Charles looks older than his sixty-one years; he is very thin and quite stooped, and his eyes are what I guess are described as “lazy.” One goes one way, and one another. He is badly in need of dental work. He has emphysema, though he conti…
Category: Conditions
I am a physician and I am not isolating emotionally
I am a physician, and I am not isolating. Like the Vietnam War defined my parents’ generation and World War 2 defined the generation before that, the COVID-19 pandemic will likely define mine. My father and grandfathers went to battle – I am now call…
Residency training in the time of COVID-19
A few days ago, a good friend revived an email thread that routinely circulated among our social cohort of 17 aspiring doctors during our final two years of medical school. The subject line read: qThurs HH. Translation: happy hour every Thursday. Back …
Coronavirus: the human factor in intensive care
The summer of 1979 is permanently etched into my memory. I walked into the intensive care unit as a newly minted intern. I walked over to ICU-Bed 1 to be introduced to my first patient, a frail teenaged boy who was tethered to a ventilator. “He is day …
Fear paralysis in the world of COVID-19
As the United States faces enormous issues regarding the COVID-19 outbreak which has now impacted all 50 states, I would like to refer to a quote from Franklin D. Roosevelt: “Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itse…
Raw thoughts from a critical care physician
Physician burnout. Physician suicide awareness. Buzzwords. Words that get tossed around. People in leadership seem to be concerned about. Institutions say they care. “Solutions” get created. Solutions that look great on paper. Sometimes under the guis…
God bless us all and help us to destroy you, COVID-19
I, like many of my physician colleagues, nurses, and healthcare workers, have spent my entire adult life sacrificing everything to help others, trying to serve the sickest of the sick. However, for every patient I have saved, you have seemingly multipl…
Advice to employed physicians plunging into telemedicine
As we have literally overnight plunged into the world of telemedicine, I wanted to caution everyone to stop and think about something. As an avid telemedicine provider, I truly believe in helping support our patients and the public. However, if anyone …
Is centralized quarantine in our near future?
I want to make this simple so that politicians can understand. Our country will never survive this pandemic without centralized quarantine and widespread testing. This is not the flu, and our current policies and lack thereof will result in millions de…
COVID-19 has us on our knees
We are in a bizarre state of limbo within the crisis. We feel hopelessly behind, yet still attempt courageous efforts to be preemptive. My residency program, for example, had a fantasy of identifying which services were essential and which were not, st…
