I can’t believe I’m writing something with this title. Anyone who knows me and sees my name next to that title will probably spit their coffee all over the kitchen counter. And to all the people who have dealt with me on call, let me begin by saying, I’m truly sorry for anything I might have said, done, thrown or broken. Mostly. Kinda mostly.
Those who know me will likely think …
I am very much a student of the Zen of call
As I sat next to her bed in the intensive care unit, I wondered if she knew that today was her last day when she woke up this morning. I didn’t think she knew that it was her last day now. I was sure that she knew that something was wrong but did she know that she’d be dead in a few hours?
One of the most profound things about being a …
Today happens once. And we are guaranteed nothing.
“I need help with my colitis.”
“Really? I thought we had things pretty well controlled.”
I hadn’t seen her in the better part of a year. I remembered how hard it had been to get her ulcerative colitis into remission. How sick she had been, how miserable her life was. There was a bit of trial and error in the office, followed by a hospitalization for intravenous steroids, then a tapering dose …
People are going broke because they can’t afford care. It needs to end.
A good friend of mine recently found herself between jobs, with a gap in her health insurance and a recurrence of her kidney stones. What she needed were fluids and pain relief, fast. I’m a gastroenterologist, and hoping to minimize the financial impact, I went with her to our local ER and had a conversation with the attending physician. Maybe we could pass on the CT scan and extraneous lab …
When it comes to your health care, buyer beware
Every now and then, more often when on call, I experience what I think it was like to be a physician when I was a boy.
I remember the era of the house call. I remember the physician as a part of the community. You saw him around town, school, and at church. You knew his wife and went to school with his kids. I remember that. And I remember the …
We’ve killed the way physicians should be
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