Judging by the Source
“Mom, who made the first people?” he asks me sweetly. It is already nine o’clock and well past his bedtime. Blah, blah, blah, I stumble a bit then build up to “people came from monkeys.” “Nah,” he says and gives me a sly smile as if I’m trying to trick him. My “really, they do!” … Continue reading
Gorilla Glue and Heartbreak
“My friend said to tell you everything when I come,” she says as she opens a little zippered bag full of flakes. “My teeth are falling out and I can’t afford a dentist, so I use Gorilla Glue to glue back the pieces,” she says. She was referred to me for severe asthma, but she … Continue reading
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
Slow Medicine
Time heals all wounds, they say, or, in medicine, if not all, then many. But with our improved efficiency and throughput of patients, we fail to allow this most magical treatment to work. The pace and intensity of medicine has increased exponentially over the past several decades. We see more doctors, have more procedures, take … Continue reading
Need Oxygen to Smoke
Need Oxygen to Smoke? my editorial in the Salt Lake Tribune on the difficulty of tobacco cessation. What do you think about the policy at the Cleveland Clinic and other large employers that refuse to hire smokers? Below are my links that were embedded in editorial, but for some reason SLC trib removes them. …Even … 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
Can I Become A Doctor Online?
The cost of medical care and the cost of education in general is sky rocketing. But it is much worse to be at the nexus of these two endeavors – Medical Education. The current path to becoming a doctor in the US involves four years of university followed by four years of medical school. Each … Continue reading
Customer Satisfaction
I recently changed my children’s dentist because his office was too nice. As with their doctor, it is impossible for a lay person to have any idea whether their dentist is clinically competent or good. Most of us choose our dentists the same way we choose physicians – by personal recommendations from people we know, … Continue reading
Genetic Testing
“If you want CVS, you’ll have to decide within the next three days,” the genetic counselor told us. My husband and I were sitting in the upscale office of the maternal fetal medicine (MFM) practice in downtown San Francisco. Our obstetrician had referred us here for genetic testing of our twins in addition to the … Continue reading
Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc
We understand very little about the human body. Sometimes I think that the more we learn, the more we learn how much we don’t know. Occasionally, our patients show us. Take Jim*, for example. He came to me complaining of wheezing and shortness of breath. He had been newly diagnosed and treated for asthma over … Continue reading
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