Hubris

“I think he’s just anxious about it,” the medical student told me a few sentences into the presentation.  His patient had had a spontaneous pneumothorax, a leak of air between the lung and chest wall, a few years ago, and now he had some uncomfortable feeling and was worried about a recurrence.  I hadn’t heard the full story … 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