How I long for the good old days of mom-shaming. Back then, you could tsk-tsk over any number of maternal decisions: breastfeeding or bottle-feeding; having children out of wedlock or in wedlock with another woman; staying at home, or working full time…
We are tired, overwhelmed, very committed, missing our families, and carrying each patient with us as we try to deliver excellent care in a very disorienting time. We worry about the health of our families and friends and community as well as our own h…
“There is no such thing as balance, just different degrees of imbalance at different times,” said the speaker. I was at a work-life balance panel for women in medicine during medical school. As a young woman just starting my medical training, I found t…
Now more than ever, children and adolescents need to continue receiving routine well-child visits and regularly scheduled immunizations. From the earliest onset of the COVID19 pandemic, there has been a significant decrease in the number of preventive …
“After almost 30 years in this profession, I have come to the conclusion that there is some truth to that, as no day or week passes that I do not have a depressed, anxious or suicidal teen on my ‘to see list.’ Could it be my own perso…
I lost my mom to breast cancer two months before finding out I was pregnant for the first time … with twins. Trying to navigate being a new mom of two without my own mom was ridiculously hard, both physically and emotionally. While I had help at …
Growing up in Puerto Rico, “babas” (bottles: biberón/botellas) and “bobos” (pacifiers: chupetes/chupón) were very common among the families and children of the island. I still remember our Abuelita giving us milk in our “…
It’s that wonderful time of year when new interns take their first steps into hospitals as practicing physicians One of us has just completed her intern year and the other quite a while back (but recently enough to still remember some of it), so we wan…
As a newly minted neonatal-cardiac intensivist, I was all ready to take on the world. I mean, caring for the babies with congenital heart disease (CHD), congenital diaphragmatic hernias (CDH) and all other congenital anomalies and premature birth. I wa…
An excerpt from A Country Doctor Writes: CONDITIONS: Diseases and Other Life Circumstances. “Welcome back. How was your trip? Or exile … you were away for a long time.” “Almost a year,” my nine o’clock patient answered. A woman just over forty, s…
