It was my son’s birthday, and I wanted to give him a gift he would remember. He had written a story when he was seven years old about eating boogers. As a urologist, I can attest that this is not a healthy habit and do not recommend it. I helped …
Category: Pediatrics
Kids are not OK: Health care is failing them
Our medical system is failing our children. The rate of chronic diseases in children is skyrocketing. Obesity has increased. Behavioral health issues are at new highs, making suicide a leading cause of death in children. During the pandemic, rates of p…
A random act of kindness on a plane
My wife and I were on a short flight from Rome to Brindisi in the region called Puglia in the southern part of Italy last year. As we were starting to taxi down the runway, I heard a child crying a few rows behind us, but it was very different from a b…
Losing our most valuable non-renewable resource: physicians
Suppose you have watched the news, been on social media, or have had any conversations with others. In that case, it should not be a surprise that health care workers are physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted and extremely burned out. We are …
Autism spectrum disorder and the masks we wear [PODCAST]
This episode is sponsored by Athelas, the number one provider of remote patient monitoring. “In the ongoing saga of the pandemic, there is the debate whether to wear a mask or not. These are physical masks that temporarily hide our face, but we a…
COVID is not always mild in kids
Can we agree to abandon the notion that COVID in children is “mild?” At least, as a medical community? We are taught to look at the data and guide our patients based on evidence. And the fact is, in a single week in January 2022, nearly 1 million pedia…
Sometimes an ounce of compassion feels like a waterfall
My husband Jeremy and I stood just inside the entrance of the NICU, between the front desk where we used to get our bright orange stickers, permitting our entry as proud parents of Reed Robinson, Room 363, and the washing station, where we meticulously…
When doctors can’t hug
I stood outside the busy ICU room with Gregory’s mom, holding her hand and talking softly, while the team inside removed his breathing tube and prepared him for his final trip home. Gregory was dying from a devastating brain tumor with no known c…
Our patients become an inextricable part of our lives [PODCAST]
“The weekend after Isabelle’s discharge, I take my shoes outside onto the driveway. The sky is a brilliant blue, and green tinges of leaves poke through shells of buds; the wind slips through my fleece. I scrub the spots of blood with an antibact…
Screening for adverse childhood experiences in pediatric primary care made my job easier
When our pediatric clinic added the PEARLS (Pediatric ACEs and Related Life-events Screener) questionnaire to well-child visits, we were worried that we would uncover trauma that we didn’t know how to address. Our physicians feared that the volum…
