“As an oncologist, perhaps the hardest part I play is as witness. I am there to give a diagnosis that, more often than not, will alter someone’s life forever. For some, I see resignation—a sense that they’ve known something was wrong and that it’…
Category: Oncology/Hematology
Death is personal for this physician
An excerpt from Dying with Ease: A Compassionate Guide for Making Wiser End-of-Life Decisions. Used by permission of the publisher Rowman & Littlefield. All rights reserved. In 2017, there were 2,813,503 deaths in the United States. About a quarter…
Do COVID restrictions in the office negatively affect patients?
Many health care facilities are enacting policies during this time of COVID-19 that restrict the number of people attending appointments in person. Family care providers are asked to wait outside or drop off the patient for their appointment and come b…
Patients without traditional support systems, and the doctors who stereotype them [PODCAST]
“When doctors ignore the evidence showing that a support system doesn’t have to be traditional in order to be effective, that’s not a medical judgment. It’s a personal prejudice that puts singles at serious risk. Classifying patients as married o…
Sunscreens: The balancing act between safety and cancer prevention
That’s the question that will be on the minds of many as the Food and Drug Administration releases a second study on the absorption of sunscreens. The reality is that answering the “safe” question is becoming more complicated—and more important as well…
Why this physician created the Cancer and Pregnancy Registry
Breast cancer is the most common cancer diagnosed during pregnancy. In fact, 5 percent of invasive breast cancers occur in women less than 40 years of age, and 7 to 14 percent of premenopausal breast cancers occur in pregnant women. Harrington and othe…
The story of how a supportive residency program made a difference
An ecosystem of inpatient medicine moved at full speed around me as the news came in. It was the fall of my intern year, and my mother’s glioblastoma was back. Just months earlier, I had begun residency as a liability – a brand new, unproven doctor who…
Colorectal cancer screening: colonoscopy vs. Cologuard
When COVID-19 hit, routine cancer screenings nearly came to a halt. Now those postponed appointments and overdue tests will likely result in delayed cancer diagnoses. Now more than ever it’s an opportune time to educate the community about the importan…
Colorectal cancer screening: colonoscopy vs. Cologuard
When COVID-19 hit, routine cancer screenings nearly came to a halt. Now those postponed appointments and overdue tests will likely result in delayed cancer diagnoses. Now more than ever it’s an opportune time to educate the community about the importan…
A letter to my first patient
It was only my first week in the hospital as a third-year medical student when we met. I entered your room early Tuesday morning. Only knowing your chief concern, I knocked on your door and entered the room. You didn’t complain when I awakened yo…
