She was dead when we walked in the room. Lungs ventilated, kidneys dialyzed, on pressors to maintain enough tension within her blood vessels to keep blood traveling to her brain and with a tentatively beating heart, but dead, nonetheless. The microbes …
Narcissism is a term that has roots in Greek mythology, and as the story goes, a nymph named Echo fell in love with a handsome young man named Narcissus, who loved nobody but himself. Echo had previously been cursed by a vengeful goddess who took from …
I really shouldn’t complain. I haven’t lost my housing or job. I have plenty of food and toilet paper, and so far, no close friend or family have died from COVID. That said, this pandemic is hard. In fact, it is exhausting. During the spring and summer…
As the burden of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) plateaus into a perpetual state of public health emergency for 2020, examining the United States’ forgotten epidemic of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) offers insight to a COVID-19 solution. STIs…
As we continue to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic causing spiking numbers of cases, the scientific and medical communities continue to search for effective treatments and preventive measures. We have clearly established the importance of wearing masks…
An excerpt from Medical Myths: A Sceptic’s Journey. “Don’t go out tonight, ‘Cos it’s bound to change your life, There’s a Bad Moon on the Rise.” – Creedence Clearwater Revival, August 1969 On a summer’s night on the St. Lawrence…
I have observed with impunity, a silent form of racism that exists in our society and in just about every American health care delivery system against people of color. If you are on Medicaid, without health care coverage, or have a low cost/low premium…
During the global pandemic, we count the numbers of hospital admissions. Of respirators. Of deaths. Days of quarantine. Days since our last morning swim. We count how many armfuls of laundry we do at dawn. We count how many dishes we wash, how many …
Late one evening, an ICU physician calls a family to say Dad’s breathing rate had slowed to such an extent that he did not believe Dad would survive the night without life support. This seasoned doctor added that he had never seen patients come back fr…
I used to work with veterans who sought mental health care. Many developed PTSD after witnessing their comrades get injured, blown up, and die. Some of these veterans had visible wounds, as one would expect, but almost all of them had invisible wounds….
