceful. …
Why does one person respond favorably to lung cancer treatment while another does not?
The answer lies in their DNA.
Just 20 years ago, lung cancer was broadly categorized into two groups: non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and small cell lung cancer (SCLC). Relatively recently, the treatment of NSCLC shifted from chemotherapy as a single treatment option to treatment with precision medicine, which is positively impacting survival rates.
Facts combat fear
It’s hard to believe the first COVID-19 vaccine was administered in the U.S. only a year and a half ago. Like many others, I welcomed the COVID-19 vaccine as a triumph of global cooperation that leveraged decades of research and a beacon of hope that life could eventually return to normal. Yet I was so surprised the first time a pregnant patient told me …
I cry often enough that my kids almost gleefully expect it, checking me for tears during movies or shows, shaking their heads in mock dismay when they see that their prediction is correct. I’ve cried many times at home, watching screens, reading books, talking on the phone, and at work, where I am a doctor who cannot always suppress my emotions. And I’ve cried in front of health care providers …
“I don’t want to be alive anymore.”
My friend Margot was despondent. Her lips quivered. Her eyes, normally the shape of almonds, folded themselves into little triangles when she cried. This kind and gentle woman of 62 years – my neighbor – was undeniably at her lowest point. I was sharing a couch with her during my junior year of college as her composure crumpled before me.
I first met Margot when …
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Recognizing accomplishments and a ticket to residency: That was Match Day. But now, at the doorstep of the next challenge, you’d better take a hard look at your most important personal relationship.
That is, if you want to keep your good thing together. Because if you think residency is going to be the start of easy, no-maintenance times for you and your partner, maybe you need to go back to medical …
Maybe we need to educate upper management — those multi-million-dollar hospitals with multi-million dollars per year salaried CEOs and board members with their financial perks — that health care professionals and nurses during “Health Care Worker/Nurse Week” in May of each year are no longer in the second grade.
Maybe we need to remind “them” that we are college-educated health care professionals with degrees, like ADNs, BSN, MSNs, RNs, LPNs, educators, …
The landscape of medicine and health care is constantly changing. With the integration of electronic medical records (EMR) and other technological advances, physicians and health care providers must be much more adaptable than ever before and possess unprecedented levels of technical literacy in the field.
The modernization of health care has been a driver of burnout, defined as “the constellation of symptoms that occur when your energy account …
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I used to spend most of my day listening.
As a high school counselor, I encouraged teenagers to talk. Feeling stressed, they said, is their automatic response to demanding teachers, parents’ high expectations, and the drama of shifting friendship alliances.
Daily dilemmas and problems affect everyone: the terrified boy who just heard rumors he was going to be jumped after school, the teary-eyed girl whose teacher embarrassed her in front of the …
In a viral video shared on Twitter in 2021, we see a line of women waiting to board a flight from Santo Domingo to Atlanta. Airline staff in safety vests stand around the women, all of whom are sitting—in wheelchairs. These women had recently undergone the popular Brazilian butt lift or “BBL” surgery, where fat is transferred from one part of the body to the buttocks, despite …
When Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa acquired the company that makes Lovot, a pet-sized robot for emotional support, it spoke about more than a financial investment in robotics. The news was tied to love, companionship, and healing. It also revealed the global loneliness and social isolation pandemic. The use of assistive robots is gaining popularity in Japan and China to deal with the caregiver shortage because social isolation is …
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In 2022, you might have never envisioned that the United States of America would be among other countries struggling to feed its babies. As of the first week of May, more than 40 percent of formula brands are out of stock, and many families are desperately searching high and low, near and far, to find substitute options. In the background of this chaos, I cannot help but consider how we …
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