Medical

“As a young girl, I’d stand on my tiptoes, craning my neck to watch her sweep cerulean eye shadow across lids and smear foundation on sunken cheeks. While my high school friends resorted to secondhand eye shadow instruction from the pages of Teen magazine, I learned by watching my mom transform the face of a…

Leanne, a nurse, sits next to me in the ICU. She says into the phone, “Now, Johnny, you be good for Nana.” We’re only halfway through another 12-hour shift, and she won’t be home until after her 5-year-old son is ready for bed. Such calls to palliate separation have long been part of the fabric of…

I consult on many patients because they are suffering from pain. In fact, their pain is so severe that they are considering spinal surgery. More than 100,000 Americans decide to undergo surgery, and millions more have invasive procedures for low back pain or sciatica every year. You almost certainly know someone who has struggled with…

It seems that the midlife “slump,” “crisis,” or “malaise” phenomenon is actually something that has been studied and written about a lot in the last 40+ years. The phrase “midlife crisis” was originally coined in the 1960s, as explains Jonathan Rauch in his 2018 book, The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50.  He…

“I just started laughing. It was early on Monday morning during our COVID surge. I couldn’t help myself. Phones were not on yet, but I already had triage COVID calls.  “Put on your roller skates” was all I was thinking. I questioned my laughter. The day and a life of a primary care physician during…

The COVID-19 pandemic represents the single most disruptive health crisis of the past 100 years. It has disrupted basic, taken-for-granted societal routines, which subsequently has prompted dynamic changes in our behavior. The ramifications of these disruptions have yet to be fully quantified. But, suffice to say, a lot of people died in 2020 because of…

Imagine that you’re a physician in the middle of the global pandemic. The life-saving vaccine has just come out, and your job includes administration of the vaccine. At the end of your day, you have 10 extra vaccine doses in an opened vial that will need to be discarded if not used. You know there…

At an early age, Tasha remembered looking up to her mama dressed in a crisp white uniform and a nursing cap placed perfectly upon her head — one bobby pin at a time. Tasha learned what sacrifice, responsibility, and dedication were all about. She also knew her mama’s love for the nursing profession. When Tasha…