Would you choose heaven over hospital?

Conditions
June 3, 2016

In the dark lecture room, I watched the neurologist’s shadow flicker across the only source of light — a projection of the New York City subway map. He pointed at Times Square station. If the subway system were a brainstem, then Times Square would be the pons, transporting vital signals like breathing, speaking, and swallowing.

He likened the station’s abrupt destruction to a stroke producing locked-in syndrome. Writer Jean-Dominique Bauby describes …

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Would you choose heaven over hospital?

Slowly, slowly

Physician
August 11, 2015

“What is the meaning of life?”

A perfectly reasonable question, albeit a strange one considering that I was in the third grade, it was recess time, and I was having a philosophical conversation about death with a grasshopper I had just caught.

Ever since I could remember, I was fascinated by death. But my life was characterized more by loss than by death. When I was three, there were no funeral processions …

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Slowly, slowly

Where will you find happiness now?

Physician
July 28, 2015

Mid-November, and Christmas music is already blaring from speakers camouflaged in silver holiday tinsel. Frank Sinatra’s croons reverberate throughout the barren expanse that is Somerset Mall at 8 a.m. “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas…” It’s raining outside. I begin to laugh and try to explain the apparent irony to my grandmother, but my attempt gets lost in translation. My Chinese is poor. Her English, poorer. …

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Where will you find happiness now?

Doctors should pay more attention to their kinky patients. Here’s why.

Conditions
March 3, 2015

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On Valentine’s Day weekend last year I found myself at Paddles, the local dungeon in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood, for the first time. I was perched at the alcohol-free bar when a man politely introduced himself as a human carpet. He asked that I tread on him and lay on the floor to demonstrate. A professional dominatrix-in-training stepped onto his …

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Doctors should pay more attention to their kinky patients. Here’s why.

Why you should protest the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown

Policy
December 9, 2014

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In the pediatrics playroom, the medical team and I, a medical student, hunkered down in child-sized chairs to review patient progress notes. A television screen nearby diverted my attention. On CNN, video of protesters alternated with Eric Garner’s final moments. The television was mute, but I could hear Garner say, “I can’t breathe …I can’t breathe …” One moment, he is …

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Why you should protest the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown