Author's posts
To my patient who is going to lose her hair from chemotherapy
I understand that the biggest fear you have about going through chemotherapy is losing your hair. I just want to tell you. You will be fine. Trust me. I know it’s barbaric. Why don’t we have medicines to treat cancer that will not make you lose your ha…
Does pro-vaccine always have to be pro-mandate?
“They are firing me for not getting the COVID vaccine. I can make more money working at Michael’s than I do at this job. I was only doing this because I like to help people. But this is it for me. I’m quitting. I’ll miss the pat…
A medical student’s guide to taking a social history
Dear medical student: I was in your shoes twenty years ago. At that time, I thought that becoming a doctor was all about gaining medical knowledge. When I started my clinical rotations, I was convinced that the “history of present illness” …
A nurse is to a patient what a mother is to a child
I was on inpatient service and had already seen most of the patients on my list. I just had to see one more before I could call it a day and rush out just in time to take my daughter to her tennis lesson. I reviewed the patient’s chart to find out that…
After all the years of medical training, I learned how to treat ugly on my own
We first met about two years ago when she came to see me in my clinic as a new patient. I glanced through her chart and reviewed her scans and pathology reports. She had one of the worst possible kinds of lung cancers, called small cell lung cancer, th…
What this physician says to vaccine-doubters
Can you tell the difference between an “anti-vaxxer” and a “vaccine-doubter”? An anti-vaxxer will outright deny and reject vaccines and may be quite rigid in their views. In contrast, a vaccine-doubter understands the importance of vaccines but has man…
We need more black cops. We need more black physicians.
I am neither black nor white. I’m brown. I can choose to stay silent and indifferent, but the human and the American in me urges me to express my feelings and opinion about the current situation in the country resulting from a series of unfortunate eve…
Introducing smartphone users thumb
Until about 50 to 100 years ago, the tradition was to name diseases after the doctors who used to describe them for the first time. Such diseases are called eponymous diseases. There are numerous examples, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Marfan̵…
