My patient was a young man who wanted to be placed back on buprenorphine. He had started using again. He often missed appointments, did not pick up phone calls. So when I saw him in the room, I masked my surprise. “What makes you want to start today?” …
Drinking the Kool-Aid Across the USA recently, demonstrators wielding, “Stop the madness! It is just a cold virus!” and “Let me work” signs, chanting “Freedom now” and “Fire Fauci,” dangerously demanded a…
Elise loves this book. The protagonist is a girl who, due to a desire to fit in with her friends, denies her love of lima beans. Camilla awakens with stripes on her skin, and no one can explain it. The doctors are called in, then the specialists. The s…
We all love a good conspiracy theory. Did a man really walk on the moon? Who really killed JFK? On and on. The medical conspiracy theories have also been around. The anti-vaccine movement has left many children vulnerable to preventable life-threatenin…
Like many physicians not initially on the front line of the COVID-19 pandemic, I watched with growing dread as stories from doctors and nurses started coming out from hot spots first in China then in Italy and then Seattle and New York. Seeing their fa…
One afternoon in clinic, I opened a patient’s chart for a telehealth visit. Within days of the COVID pandemic, all clinic visits had transitioned to telehealth. The young woman had sent a picture through the electronic medical record of a rash on her l…
My three-year-old daughter calls it “canolavirus.” To her, it represents the answer to a number of hitherto unprecedented events happening in her life at this time. Her physician mommy working from home for a number of weeks now. The last she remembers…
One of the great responsibilities in doctoring is alleviating suffering. That hasn’t changed. But the novelty of COVID-19 makes us uncertain as we care for our patients. Anxious even. We feel helpless watching people get ravaged with SARS-CoV-2. …
If you’re like me and you don’t live in a state that has already started re-opening, you are likely taking a lot of walks. Regardless of where you are in the U.S., I think we can all agree that if you cough or sneeze in any public setting, you automati…
I am a 41-year old physician in the Phoenix metropolitan area. In the course of several unforgettable weeks in March 2020, my life, like every American’s, had been drastically flipped on its head. While I feel fortunate to be able to continue to have e…
