Diana Londoño is a urologist and can be reached on Twitter @DianaLondonoMD.
Have you ever thought of someone, and then a few minutes later, they called or texted you?
Have you ever felt or had a whole conversation in your mind to later be told that is exactly what someone was saying about you at the same time, even though you were physically in a different place?
How can that be? Is it merely a “coincidence,” or are these beautiful hints from the universe …
Regret. We often think about it because of an action or lack of action. We regret having done something or perhaps not doing enough. Regret is filled with “shoulds,” which soon spiral down into guilt, remorse, self-judgment, anger, and depression.
To me, I think about the actions often. Do I regret having trusted or opened my heart to others?
The thing is, I don’t have ANY regrets. I have experienced many circumstances …
Intimacy starts outside the bedroom. Most people think intimacy occurs inside, but it seems to me this could not be farther from the truth.
Intimacy is a taboo topic in our society. I am not referring to only physical intimacy but also emotional and spiritual. For some reason, it makes us uncomfortable; it rattles us.
Intimacy is about honesty, love, and connection. It starts with connection, but the other pillars are essential.
Our …
“Thank God it’s Friday.”
So many of us say it often. This resonates with many, as there is even a restaurant franchise with that name that has $2.5 billion in sales. Clearly, they are tapping into something that echoes what many think (even if they have what feels like a 73-page menu which, on Fridays when you are especially tired, can seem overwhelming, but I digress).
However, if we dig a little …
If we look around and spend time in nature or just walk outside, we realize everything has a season. The trees, the flowers, the weeds—they all change during the seasons. Flowers don’t constantly bloom; trees show their beautiful display of colors on their leaves, shed them, and grow a new set of beautiful leaves each year. There is constant change. As famously said by Heraclitus, “The only thing constant is …
How do we react to them? For ourselves or maybe when kids make them. We will all make them, so we might as well make the best of it and realize they are learning and growth opportunities.
I was recently a guest on the podcast Thrive State which I was so excited about because I am a huge fan of the host and the podcast. It has many followers on social …
Gatorade’s commercial featuring Michael Jordan from 1992 and its catchy song, “Like Mike,” is now part of pop culture history. The lyrics were likable. “I dream I move, I dream I groove, like Mike, if I could be like Mike, oh if I could be like Mike.” Let’s face it, growing up, many of us dreamed to be like Mike. As their first athlete endorser, Michael Jordan elevated the Gatorade …
Symptoms of burnout that are plaguing physicians and society include feelings of cynicism, apathy, depersonalization, and fatigue. These are associated with anxiety, depression, and suicide. In fact, more than 400 physicians each year die by suicide.
So much is written about the causes and what can be done to change these statistics. Whether it’s from the leadership standpoint, the autonomy of physicians, the burdens insurance places on physicians and their practices, …
Your parents likely spent months searching through baby name books, polling the family, and looking through the photo albums of ancestors to pick the perfect name for you.
Maybe your parents had to see your face before they could pick the perfect one. Names have history, they have power, and they embody your personality.
My daughter was officially named Daniela, yet we called her Bimbi months before she was born. That is …
On my second year-long round of burnout, I lay in bed at night as I festered in my negativity, thinking to myself, “What am I good at, what do I like to do, what am I supposed to be doing?” Little did I realize this was a spiritual crisis.
After almost 15 years as a urologist, I wondered, “What else can I do? What am I supposed to be doing because …
We have probably heard this saying with different permutations many times about someone showing “their true colors.”
As physician and best-selling author, Tess Gerritsen, shared: “There is no better test of character than when you’re tossed into crisis. That’s when we see one’s true colors shine through. So, I try my best to make my characters personally involved in the plot, in a way that stresses them and tests them.”
It made …
I recently came across an article in the Journal of Urology that was trying to understand the determinants of patient satisfaction in the outpatient setting. They surveyed 500 patients over two months and asked questions about demographics, expectations regarding the time frame to obtain an appointment, appointment wait times, and the amount of time they expected to be spent with them, as well as expectations of being …
The levels of physician burnout which are a constellation of symptoms including feeling apathy, fatigue, depersonalization, and detachment are a group of feelings that have plagued health care.
But within the last two years, burnout has exploded to upwards of 65 percent in specialties like emergency, critical care, and infectious disease. It is not surprising, as these specialties have been on the frontlines of COVID care.
Why does this matter?
Because — we …
Many of us in health care tend to have qualities that brought us to our professions, which hinder our self-care. We tend to be self-sufficient to a fault, at times lacking the humility to acknowledge or accept we need help. We may also think we are invisible and that we can endure all suffering we witness or experience without any need to process what we experienced emotionally. Additionally, we have …
One of the most extensive studies to look at trauma in the U.S., the ACE study (Adverse Childhood Events), showed that more than 60 percent of adults surveyed had experienced one traumatic event during childhood, including enduring physical, emotional, or sexual abuse — 25 percent of women had experienced sexual abuse. This shows how prevalent abuse is in childhood and how most of us carry trauma. It does not escape …
My 5-year-old proudly told me during lunch, “Did you know animals don’t cry?” When she told me this, I had to think about it and then immediately Google this. Having small kids teaches you many random facts, including that sharks don’t blink because they don’t have eyelids.
So, when she told me her new fact, I was intrigued.
Animals, unlike humans, do not have a prefrontal cortex.
This is an area of the …
What can we learn as we experience turmoil, change, or as we grieve a loss? Is there something we can focus on to help us go through difficult times in our lives? This can be a minor occurrence in our life, or it can be what we have all lived through collectively during a global pandemic.
What can help us see what is beyond what we are experiencing now and let …
Are you a woman, and your sanity has been questioned? Congratulations: You are now an activist.
There is such a thing as implicit bias in which we may not be aware of how our subconscious thoughts are affecting our conscious thoughts, opinions, or actions we have daily.
They manifest in all aspects of life. Whether you come to see me for a surgical consultation and when you walk into the room, you …
It is said that everything that moves has a breaking point. Engineers understand this concept, and they have developed intricate methods to understand when metals will reach their breaking point if they sustain repeated back and forth stress.
It becomes crucial to understand that when metals break, the consequences have substantial implications as many industries rely on machines to be efficient and safe. If a machine shuts down due to the …
I recently heard an interview on NPR about the author Yusef Salaam that wrote a book called Better, Not Bitter, and the title just blew my mind. I had to repeat it a few times in my head. Better — not bitter.
It made me think of everything that happens to us and how we all have a choice to turn any small interaction up to every major trauma into an …
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