Medical

What prompted me to write this essay is seeing a chest X-ray of a physician fighting the COVID-19 disease, and it did not look promising. I wish for the speedy recovery of this unknown physician. With the current state of affairs that our country and many others in the world are in, we need to…

I have been answering a bunch of questions about this virus. There is a lot of confusion, and there are a few questions that I seem to hear over and over. So, here is a simple primer. 1. Why is personal distance of 6 feet a thing? The measles virus can be spread through the…

We are in an unprecedented time. With the amount of information available, it is easy to feel overwhelmed. Sometimes the information we consume is confusing. For example, at a March 16th press briefing, President Donald Trump addressed the public about COVID-19.  He stood next to Vice President Mike Pence and other top officials. A reporter…

Skin tags are common, benign skin growths that hang from the surface of the skin on a thin piece of tissue called a stalk. They are made up of many components, including fat, collagen fibers, and sometimes nerve cells and small blood vessels. It’s possible that these collagen fibers and blood vessels become wrapped up inside…

Here in the U.S., we slip and slide around the reality of rationing. We like to believe we can have it all, do it all, that there are no bounds. And if you have money in the U.S., that is more or less true. Until now. Personal protective equipment and test kits for COVID-19 are…

As a hospitalist in Minnesota, my colleagues and I are busy preparing for the coming viral storm. It is starting to rain. We read the harrowing front line stories from overwhelmed hospitals in China, Italy, and now here in the U.S., and reach for a sublingual Zofran tablet to calm the nauseous dread. The smart…

There’s an intruder in our relationship, and her name is COVID.  Every night I come home, and she’s lurking around the corner on an Amazon box, in the crevice of my couch perhaps, or her scent is lingering on my husband’s scrubs.  A physician-physician marriage is hard enough, but when put under the microscope of…

There’s a saying in medicine that: “If you’re holding a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” It’s our way of acknowledging that we all suffer from a particular set of blinders unique to our own specialties. Usually, our focused way of viewing the patient facilitates our ability to serve them, to see their problem, and…