Andrea Hayes is a retired endocrinologist, author, and speaker whose work brings uncommon candor and humor to the realities of medicine, illness, and the human body. After nearly three decades in clinical practice, including years leading a high-volume endocrine and diabetes center, she now writes and speaks about health care, chronic disease, physician burnout, patient behavior, and the often-absurd intersection between science and daily life.
Diagnosed with type 1 diabetes as a teenager, Hayes offers a rare perspective from both sides of the exam room, as physician, patient, survivor, and storyteller. Her forthcoming memoir, Floodline: Blessings and Betrayals of a Life in Medicine, explores illness, faith, betrayal, resilience, and reinvention. She is also the author of Peach Cobbler Is Not a Fruit, a humorous essay collection drawn from the endocrine trenches.
She writes on Substack and shares updates on her website, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.
An excerpt from Peach Cobbler Is Not a Fruit.
Laughter is good medicine. I don’t merely believe that. I have prescribed it, inhaled it, survived by it, and, on more than one occasion, snorted it through my nose at profoundly inappropriate moments.
Medicine is serious business. Patients entrust their bodies, fears, secrets, and occasionally their entire futures to the care and judgment of their physicians. The work demands rational thought, scientific …
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What does humor in medicine actually do to the body?
I did not expect the red-carpet treatment. My illness came on abruptly, without a prodrome and without the courtesy of localizing symptoms, no cough, dysuria, or obvious source of infection.
One weekday morning, after stepping out of a hot shower, I collapsed onto the bathroom tile like a heap of wet seaweed. I attributed it to overwork, dehydration, and the predictable consequences of caring for everyone except myself. By the time …
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The physician as patient nobody wanted to listen to
For nearly three decades, I lived inside the machinery of medicine.
As a busy endocrinologist, my days revolved around blood sugars, thyroid glands, hormones, weight, lab results, prescription refills, insurance denials, prior authorizations, and the occasional body part someone believed had betrayed them. My schedule was full before I even sat down. There were charts to sign, labs to review, patients to see, and paperwork quietly reproducing in every corner.
Medicine is …
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From endocrinologist to writer: a doctor’s second act
When Alexander Zverev lost to Taylor Fritz in the Halle semifinal tennis tournament, he didn’t blame his pancreas. He did the professional thing: He admitted Fritz outplayed him. But Zverev also let slip a detail that deserves more than a post-match shrug. Before the match, his glucose sensor decided to go rogue. Based on its creative interpretation of his blood sugar, Zverev injected a dose of insulin better suited for …
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Type 1 diabetes and the tennis match you cannot see
