Charles Feng is an allergy and immunology physician.
The intensive care unit nurse was worried the COVID-19 vaccine would kill her.
In the past, just minutes after getting the influenza vaccine, she had hives, wheezing, and throat swelling. Her life-threatening reaction only resolved after an epinephrine injection and monitoring in the emergency room. She vowed never to get another vaccine.
With the arrival of the COVID-19 vaccine, she reconsidered her stance. Now she was in my clinic, …
When I first saw Jea-Hyoun, in a medical meet-cute straight out of a romantic comedy, she was being evaluated for thyroid cancer. I was an allergy/immunology fellow harried by a pile of paperwork. She was a patient, in the same building where she saw patients of her own as a psychiatry and family practice resident, preparing to see the specialist. We made awkward small talk in the hallway before she …
Though I owe a debt of gratitude to all of my internal medicine attendings, none of them can claim credit for getting me through the gulag of residency. That distinction, instead, belongs to Zubin Damania, alias ZdoggMD, an internist and purveyor of viral YouTube music videos.
I first became aware of Damania’s videos when a med school friend sent me a link to his online archives, resulting in one …
I want to tell you a story about dying that ended up being a story about living.
A few years ago, I was an eager-beaver third-year medical student, and relished the opportunity to finally work on the wards. One of my patients was Mr. Taylor, a middle-aged man with pancreatic cancer—a disease that, of course, carries a bleak prognosis. He was emaciated, …
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