So, your guy or gal is struggling with a serious emotional issue. Is that a basis for bailing? Let’s get personal here; if you’ve got one foot out the door, you’re probably asking the wrong guy. One of my key values is loyalty. But be…
Category: Conditions
7 causes of low back pain
The New Year is a typical time for resolutions, and one of the most common ones is to get healthier. For many of us, a common stumbling block is dealing with low back pain. As a rehabilitation medicine physician, my focus is nonoperative spine care wit…
The COVID vaccine is a life raft. I’m not your life raft to get out of it.
It began with a seemingly innocuous text from a friend of the family. “Hi, Richard. I hope you’re well. I need to speak with you. Can I call you?” The last time we spoke was at my brother’s long-postponed “celebration of l…
Attack COVID like the terrorist it is
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…
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…
