When I was a child, I used to sometimes close my eyes and try to convince myself that I was someplace else. I would lie on the carpet of our living room, block out the sights and sounds and smells around me, and imagine that I was lying on the floor of…
As the pandemic loomed, there was widespread concern about running out of crucial medical resources, such as mechanical ventilators. We watched as the crisis escalated in Italy and elsewhere, where hospitals seemed overwhelmed. We prepared for the surg…
Troubled by the volume of patients dying before they could even be taken out of ambulances, a New York emergency physician recently ended her own life. Are we all just vital statistics, waiting to be calculated? COVID-19 has infected and killed more th…
I feel like I am reliving a bad dream. The race to find a treatment and/or cure to SARS-CoV-2 is reminiscent of decades of practicing gastroenterology while hepatitis C roamed the hospital wards as a death sentence for many. I found myself recently rec…
I am an orthopedic surgeon in New Jersey and recently started a new practice. Less than a week after starting, news of COVID-19 arriving in NYC was everywhere. My family, my hospital system, and the rest of the country was trying to get a handle on thi…
I was seven years old when I first got my heart broken. I was swiftly rebuffed by my second-grade crush, Brett who, upon getting gently pecked on the cheek by me one afternoon following recess, grimaced and began aggressively wiping off the invisible r…
As I stand in line at a Tampa Lowe’s today in the middle of a global pandemic, I cannot help but note the vast differences in people’s behavior around me. There is a complete dichotomy in the ways in which individuals are responding to COVID-19. Some c…
The reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic in the comprehensive psychiatric emergency program (CPEP) began insidiously, with an initial sense of unease. Patients are brought into CPEP when they pose a danger to themselves or others. Often they are brought b…
In the last six weeks or so, the practice of medicine has been turned topsy-turvy by the COVID pandemic. Those weeks seem like an eternity. We have been so consumed with testing and treatment coronavirus, flattening the curve, and figuring out how to …
As far as psychiatrists go, I admit I’m odd, even in a field known for its quirks. I’m fast-talking, irreverent, and most patients tell me I’m not what they expected, but they come back. I’m not for everyone, and that’s OK…
