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In this episode, we hear from Alen Voskanian, a palliative care physician, who shares his personal experience with COVID-19. Dr. Voskanian reflects on the mental coping mechanisms he used to try …
The COVID ICU is abuzz with monitors beeping and doctors and nurses rushing from bed to bed to care for critically ill patients, most on ventilators. The machines – dialysis, vents, pumps – sound off their rhythmic repetitions; breaths are pushed in and pulled out, and meds are dripped. Only the patients themselves are silent. We know this, and we hear this, but we are not there. It’s the height …
The isolation of the COVID ICU: the need for patient advocates
“No, no, no! I’m having a nightmare!” She shrieked through the phone. I couldn’t bear to hear it as words fell clumsily out of my mouth. “Your husband couldn’t breathe on his own. We had to put him on a ventilator. I’m so sorry.”
I was apologizing already. I’m sure she knew that it wasn’t a good sign when a physician opened with an apology. “What does that mean?” she stuttered. …
Saying goodbye: the tragic impact of COVID-19 on families
An excerpt from Fifty Years a Doctor: The Journey of Sickness and Health, Four Plagues and the Pandemic.
Our favorite internist and chairman of the internal medicine department was lecturing us on sensitivity to patients’ suffering when they have a serious illness. He stressed that our sensitivity would increase as we got older and had more life experiences. Then he added a wish that every one of us should have …
The worst illness this physician ever had
I still remember the exhilaration I felt upon learning that my peers and I could finally return to our in-person classrooms. After a year of Zoom lectures, asynchronous exams, and more, the prospect of seeing each other again thrilled us.
However, we had not anticipated the constant fear and uncertainty that would accompany this transition. Despite implementing safety measures like masking and one-way hallways, the number of COVID-19 cases continued to …
Let teens self-consent to vaccines
I see there has been yet another measles outbreak; at the time of writing, the count is 59 in central Ohio. All are either unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated. No doubt local pediatricians are being flooded with worried parents proffering their offspring for viewing with the statement, “Could this rash be measles, doctor?”
This certainly happened to me in 2019 when doing some primary care practice. That year experienced a massive …
Measles: a preventable disease that is making a comeback
Sliding toward another solstice, I feel myself yearning. I want the daylight to stay a little longer, soft like this, gentle warmth and lovely shadows, lazy breezes, the illusion of contentment.
But I am not content. Or perhaps I am, but whereas I once thought contentment was the goal, the sentiment makes me uneasy now.
“Nothing gold can stay,” Robert Frost wrote. To stay content would be to embrace the shift in …
Over the last three years, we have faced the original COVID-19, followed by Omicron, Delta, and monkeypox.
It is apropos that on the third anniversary of COVID-19, we are facing the tripledemic of COVID, influenza, and RSV.
After almost three years of not getting COVID-19, I started believing that my childhood fantasies about me being superman were true and that my immune system was superpowered with bullet-proof antibodies that would keep me …
A physician in denial after being diagnosed with COVID-19
Dear Dr. El-Dalati,
I am sorry that we will not be able to publish your recent letter to the editor regarding the Chowdhury article of 16-Sep-2021. The space available for correspondence is very limited, and we must use our judgment to present a representative selection of the material received. Many worthwhile communications must be declined for lack of space.
The response from The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) seemed simple and …
When your letter to the editor is rejected or ignored
I’ve moved recently, and in the process of moving, invariably, one discovers old items. This had gotten shelved in the fracas of those years, work changed overnight, changing employers, moving. However, in a discussion with a close friend today, this resurfaced as she’s grappling with patients and family who are not seeing what she’s seeing.
Summer 2020
It’s another Sunday night family dinner. Conversation centers around catching up on the latest family …
An interview with David Quamman, author of Breathless: The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus.
Rosenberg: After the publication of your 2012 book Spillover, in which the scientists you interviewed talked about expecting the “next big one,” I was surprised more people didn’t say, “Quammen told us so.”
Quammen: Actually, in Jan 2020 [as COVID-19 hit], I immediately got calls asking me how “I knew” this was going to …
The scientific race to defeat a deadly virus
They loved long walks through the woods in California. They were sweethearts in high school through college. If they wanted to take a break from their walks, the dogs would gang up on them and insist on continuing.
The trees, the skies, the quiet, the fresh smell of pine and wildflowers.
And on one clear blue sky day, Bill dropped down on bended knee and proposed to Jennifer. The breeze gently blew …
A careless misdiagnosis. A death. A lawsuit.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Americans got accustomed to regularly answering a series of questions about our risk of exposure to COVID and our possible symptoms. For more than two years, our country remained laser-focused on this protection, demonstrating our health care system’s ability to mount a strong response to a public health crisis. So why haven’t we taken similar precautions in the face of other crises, particularly HIV?
For too long, …
Why HIV and COVID-19 vaccine screening should go together
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This article is sponsored by Novavax.
In this special sponsored episode. I’m joined by Dr. Filip Dubovsky, chief medical officer at Novavax, to …
Preparing for fall and winter: Importance of COVID-19 vaccination during the flu season [PODCAST]
As is the case throughout the country, central Ohio is in the midst of a viral surge with an unusually high number of ill children for this time of the year, leading to long delays in our urgent cares and emergency departments, in our primary care offices, and with over capacity inpatient units. It’s an extremely busy time for all of us and honestly makes for tiring and stressful days. …
Advice from a pediatrician during the viral surge
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“If any of those people get infected, their illness will potentially impact dozens more. COVID infection may now be ‘just a cold,’ at least for the vaccinated. But no one should …
My one case of COVID impacted dozens of lives [PODCAST]
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“Patients with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) and their allies will rally in DC, London, and Edinburgh this September to “demand bold, urgent governmental action” for the millions of people living with ME, …
Why psychological explanations for long COVID are dangerous [PODCAST]
For the first time since graduation from medical school, stirred by the courage of my colleagues in the ICUs and emergency rooms during the COVID pandemic, I looked back at the Hippocratic oath to reassess its charge to physicians. My wife and I, both doctors, studied and trained for a long time, and we considered the years spent and the effort put forth to be a calculated sacrifice. But amidst …
Coronavirus and the duty to treat
With COVID-19 vaccines now widely available for children six months and older, we join pediatricians and pharmacists across the country and urge parents to vaccinate their young children against COVID-19 as soon as possible.
Schools are open and more activities are moving indoors with the cooler weather, so now is the time to ensure your child’s vaccines are up to date. Vaccinated children are much less likely to be infected than …
Pediatrician and pharmacist agree: Children should be vaccinated against COVID-19
The sound of beeping monitors of ICU, the blood pressure cuff going off on a patient after having detected an unsatisfactory read undisplayable on the screen, hearing a child cry while walking past ED rooms. These sounds, not alien to the ears of a physician, were no longer everyday noises that I could pass by without bothering to register. I could not figure out why such mundane and run-of-the-mill sounds …
My postpartum depression was a stumble, but am I really past the trauma?
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