I’ve been out of medicine a little over a month now. The first couple of weeks were crazy; I ran right to Boston to my MFA residency, and was too busy to really process much. When I got home, there were a lot of people and things to catch up with, and…
“Alice Woods” is dying of metastatic breast cancer, but she cares little for awareness efforts like pink ribbons and catchy hashtags like #stage4needsmore. You see, Alice has akathisia due to an adverse effect from discontinuing Klonopin — a condition …
Burnout and dealing with its symptoms has become a hot topic in the last decade. It’s a problem that has multiple contributing factors. Some of those factors are thrust upon us and are beyond our control, such as government regulations. Other factors a…
Imagine being a cancer patient afraid of seeing an oncologist because they would likely need to discuss chemotherapy and all the lifestyle changes that it entails. Imagine being a patient with heart failure afraid of seeing the cardiologist because the…
College students work hard, and many are looking for ways to improve their studying and learn more effectively. Getting more sleep and more exercise would probably help, but up to a third are trying ADHD medications to see if pills can give them that e…
I didn’t know that he and I were on the same train. At the Othello stop, I got out of the last car and walked towards the front of the train. The morning chill seeped through my coat and I slid my hands into my pockets. “Dr. Yang!” The doors of the tra…
I don’t know how many times a patient has told me, “I was in therapy once, and it didn’t help.” My response is always: “That’s like saying ‘I saw a movie once and I didn’t like it’.” That usually breaks the ice just a little. In primary car…
A few months ago, I was having lunch with a friend. He mentioned a recent outpatient surgery that he had and indicated that upon being discharged, he was given a prescription for 30 pain pills. Although the recovery was uncomfortable, the pain was not …
The nights from that time run together in my memory: The cuffs of my scrub pants getting caught on the heels of my clogs because my pants were sagging; stuffing dry graham crackers I stole from the nursing stations into my mouth at 4 a.m. to stay awake…
An excerpt from How to Be Sick: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill and Their Caregivers (Second Edition). Copyright 2018 by Toni Bernhard. Excerpted with permission from Wisdom Publications. In the years since I’ve been chronically ill, more essential to me than formal meditation has been mindfulness outside of meditation. Mindfulness refers to paying attention […]
