Over the past few days, I have read numerous articles reflecting on 2025: what people achieved, what they lost, how many books they read, and how they touched the lives around them. I found myself lingering on them, thinking, reflecting. But today, I want to pause on something closer to home: my first day of this new year, January 1, 2026.
I am sitting in the library, one of my favorite …
An excerpt from From Both Sides of the Curtain: Lessons and Reflections from an Oncologist’s Personal Breast Cancer Journey.
The mammography waiting room always played HGTV. I had been in this space countless times before, having started routine screening at the age of 40. I always booked the first appointment of the day because I knew all too well how easily schedules could get backed up. Like clockwork, the tech …
I am a 45-year-old Black woman. I learned in early 2025 I was going through perimenopause. As I experienced what was my new norm of mood changes, anxiety, migraines, and once again heavier periods, I found vitamins to help with some of my perimenopause symptoms, but not all. I decided to make an appointment with a gynecologist.
I made an appointment with the first available GYN since I hadn’t seen my …
When a child dies under the supervision of the care system, the public response is often immediate and visceral. Media headlines demand answers. Prosecutors search for accountability. And very quickly, attention narrows to a single figure: the frontline social worker.
In recent child protection cases, the dominant questions have sounded strikingly similar. Why did they not notice earlier? Why did they not visit more often? Why did they not intervene?
These questions …
In functional and integrative psychiatry, patterns start to announce themselves long before they show up in guidelines.
Over the past several months in my clinical practice, I have diagnosed celiac disease in multiple young adult men who presented not with diarrhea, abdominal pain, or weight loss, but with psychiatric and cognitive symptoms: chronic low mood, brain fog, fatigue, poor motivation, memory issues, and anxiety. Neither had prominent gastrointestinal complaints. Both had …
As physicians, we spend our careers believing that if we gather enough data, follow the guidelines, and monitor closely, we can stay one step ahead of disease. We reassure patients that early detection saves lives. We quote statistics, interpret lab values, and project confidence. Nothing dismantles that illusion of control quite like becoming a patient.
I have written before about my prostate cancer journey, before the surgery, after the surgery, and …
Many women entering perimenopause struggle to put words to what they are experiencing. They often say, “I don’t feel like myself anymore,” even when they can’t identify a single symptom that feels concrete or diagnosable. Emotionally, something feels different. Physically, their bodies feel unfamiliar, more aches, more pains, weight changes, or a sense that it’s harder to “get back on track.” Cognitively, many notice brain fog or a lack of …
Over the past decade, nutrition culture has increasingly revolved around a single macronutrient: protein. Popular media, fitness culture, and everyday health conversations often frame higher protein intake as a universal good, synonymous with strength, longevity, and metabolic health. In the process, many foods that once formed the foundation of balanced eating (whole grains, legumes, vegetables, and healthy fats) are quietly sidelined or dismissed.
Protein is essential. That point is not in …
As health care writers and patient advocates, the authors are engaged in multiple projects intended to encourage major policy changes by highly resistant U.S. and state public health agencies. Misdirected policies and disinformation from these agencies are literally killing patients every day by denying them safe and effective management of agonizing pain, destroying the field of pain medicine, and criminalizing its practitioners.
This is institutionalized madness. It needs to stop. Now, …
I had been trying to write this story for a long time. The topic is so heavy that it took a great deal of courage and emotional strength to finally put it into words. This story is not about a patient; rather, it is about a caregiver.
I met Mrs. N. in 2020. She travelled from Gujranwala to Islamabad (a distance of 223 kilometers) to begin her treatment. Mrs. N. was …
Picture a “No Entry” sign or a speed limit. A simple red circle needs no translation for a driver in Tokyo, Tehran, or Toronto. That’s more than just convenience; it’s a global safety net.
But in health care, where a misunderstanding can be deadly, our communication hasn’t kept up. We still rely overwhelmingly on words, pages of dense text handed to patients who are stressed, exhausted, older, or struggling with a …
We owe patients a better explanation about food.
The food didn’t change. The world did, and our guidelines followed.
For many patients, dietary advice feels less like science and more like whiplash.
Their breakfast looks the same. Their milk is the same. Their daily habits are exactly where they left them. What shifts, sometimes violently, is the label we attach to it: healthy, unhealthy, recommended, discouraged.
Consider milk
For decades, we told patients to switch …
Few things scare parents faster than seeing blood where it doesn’t belong.
Maybe your child took a hard fall off a bike. Maybe there was a rough sports collision. Maybe it was a car accident, and everyone is still shaking. Then a nurse asks for a urine sample, or your child goes to the bathroom and you notice pink or red in the toilet.
Your mind immediately goes to the worst place.
As …
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For those who know me personally, you know that I have vitiligo. Vitiligo is an autoimmune disease affecting the skin, where there are patches of depigmentation (the skin appears white or pink). It is sometimes associated with other medical conditions.
I met someone recently and they said that they were curious about my skin. I am used to looks or questions and am happy to educate people about vitiligo, so I …
When clinicians think about stroke recovery, attention often focuses on motor deficits, speech impairment, and the risk of recurrent cerebrovascular events. Cognitive outcomes, however, are frequently treated as secondary or inevitable consequences rather than primary targets of intervention. This oversight carries consequences. Post-stroke cognitive impairment (PSCI) is common, persistent, and one of the strongest predictors of long-term disability, institutionalization, and caregiver burden, yet it remains under-recognized in routine care.
As acute …
The years pass without ceremony.
They do not always announce themselves.
Sometimes they slip by like quiet weather,
like afternoons we cannot later recall
except by the way the light
once rested against a wall.
Time moves like autumn wind,
unannounced,
persistent,
tender in its own indifferent way.
A milkweed stands in a field,
having grown tall without noticing
the exact moment it became mature.
Its green has deepened,
its stem stiffened with understanding.
Now the wind arrives,
and the pods open
not in grief,
but in readiness.
Each …
Emergency medicine trains clinicians to recognize patterns early, anticipate deterioration, and intervene before outcomes become irreversible. We pride ourselves on seeing what others miss. Yet we are repeatedly instructed, explicitly or implicitly, to ignore the largest pattern of all. Political decisions consistently and predictably shape who arrives in our emergency departments, how sick they are, and how unsafe the environment becomes for the people expected to care for them.
If political …
In recent years, medicine has become more open about burnout, workforce shortages, and the challenges facing women in health care leadership. We write about mentorship programs, leadership pipelines, and the need to bring more women into ownership and executive roles. We celebrate women who build clinics, lead departments, and create space for others to rise.
What we talk about far less is what happens when women actually meet each other in …
In an increasingly digital world, older adults are often viewed as prime targets for financial scams. These malicious schemes exploit vulnerabilities inherent in aging, such as social isolation, cognitive decline, and trustfulness. As primary care physicians, we are in a unique position to recognize the signs of vulnerability in our older patients. Understanding the methods employed by fraudsters, the impact on victims, and how to educate them on preventative measures …
Throughout contemporary medical discourse, health disparities among racial and ethnic groups are often attributed to systemic and structural racism. Furthermore, organizations such as the American Medical Association assert that race itself is a social construct and urge a shift away from viewing race as a “biological risk factor” toward a “deeper understanding of racism as a determinant of health.” Unfortunately, this framing rings hollow and obscures an important …
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