She was dead when we walked in the room. Lungs ventilated, kidneys dialyzed, on pressors to maintain enough tension within her blood vessels to keep blood traveling to her brain and with a tentatively beating heart, but dead, nonetheless. The microbes …
Narcissism is a term that has roots in Greek mythology, and as the story goes, a nymph named Echo fell in love with a handsome young man named Narcissus, who loved nobody but himself. Echo had previously been cursed by a vengeful goddess who took from …
I really shouldn’t complain. I haven’t lost my housing or job. I have plenty of food and toilet paper, and so far, no close friend or family have died from COVID. That said, this pandemic is hard. In fact, it is exhausting. During the spring and summer…
“Growing up, my family sheltered and protected me with everything related to vitiligo. People never really asked me what happened to my skin. And, if I did get questions, I honestly did not know how to answer them, so I would say ‘oh, they’…
When you’re applying to medical school, it’s remarkable how much four years or more of intense work can come down to one single day. The medical school interview is high stakes: studies have found that interview performance is the most important factor…
A few years back, I took care of a frail elderly gentleman who, accompanied by his wife, had come to the ER with an elbow injury after tripping over a curb in front of a local restaurant. They had been traveling from Buffalo to Cleveland and had stoppe…
I wake when the sky begins to darken. As the sun buries itself beneath the horizon, the hospital beckons. Nights bring a kind of calm. I find that wakefulness, while others sleep, grants me something sacred — time, untouched. Circadian rhythms align us…
By all appearances, I was just another sweaty-palmed medical student taking the first neuroanatomy exam of the semester. The stakes are high with every step toward becoming a doctor, but they were even higher for me that day. Failing the test would mea…
As the burden of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) plateaus into a perpetual state of public health emergency for 2020, examining the United States’ forgotten epidemic of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) offers insight to a COVID-19 solution. STIs…
“The daily email update on COVID-19 affecting our hospital system is a glaring reflection of the health disparities amongst those in marginalized groups. The farther south you go, generally in San Diego, the higher the number of socioeconomically…
