Perhaps I am being pessimistic, with a “glass half full attitude,” but please hear me out. I am optimistic, but I am also realistic, and I pay attention to trends and behaviors in people. When monkeypox was first mentioned in the Canadian m…
Category: Conditions
Not a cancer survivor, not a cancer previvor: Am I a cancer preventer?
I recently had a prophylactic bilateral mastectomy with an esthetic flat closure (no reconstruction). My decision took months of questions, discussion and reflection. My journey began during the final four weeks of 2021. It included: four mammograms, f…
6 changes that could lower the risk of developing prostate cancer
After skin cancer, prostate cancer is the most common type of cancer diagnosed in people with a prostate. Some risk factors associated with prostate cancer can’t be mitigated. Those factors include older age, a family history of prostate cancer, …
5 tips for treating high-weight patients
It might seem odd to write about what high weight patients would like when they meet with their doctors. Don’t they want what every patient wants? The answer is yes, but the fact is, they often don’t get it due to implicit anti-fat bias among health pr…
Direct care with a podiatry twist
A patient, let’s call him Jay, came to me refusing a leg amputation. He had open sores that were necrotic, foul-smelling as if he had been neglected for a long time. At his consultation, he fought with every cell of his being, refusing to lose hi…
What a lifetime of gaslighting by other doctors feels like
If your shoulder were really injured, that maneuver would make you scream in pain,” he told me confidently. My husband and I recently established care with a new family doctor. I was frightened and scarred from a long history of medical gaslighti…
A dead baby in my arms
Five days before this story begins, where everything is upside down, and the end is the beginning. Me, standing in my PICU, slowly approaching that cradle, then removing the medication, one by one, turning off the syringe pumps. Saying out loud the num…
Why is there a shortage of mental health professionals?
There are many topics on which I cannot claim to be an expert. I cannot solve the issue of gun violence, I don’t know what will “fix” the current societal crises, and I have no idea what will happen in the future regarding climate cha…
Game over for behavioral health
He was a tall, healthy psychiatric technician, experienced in his line of work. He was a CNA but wanted more. He wanted to help heal the troubled, forgotten, and neglected — behavioral health was his niche. He would lead the way with therapy sessions i…
Open-angle glaucoma: To screen or not to screen?
In a published statement in JAMA Network on May 24/31, 2022, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force found that there was insufficient evidence for screening for primary open-angle glaucoma in adults. They could not find a way to balance harms versus b…
