More than 1,100 in the U.S. are still dying every day from COVID-19. Every three days, we are losing more Americans than the number that died on 9/11. Just because we don’t see it sneaking up on our families does not mean the COVID terrorist is d…
Category: Conditions
Sustaining mental health during the holidays and starting strong in 2022
The holiday season was notorious for causing loneliness, sadness, anxiety, and a sense of loss even before adding the COVID-19 pandemic to the mix. The pandemic has only served to magnify many of these feelings, as gatherings with loved ones are postpo…
Tobacco is a painful addiction
Smoking cigarettes is well known to cause heart disease, lung cancer, and premature death. In the face of these risks of death, quality of life issues that affect smokers are often overlooked. Although some quality of life issues such as cost, cravings…
10 things this nurse is f-ing tired of saying
Musings of a primary care triage nurse: 1. “Isolation means you aren’t around others. No, you shouldn’t be eating dinner with your family or watching TV with them.” 2. “You’ve been sick for the past week but didnR…
Is life more than breathing and a heartbeat?
A few months back, I read about a two-year-old child with a terminal cardiac condition who has spent her life in a hospital bed attached to multiple devices that maintained her survival. At the staff’s request, the institution’s ethics comm…
The trouble with resiliency: It’s time to get to the root causes of health care worker burnout
Over the last several years, there has been an increasing recognition that burnout is rising exponentially among health care workers – and there has been a positive shift in the public understanding of burnout and other mental health issues in general….
Diabetes impacts the whole body, but the foot can’t be forgotten
Diabetes is a complex yet common disease that impacts over 34 million Americans. Blood glucose is just the tip of the iceberg; related complications include neuropathy, eye disease, ketoacidosis, kidney disease, cardiovascular disease and more. In fact…
A milligram of understanding for anti-vaxxers
When the COVID pandemic first reared its ugly head in 2020, I was mentally prepared (as much as any of us could be) for the patient care wave that was coming our way. What I was not prepared for was the mass of anti-science and anti-intellectual pushba…
Think eating disorders don’t happen to Black people? Think again.
I remember receiving the email, “Eating Disorder Panel Q & A.” My physician colleague had become very experienced at caring for eating disorder patients. She understood the importance of this work and how misinformed much of the health …
Is Omicron a sheep in wolf’s clothing?
Make no mistake, the newest variant in the COVID-19 family is far more contagious than any of the others. Will it cause a drastic surge in the pandemic? Or could it have a mitigating influence? First identified in South Africa on November 11, Omicron q…
