Carmen Fong is a colorectal surgeon.
A patient came to see me recently (all my stories start like this: “A patient walked into the room…,” akin to “A guy walked into a bar…”), and she was so embarrassed to be there. That’s not uncommon for me. What was unusual was that she refused to talk about her bowel habits. She couldn’t say what her symptoms were or what her poop looked like. To her, it was …
There’s a patient who comes to see me every week. Every time we part ways, I say, “OK, Susan (name changed)! See you in a month!” But inevitably, she’ll call on a morning when she knows I’m in the office, and my staff will fit her in. She likes to tell me about what she did with her granddaughter that week. She doesn’t have anything terribly wrong with her; she …
She’s the reason I pee when I sneeze. She’s the reason I fart when I walk. And yet, I would give birth to my daughter again, a thousand times over. And that, I think, is the crux of the cross we bear as mothers — bearing children and, specifically, bearing down.
As a resident, I attended the Pelvic Floor Symposiums held by my institution. They were fascinating discussions led by …
I always said yes, taking on numerous tasks and roles, but now I question the value of unpaid work in my career trajectory as a colorectal surgeon. I always said yes. That’s what you’re supposed to do, right? Always say yes because you don’t know which opportunity will be “the one” that launches your career into orbit. So I said yes to organizing the lunch orders when the drug reps …
“Man is a dupeable animal. Quacks in medicine, quacks in religion, and quacks in politics know this, and act upon that knowledge. There is scarcely anyone who may not, like a trout, be taken by tickling…there is scarcely a disease for which a charm has not been given.”
– Thomas J. Pettigrew
As a surgeon, when I routinely went to the OR, I had a ritual. I would …
Since before the COVID-19 pandemic, anecdotal evidence and small survey-based studies show that women were leaving academic medicine in droves and were not returning— up to 40 percent of women leave medicine or go to a part-time position within six years of finishing residency. One landmark study pointed out the rarity of women in leadership positions— thirty-five years ago, less than 11 percent of women faculty were …
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