On August 30th Uncle Xi Jinping stepped into many Chinese living rooms and asked hundreds of millions of his nieces and nephews to hand over their video game controllers. Three hours per week is all they get now. According to a press release from Xinhu…
Chronic pain is an epidemic, currently affecting over 100 million American adults – more than diabetes, heart disease, and cancer combined. This doesn’t include children, 1 in 3 of whom live with a chronic pain condition ranging from migraine to chroni…
If you find yourself reaching for a bottle or sighing with relief at a well-deserved glass of wine at the end of a stressful day, then you are not alone. Far more people than you can imagine do the same thing, and many of them feel ashamed that they do…
The day just felt weird. I had this feeling of impending doom over me that morning as I sat in bed studying, waiting to get dressed for afternoon clinic. Once I got there, I was cramping, and I knew things were not OK. It was so intense throughout that…
In medical school, we are taught to listen to our patients, and if we listen hard enough, they will tell us their diagnosis. The statistic that gets thrown around is that the average amount of time a physician listens before interrupting a patient is 1…
An excerpt from Love Your Child More Than You Hate Your Ex: What Every Divorced Parent Needs to Know. As an experienced clinical child psychologist, I believe the ultimate goal of any parent is to rear an independent, responsible child. While at first…
Working day after day, year after year, in a busy high acuity ICU, we all have become a “second family.” The public doesn’t hear much about respiratory therapists, especially during this COVID nightmare. But they have been the unsung …
At 84, Emma Shuford found a lump in her breast. After a lumpectomy, she was diagnosed with locally aggressive breast cancer. Her doctors said it was treatable but she needed radiation to help stop it from growing. At first, she refused. Because of her …
In this small town I live in, a funeral procession is a big deal. The hearse is followed by several black cars turning into an array of family and friends cars. All of them roll slowly and sadly to the final destination. I knew all about this funeral. …
The day that my 82-year-old mother was scheduled to receive her first COVID vaccine, she was admitted to the intensive care unit, critically ill with COVID pneumonia. It was late January. My siblings and I hadn’t heard from our mother in a few days, an…
