An excerpt from The Healing Book. When Allie’s canoe tapped the dock in Iquitos, Peru, she didn’t know which was greater: her exhaustion or her anticipation. After hours on the Amazon River, she was sticky with sweat, and her arms and legs …
Category: Conditions
My battle with atrial fibrillation
A while ago, I wrote about my experience during an attack of atrial fibrillation (afib), lamenting the fact that my management never included a proper physical exam. Nevertheless, chemical cardioversion was successful, and my hospital stay was brief. T…
Revolutionizing health care: Rethinking burnout and resilience
I read all the time about the strategies and measures physicians and other health care professionals take to mitigate, reduce, or immunize themselves against burnout, moral distress, and empathic strain. We have been talking about this for decades, wit…
Debunking sensational euthanasia myths in the Netherlands
While surfing cellphone news headlines, my attention was caught by one from the New York Post that blared: “Dutch are Euthanizing Autistic People.” The Post aims for sensationalism, and the headline implied mass slaughter, akin to the Nazi …
What should you do if your child is diagnosed with bronchiolitis this cold and flu season?
The cold and flu season is already causing a surge of viral infections among children in doctors’ offices and emergency rooms. Health care providers are urging parents to brace themselves for what’s expected to be another season of COVID-19, infl…
Rosalynn Carter’s impact on caregivers
I’m writing this in November, which is National Caregiver Month. It’s also Alzheimer’s Awareness Month. But regardless of when you’re reading this, if you’re a caregiver, every month is “caregiver month.” Ironi…
Uncovering the truth behind my father’s tragic end
I was the “stranger” at my father’s bedside. Shortly after his 84th birthday, my father fell and landed in the hospital with a split scalp. His metastatic prostate cancer was an incidental finding, and superimposing this wildly invasi…
The path forward for telepsychiatry: a call for permanent policy
The U.S. is facing a significant mental health crisis that has united us in our efforts to make positive changes across the health care ecosystem for those in need of care. As health care providers and experienced clinicians, we hope our joint dedicati…
Words of caution when considering the use of “terminal anorexia”: perspective from lived experience
After reading the article “Terminal anorexia nervosa: three cases and proposed clinical characteristics,” I was grateful to have not had access to the article a year earlier – when I would have personally met criteria. I was holding o…
Addressing the enormous scale of work-related burnout and mental injury in doctors
When a 24-year-old laborer’s apprentice used a chainsaw without training, they sustained a jagged laceration through their left quadriceps. When I saw them 12 months later in my general practice, their laceration was well healed. However, they re…
