When you begin to pay close attention, you notice how what used to be so easy becomes complicated. When you step back and watch things unfold in front of you, you realize that what once was enough is simply too much. Dementia peels back the layers of o…
October 27th is the 30th anniversary of the Mammography Quality Standards Act (MQSA). Congress enacted this law to safeguard nationwide access to quality mammography to detect breast cancer in its earliest, most treatable stages. With this Act, the fed…
The Oxford dictionary defines insidious as “proceeding in a gradual, subtle way but with harmful effects.” Most people associate this term with clever criminals. I am writing this to ask you to think about it in another way. Perhaps the gre…
Paula came to my office on a Monday afternoon, a few months after burying her husband. She and John had been inseparable. They were both my patients, so I knew John had spent the last six months battling lung cancer. They had been married forty-five ye…
I normally start October off by changing my Facebook profile picture to a pink survivor ribbon and celebrating my breast cancer survivorship, but this October was different. I slept on October 1st because I had spent 48 hours at Gulf Coast Medical Cent…
It was the best of medical encounters; it was the worst of medical encounters. But it is indeed a story of how two physicians viewed the same situation very differently, and how one brought trauma to a young patient, and one (two) brought healing to th…
When you visit your doctor for your regular check-up, just like every human being, your body and health are judged by three main scientific standards to determine if you are healthy and “normal.” Standard 1 is the Standard Scientific Human …
I’ve had my share of therapy. My mother was a clinical psychologist, and I grew up around the concepts of consciousness and the unconscious, growth and awareness, and “authenticity” before “authenticity” was even a buzzwor…
Rheumatoid arthritis is a common autoimmune disease affecting approximately 1.5 million people only in the United States. The most common symptoms that will bring patients to the doctor are: pain swelling and stiffness in multiple joints. most of the t…
Ashley, one of my colleagues, and I discussed whether or not a doctor, nurse, or other providers of care should cry or show emotion with a patient or client. We’re not speaking of meltdowns or becoming so emotionally involved that it impairs our …
