Coronavirus has officially hit the United States. The estimated numbers of infected are likely a gross underestimate of the actual number of cases, as the U.S. has only tested a small proportion of the population. Researchers at Johns Hopkins estimate …
Serving others My career path has been non-traditional, but my mission and values as a psychiatrist emerge from the traditions of medicine and religion. Although I studied visual arts in college, I was drawn to the challenge and meaning of a career ser…
We have lost our chance to contain this pandemic and are now facing an unmitigated medical disaster. This administration’s response has actively undermined our ability to care for patients by perpetuating misinformation and downplaying the looming thre…
I have bled out during emergency surgery and been revived by the expert trauma and transplant team who raced into my operating room. I have had liter upon liter of donated blood transfused into my grey lifeless body. I survived months on a ventilator i…
I wish that I didn’t have the experience of working 34 years as a nurse. I know the big picture in a hospital. A recent article stated that the Twin Cities, where I live, has 500 ICU beds, 450 ventilators. As of last Friday, those were 95 percent…
Obesity is a topic that literally hits home for me. For the past two years, the website WalletHub has voted the McAllen-Edinburg-Mission TX metroplex as the “fattest city in America.” As a health care provider, this is deeply disturbing because it pu…
In the midst of this coronavirus pandemic, a friend of mine relayed a troubling story to me recently. My friend is a dermatologist who is 9-months pregnant, living and working in a county with no known community spread of the novel coronavirus. After s…
My dad was a baseball enthusiast and a connoisseur of fried calamari and dark chocolate. He had a genius-level IQ and knew the answers to obscure Jeopardy questions. He would beat you at any trivia game. He was an avid reader, typically reading at l…
“I’m not impressed with his pain.” “I only give Norco if I see a bone sticking out.” “She says her pain is a 10/10 but …” On any given shift in the emergency room, I hear some version of these said by res…
These are interesting times. Our schools are shut down. Transportation halted. Businesses shuttered. Public spaces abandoned. Cities locked down. Stock markets crashing. It is the greatest disruption to life we have faced since 9/11, and this wi…
