“You have the good cancer.” These are the most common words that spill out of providers’ mouths to patients just being diagnosed with papillary thyroid cancer. However, this statement does not make this diagnosis any easier to compreh…
Category: Conditions
For me, COVID has a face
I’ve moved recently, and in the process of moving, invariably, one discovers old items. This had gotten shelved in the fracas of those years, work changed overnight, changing employers, moving. However, in a discussion with a close friend today, …
Don’t lie about medical errors. Apologize.
Time of death: unknown. It was around 6 p.m. on April 21, 2013. My mom saw my grandfather dying slowly in the hospital bed. She had pressed the nurse call button frantically over the last 20 minutes. She rushed to the nurse station only to find out nob…
The impact of hand surgery on human identity and expression
One weekend, while taking hand trauma call, we received a pre-arrival page about an incoming patient, a plastic surgeon, who had injured himself while moving a glass table. The information we received was devastating — a wrist laceration through the me…
A holiday wish for lung cancer screening
In November, Mariah Carey defrosts for another holiday season with her iconic tune, “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” and social media floods platforms with content about Black Friday and the holidays. November is also Lung Cancer Awarenes…
The scientific race to defeat a deadly virus
An interview with David Quamman, author of Breathless: The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus. Rosenberg: After the publication of your 2012 book Spillover, in which the scientists you interviewed talked about expecting the “next big one,&#…
A careless misdiagnosis. A death. A lawsuit.
They loved long walks through the woods in California. They were sweethearts in high school through college. If they wanted to take a break from their walks, the dogs would gang up on them and insist on continuing. The trees, the skies, the quiet, the …
Protecting children from bad medical care
Unfortunately, at least from where I sit, suboptimal medical care seems to abound. And every encounter of my family members with the health care behemoth is an opportunity for them to become a recipient of it. When it comes to shielding them, I have ha…
By failing to discuss strangulation, we are failing our patients
Six seconds is the amount of time it would have taken for him to render me unconscious. Shortly thereafter, I might have lost my life. One month before I finally found the strength to leave an abusive ex-partner, he rushed at me with unexpected force d…
Managing key risk factors may lower your dementia risk
Close to 6 million adults in the U.S. are currently living with Alzheimer’s disease or a related form of dementia, according to CDC data. And that number will grow as the U.S. population ages. The number of people with Alzheimer’s and relat…
