As a devoted runner, I find life lessons from this movement that help me get through difficult times.
Journey with me for a moment.
We have signed up for a distance running race. For some of us, this is familiar territory. For others who consider paying money to cover long distances on their own feet a ridiculous contractual agreement, just play along.
As we nervously approach the starting line, our race director tells …
COVID is a race with no finish
One year ago today, my hospital system admitted its first patient with COVID-19. It’s hard to believe that it’s already been twelve months. It simultaneously feels immensely long ago and like it was only yesterday; that what I know of medicine has changed forever and that nothing has changed.
This pandemic has certainly brought me new knowledge and new ways of practicing medicine. I have treated patients …
An anniversary: Reflecting on COVID-19 and combustion
Hypertensive disorders with onset during pregnancies are among the leading causes of maternal and infant mortality and morbidity in the U.S. and can have far-reaching consequences for the long-term health of the mother and child.
In Dr. Jerome Adams’ recent Call to Action to recognize and address hypertension control as a public health priority, the former Surgeon General referenced the success of health care …
Hypertension is killing pregnant mothers. Blood pressure monitoring can help.
“A scientific achievement can never have success on its own unless if it has acceptance in the social context by the masses. I think that the concerns brought forward by the vaccine-doubters cannot be dismissed as ignorance, and it is hard to convince people. As a physician, it is not uncommon that I see a patient become indecisive and anxious about various treatment decisions facing them. I don’t …
What this physician says to vaccine-doubters [PODCAST]
Acute COVID-19 infection ranges from no symptoms (asymptomatic) to life-threatening. What about long COVID (the symptoms occurring more than three weeks after infection, also known as post-acute COVID syndrome)? Could there be thousands of people with “mild” long COVID who don’t know it? Could there be legions of people with new low-energy levels being misdiagnosed as depressed, stressed, having a sleep disorder, or being labeled “lazy”? The inability to tolerate …
Could a glass of wine diagnose long COVID?
This has been a very difficult year. COVID-19 has rampaged the country, worked hospitals to their breaking point, torn families apart, and kept families apart. The grief seems never-ending.
At the beginning of 2020, we watched in horror at the destruction in Wuhan, China, and Italy. We could not fathom what was happening over there, with mandatory quarantines, over-filled hospitals, freezer trucks, and body bags because of insurmountable casualties. Global air …
Loved ones are hospitalized and alone during COVID
An excerpt from Recovery from Lyme Disease: The Integrative Medicine Guide to Diagnosing and Treating Tick-Borne Illness.
As I write this, I am sitting in a hospital room with my wife. She had the sudden onset of severe chest pain and neurological symptoms and was admitted through the emergency room.
The tests showed evidence of cardiac stress but gratefully no …
Our work as physicians and healers is to see the whole patient
I did not lose a loved one.
I did not lose a friend.
Yet, COVID has forever changed me in ways that I cannot even begin to rationalize.
I feel old — my body, my soul, my heart.
It has been one year since I have hugged my parents.
It has been one year since I have hugged my sisters.
It has been one year since I have hugged my nephews and nieces.
How many lost memories, …
I remain hopeful: a personal reflection of the pandemic
My whole life has been leaping from one goal to the next. As far back as I can remember, I always had goals. Later in life, after practicing for a while, academic and career goals shifted to financial goals. But goals nonetheless. I never gave myself a chance to not have any goals, to just chill. I regret it. Good things come to those who wait, right? Always planning for …
When your future steals your present
“The rapid change-over to telemedicine in March of 2020 brought predictable challenges to health care at large and substance use disorder treatment in particular: patients without the skill set to navigate HIPAA-compliant apps, phones with too little smarts to handle video conferencing, lack of connectivity in rural and economically depressed …
Addiction medicine during COVID-19 [PODCAST]
One of the best feelings medical students must have is the day they match into a residency training program. This day will end an era and starts another. During those few months before July 1st, all medical students go through this phase of mental transitioning from the medical student to the resident. This transitioning process varies in its depth and complexity depending on each student and their environment. Some take …
Congratulations, you matched! Now what?
The Washington Post published an interesting article in its weekly health section on March 2. 2021. The article had an impactful graphic using data from the Centers for Disease Control that showed the number of pediatric deaths due to influenza over the last four years.
Of course, this was a flu season and year unlike any other. In 2020, around mid-March, Americans became aware of a newly …
Influenza: a deadly risk in schools before COVID
In her February 11, 2021 press briefing, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki stated, “The president, vice president, secretary, and senators established the mutual understanding that America needs to build new infrastructure across urban and rural areas, and create millions of good-paying jobs in the process of supporting the country’s economic recovery in the months and years ahead.”
What we need by the end of 2021 is a mental health infrastructure …
We need a mental health infrastructure bill
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Our lives are stories, and we are the narrators. The stories we tell have an arc across our lives as the plot, characters, and climax unfold. These narrative arcs are expected, for the most part, to follow a linear path defined by time. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how time flows through life and how we measure our life in relation to time. We have no grasp of …
A new system for measuring the story of my life
I do not usually write on this subject. I avoid talking about it also. Not because I do not have what to say but rather because of numerous disturbing memories and experiences since childhood that I intentionally avoid remembering. Events of the last week involving TIME’S UP Healthcare pushed me to write this text.
I come from a society that normalized all forms of female abuse. From …
Did TIME’S UP Healthcare give false hope to health care workers?
In 2002, two Stanford dermatologists published a study in which they sent a questionnaire to a week’s worth of patients, asking them their preferences for how medical providers dress. The study covered relatively new ground. Two of the four references were the 1970s best-sellers, Dress for Success, and The Woman’s Dress for Success Book. The study also uncovered strong preferences. Patients preferred a white coat, dress …
Can science tell doctors what to wear?
There is fear in the air. Fear that the COVID pandemic may not get under control because the virus is mutating so fast. Fear that the vaccines may not be effective against these new variants. But fear should not be the driving force behind public health policy decisions. A measured analysis of facts and data is what is important.
With the WHO’s approval, the South African government …
When is it ethical to stop a vaccination program?
We swore an oath: “Primum non nocere” — First, do no harm. When pandemic stress began to bear down on our hospitals, we scrambled to manage the burden of volume and simultaneously mitigate the threat of contagion. In our war efforts, we donned our hazmat suits, and pleaded with everyone to do their part. We stopped most elective procedures and shut our doors to visitors, families, even volunteers. What we …
The pandemic plight of CHF: one center’s response
On February 18, Dr. Marty Makary published an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal which struck an unusually optimistic note as to the stage of the American COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Makary predicts that based on the current trajectory, COVID-19 will be mostly gone by April, allowing Americans to return to a post-COVID-19 normal life. He notes that in the last few weeks, we have seen …
A perspective on herd immunity for COVID-19
“While behavioral health integration (BHI) has been a long-standing conversation in collaborative care or health’s team-based approach, it hasn’t always been clearly defined and rarely means more than referring a patient in need to a specialist. The biggest shift over the past twenty years has simply been recognizing just how vital behavioral …
Using technology for behavioral health integration [PODCAST]
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