When a patient comes to see me for a migraine headache, I know that they will leave feeling 100 percent better. They will finally be rid of that pounding, nauseating pain in their head, and they will be happy. And that makes me happy. Doctors derive gr…
“You’re 27-and-a-half weeks pregnant.” As I lay on the exam table, time froze. How can this be? I wondered dazedly. I’m a second-year medical student. I’ve just completed a course in female reproduction and endocrinology. …
Early into my career as an emergency physician, I was seated in the department with a colleague when I inquired about one of our co-workers I had not seen in a while. “Oh, she’s on the mommy track,” my colleague said and picked up ano…
The sound of a clock, hung haphazardly on a colorless cold wall, ticks repetitively — tick, tick, tick. Time continues to pass as my appointment scheduled for three hours ago seems like it will never come. I scheduled this appointment three month…
The Washington Post ran this headline: “’Horns’ are growing on young people’s skulls. Phone use is to blame, research suggests.” The headline is entirely correct except for a few minor points: They’re not horns, which point up from the forehead. They’r…
I’ve been living with chronic pain for more than a decade. It began in 2009 with nerve damage after emergency groin surgery. Four years later, I fell and hit my head. That fall led to a constant headache, a whistling sound in my ear, back and hip pain,…
It was a simple chief complaint: sore throat and fever. As expected, the little girl’s rapid Strep was positive. Instructions given. Antibiotics sent. This was Peds 101. But for some reason, before mom walked out the door, she made mention of their sta…
Since starting medical school, I have struggled to answer this question. Because medical school is everything. It’s amazing, challenging, soul-sucking, life-giving, exhausting, dream-fulfilling, anxiety-provoking, interesting, and, dare I say, fun? How…
The science of complexity lays a conceptual foundation for understanding “complex adaptive systems.” What all complex adaptive systems have in common is that they are all bound by the same set of physical laws. Their “behavior,”…
One question I get asked a lot lately is this: “Is it OK for me to use CBD oil?” First of all, CBD oil and associated preparations are types of alternative medications, medicines that might not be mainstream or readily prescribed by doctors, but are n…
