I am overwhelmed right now. I know I am not alone. I hear it in the voices of my friends, family, colleagues, patients. We are all feeling it. I am overwhelmed by this virus. There is so much to learn, so much to teach. Every day the information change…
I am sitting on my living room floor, my back to the living room sofa, a sense of dread overcoming me as I realize that my call to 911 may be too late. I hear her muted voice with periodic pauses that allow her to catch her breath. All I can do is say,…
You are a physician. You have put in years of hard work and sacrifice getting here. Now what? Does your life look and feel exactly how you imagined it would? If not, what does your ideal life look like? Certainly, answers to this question are deeply pe…
To suggest that the impact of the novel coronavirus has been nothing short of devastating – from a health perspective, to the economy, to basic social interaction – would be the most striking understatement of the decade. Daily media viewing over the …
“Each patient I have seen over these four decades has made me a better doctor. Books do not impact long term memory the way a real patient can. I once heard the chair of medicine at a teaching hospital say that the worst thing about being on call…
As of October 2019, the small country of Lebanon began its descent into its worst economic collapse in modern history. Exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Lebanese currency has lost nearly 85 percent of its value on the black market, and the infl…
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the structure of many people’s households has changed dramatically. Young adults who were away at college had to return home when schools closed, and many will still be at home this fall as schools continue to limi…
I am exhausted. I’m a physician in the suburbs of Houston. The latest COVID-19 infection rates in the Houston area show a steep increase in rates since reopening in May. And it’s still rising. As an infectious diseases physician in the middle of this w…
“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…
I am a voyeur of human anatomy. Not in a perverse sense, but rather as part of my profession. In a single day, I can watch a heart beating in its chest cavity in one operating room, walk two doors down to view an exposed brain, and then cross the hallw…
