I came back from a family vacation to Italy one day before the first case of novel coronavirus was reported there. Two days later, the CDC issued a Level 3 travel warning for visitors to Italy. Eight days later, and six days after returning to work, …
COVID-19 is here, and it isn’t going away. The SARS-CoV2 virus, and the disease it causes, has entered the ecosystem of human pathogens and is running up numbers that make it appear to be heading into the realm of the pandemic. Let’s look a…
“The weak would never enter the kingdom of love.” ― Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera As the medical community grapples to come up with an appropriate response and protect our patients from this latest pandemic, I cannot help but wo…
1. Take it easy. The worst part of all this is the fear. More people die from the flu, car accidents, or guns. As of Saturday, March 7th, 19 Americans had died from COVID-19, compared to 1,177 every week from the flu, 746 from car crashes, and 294 from…
Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians. A 36-year-old man is evaluated for a 10-day history of abdominal cramping, diarrhea, malaise, and nausea. Diarrhea is watery without mucus or…
Nearly 100,000 pop culture fans flocked to Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle last year, including many dressed as superheroes, aliens, and robots. But something scarier than a comic book villain is roiling the conference this year — the spread of the c…
In the dark radiology reading rooms, only the gentle hum of the computers and the quiet chatter of residents dictating radiology reads break the silence. Among the computers sits Dr. Exner, a senior radiology resident at Hospital Woeisme. He has recent…
When first responders answered roughly ten calls from a long-term care center in Kirkland, Washington, over the course of a week, they did not expect to become patients themselves. Entering the Life Care Center of Kirkland last month exposed them to th…
Recently, revelations indicated that the Iran missile strike on the U.S. base in Iraq actually did cause head injuries. So why did the U.S. initially claim no “casualties”? From the limited reports available, it appears that most of the soldiers’ sy…
“Should I cancel my business trip?” That is not the kind of question that patients typically ask their doctors. For most people, that’s not even a question they can ask their doctors, at least, not without an appointment, a co-pay and an anxiety-induci…
