When I served as president of the New Jersey Neurosurgical Society, I met a lot of people from around our great state. One question that I heard from many parents and coaches was, “After a concussion, when is it safe to let a student-athlete return to…
As a college freshman in 2012, my life seemed perfect. I was attending Rhodes College in Memphis, TN, with the dream of becoming a pediatric oncologist. To that end, I was serving as a volunteer, researcher, and clinical intern at the world-renowned St…
Stress! It is a fact of life for all human beings. Stress is a normal reaction — psychologic and physiologic — to the everyday demands of life. When your brain perceives a threat, the body reacts with a fight-or-flight response, releasing hormones, inc…
It was the last week of my EMS elective. I was incredibly lucky to ride with one of the EMS captains who was eager to take me to any call that sounded interesting. We were called to a possible stroke. An 82-year-old woman with sudden-onset unilateral w…
In medical school, you’re not taught how to give stellar patient presentations. Yes, you’re shown the traditional order of things: “Give an effective one-liner first, then tell the HPI [history of present illness] but only give pertinent info, etc.” Ju…
As my patients aged along with me, I noticed both the expected increased numbers of people with some form of dementia and even more patients who were worried about this topic. Unless you have been away on a ten-year safari, you are very aware that deme…
When a patient comes to me long after he or she suspects that something is amiss, I tell them, “I understand.” I know why they had ignored their tremors for too long. I understand why they had dismissed their balance issues as insignificant. Depictions…
Nothing quite catches our collective attention like clear and dire issues that need solutions and traumatic brain injuries (TBI), the leading cause of death and disability across all population demographics, are no exception. More and more research is …
Two prestigious medical journals published studies involving Alzheimer disease (AD) and amyloid beta in successive weeks; both were paired with guest expert commentaries (editorials). One editorial, about a drug study, also reviewed several other fail…
“As soon as I mentioned the ‘A’ word, I knew she would not be calling me back.” This was what one of the parents I met at my preschool told me about what it was like trying to register her son with autism in a non-specialized local communi…
