Medical

Writing a pandemic novel is sort of like running a mock code. You may feel a tinge of fear as you work through the actively changing scenario, but mostly you feel the excitement of the challenge. Yet when an actual patient is deteriorating before you, all you feel is terror. In 2007, as I was traveling daily…

Five years ago, if you asked oncologists at my practice to name the list price of a given chemotherapy agent, most wouldn’t have known–unless they were executives, maybe. Pharmaceutical reps rarely talk about costs. The EMRs don’t give list prices. And when we input drug orders back then, no cost analyses were offered. These days,…

Walking into the COVID ward in the children’s hospital, those words seemed etched on an invisible wall, a wall that I wanted to choose to stay behind.  It was a wall I could stay behind for the first couple months of the pandemic where multiple studies touted how children weren’t getting sick, and my hospital…

“COVID-19 has rapidly spread across the nation, leading to the implementation of stringent social distancing guidelines by local and regional authorities. In a desperate effort to limit infection rates, in-person social interactions have been reduced, and many have turned towards indoor hobbies and online platforms to connect with their loved ones. Still, this solution to…

He shoved the paper with the address in his pocket. Then he found his little black bag with the oils and other implements for giving what once was called the last rites of the church, but were now termed the sacrament of the sick, and headed off in the direction of the Flats. Sixty-six Center…

As a medical student, I have discussed with classmates and faculty how to handle a potential patient interaction on vaccinations. Learning how to handle a patient who may be misinformed may be best through experience rather than lectures. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this experience may come sooner and be more commonplace than I previously expected.…

A few weeks ago, I was delighted when KevinMD accepted an opinion piece I’d submitted. But I withdrew it just before publication because, on reflection, I realized that I’d been wrong. While sheltering in place during the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve become an avid consumer of medical podcasts, such as those presented by JAMA and the…

As we all grapple with what it means to live in society battling a global pandemic that is so fundamentally altering the way we interact with one another, we are faced with several questions we haven’t faced before in our lifetime: how are we going to move forward from this? What does a post-COVID-19 world…

As protests broke out on the streets of downtown Cleveland and the National Guard camped outside the hospital, I delivered a beautiful, Black baby boy. In some ways, that night was like any other night. Another vaginal delivery, another moment filled with love and joy that I had the privilege of sharing with a family.…