Medical

“As a physician anesthesiologist who has previously been on assignment for Doctors Without Borders in a resource-depleted region fraught with conflict, I’d like to say there’s little I haven’t seen. But now, after four weeks of staffing COVID intensive care units and emergency response teams throughout New York City, I struggle to distinguish between the…

Career transition is talked about a whole lot more these days than it was in 2004.  Maybe I just notice it more now.  Back then, I felt like I was the only one doing it.  You know how it is when you are going through something difficult, and you feel utterly alone and unsure about…

Gilead’s $1,000-a-pill antiviral remdesivir is no wonder drug. We knew this when it failed for hepatitis, the disease it was created for. And then when it failed for Ebola. And then again, when it failed for COVID-19. But like a bolt, in late April, a breakthrough: in a second trial for COVID-19 patients, remdesivir sped time to…

They are physicians, mentors, partners, mothers, sisters, friends, colleagues – but most evidently, at the moment, they are heroes. I (virtually) sat down with five women physicians, at all points in their medical careers, who are working in several of the largest emergency departments in Texas, to talk about their experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic.…

He could hear the football game playing on a radio outside his room, so he knew someone was there, and he knew he was dying.  He screamed and screamed as the paralysis from what he was sure was sepsis took over more and more of his body. No one answered.  Only his wits and knowledge could save…

I am writing this as I lay in bed, feverish, sweaty, and persistent dry cough. I have been sick with presumed COVID-19 for the past ten days. I have quarantined myself from my wife and two sons, unable to hug or reassure them that everything will be okay. Additionally, my wife is 39 weeks pregnant.…

Could your kids power the electrical grid, if you could only figure out how to tap that energy? Someday, all the hours spent cooped up at home will be a memory, not a daily reality. But if your children are bouncing off the walls with schools and day care still closed and summer coming, here…

“Howard wants to go to the hospital. He knows he isn’t doing that great. He says he is having homicidal thoughts.” This from my supervisor, Linda. Homicidal thoughts on the part of any client get our attention, especially so with Howard, because years before, he killed a man with a gun. I believe it was…