Ebola
“If I get a call about smallpox from the ER I’m not coming in,” an Infectious Disease doctor said to a colleague in the hospital where I was working. It was the early days of 9/11 and anything seemed possible. “Are you all OK with providing care for Ebola patients?” our section chief asked. Our ICU is the … Continue reading
The State Fair
“I got run over by a golf cart at the State Fair,” my five-year-old cheerfully says to the Emergency Department technician who is checking us in. A utility cart knocked him down – he is a five-year-old running along the grass by the path, and some asshole wasn’t looking as he turned into my kid … Continue reading
Denial and the Imponderable Differences
David Foster Wallace “Infinite Jest” Page 604 …people of a certain age and level of like life-experience believe they’re immortal: …they deep-down believe they’re exempt from the laws of physics … And they’re constitutionally unable to learn from anybody else’s experience: if some jaywalking B.U. student does get splattered on Comm. or some House resident … Continue reading
Continuity of Care
“I would want you as my doctor. I just wouldn’t want your life,” I said to the thoracic surgeon. It was after midnight and we were standing in the intensive care unit. I, having urgently intubated a critically ill patient; he, having finished a surgery on a patient we shared. This particular patient had had a lung … Continue reading
Anxiety
Anxiety ranks among my least favorite diagnoses. In medicine, we have a long history of blaming a variety of diseases on anxiety. Even in the recent past we attributed gastric ulcers to stress until it was proven that a bacteria that lives in the gut is responsible. Indeed, who would have thought: a bacteria living … Continue reading
Doctors Can Only Give So Much
editorial in SLC Tribune I called it “The Depressed Doctor” in homage to David Foster Wallace and his short story, “The Depressed Person.” The SLC Tribune titled it: “Doctors Can Only Give So Much.” Here’s a link to the Schwartz foundation and more about Schwartz Rounds.
Brain Transplant
When I was in Boston, I had a patient with a brain tumor and two adult sons. She had a malignant, progressive brain tumor and had been unresponsive for months. Her prognosis was poor. One son, I’ll call him Peter, thought she would have wanted to be DNR/DNI: if her heart stops, if her breathing … Continue reading
mybetterdoctor 