I remember my first visit home at the end of my second year of medical school. I’d just received my black doctor’s bag loaded with medical equipment. Like a 16-year-old with a new driver’s license, begging to do the very errands she’ll soon groan about, I went around my parents’ living room and took everyone’s blood pressure, looked in their ears and throats — and then made my “rounds” again.
While …
“What would you do if you were your doctor?” Mary asked me. Mary is my physical therapist and she was trying to figure out why the rehab after my shoulder surgery was progressing so slowly. A month after my operation I was still in pain and still not moving the joint well.
Without hesitation I replied: “I’d come up with a differential diagnosis.”
Differential diagnosis is a two word summary of how …
Let’s set aside for the moment the question of whether it’s appropriate to talk about gun control in the wake of the shootings in Aurora, Colorado (though I can’t think of a more appropriate time to talk about it). And let’s not consider whether it makes sense that it’s legal to buy thousands of rounds of ammunition on-line in the U.S, without any background check (though could it, really?) And …
One summer in college, when I couldn’t think of what else to do, I lived near campus in a punishingly hot walk up apartment, held down three boring jobs, and took intensive Latin. Every morning we met in a blissfully air-conditioned classroom–that was the upside!– to conjugate and decline: a whole year of Latin in 6 weeks. I remember nothing I learned, of course. I’m reminded of the great Woody …
Not long ago I fractured my shoulder and needed surgery. After the operation, my husband of 30 years did all the things a loving spouse would be expected to do: He fluffed my pillows and put toothpaste on my toothbrush (try doing that with one arm!) and overlooked my crankiness.
My husband also helped me in ways so fundamental to our status as a married couple that I barely registered them. …
I’m currently having a chance to do one of my least favorite things: be a patient. And the whole time, I’m missing no opportunity to declare what a bad patient I am. “I’m sorry I’m such a bad patient,” I said to the phlebotomist when I winced as she drew my blood. “I know I’m a bad patient,” I said to the x-ray technician who re-positioned my fractured arm. “We …
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