According to the WHO, 10 to 20 percent of COVID-19 patients experience lingering symptoms for several months following infection. What we know as long COVID is now termed post-COVID condition as of October 6. Post COVID-19 condition occurs in individuals with a history of probable or confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection, usually three months from the onset of COVID-19, with symptoms that last for at least two months and cannot be …
If you’ve ever been in a serious accident or traumatic event leaving you with one or multiple injuries, you’ve probably met the rehab doctors a few times. Physical medicine and rehabilitation (PM&R, also called physiatry) is a branch of medicine geared towards helping people heal and adapt to new circumstances after their diagnosis using medications and rehab.
Here, I want to share three ways a physiatrist can be your advocate after …
An excerpt from The Empathy Effect: Seven Neuroscience-Based Keys for Transforming the Way We Live, Love, Work, and Connect Across Differences.
“Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.”
What picture do you see when you read this quote from Mother Theresa? Do you see an orphaned child living in poverty? Or, maybe a homeless person begging on …
The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has made believers out of us. The statements “I believe in science” and “follow the science” express our collective assurance that scientific innovation will continue to serve humanity and sustain us through our pandemic weariness.
Historically, our scientific pursuits have catalyzed both extraordinary accomplishments and unimaginable atrocities. The line between the two is thin and the guardrails that protect against crossing this line are easily corroded. As a …
It’s been in the news that several telehealth companies are offering patients access to the anti-parasite drug ivermectin, which while rumored by some to be an effective treatment for COVID-19 is unproven. As coronavirus deaths in the United States continue to rise, tracking at over 650,000 deaths to date and hovering around 1,500 each day, we need to remain hopeful, of sound mind. Most importantly, we need caregiving and doctoring …
An excerpt from The Addicted Child: A Parent’s Guide to Adolescent Substance Abuse.
How do you know if your teen has a substance problem? The inability to control substance use despite negative consequences is a classic definition of a severe substance use disorder. But substances aren’t the only thing afflicting adolescents. Another dangerous behavior is invading the adolescent population: process disorders. …
Currently, there is an outcry against the pressures of breastfeeding, with an underlying backlash against the stigma of bottle feeding. Commercials from formula companies, such as Bobbie, are playing at the hearts of struggling breastfeeding mothers. Touted as an organic European formula comparable with breastmilk, Bobbie is the solution. Famous stars, like Queer Eye’s Tan France, emphatically narrates his decision on choosing formula over donor milk for their family. Over …
Where do I begin? Maybe at the beginning.
Let’s start with the degradation and devaluation of nurses across this country.
For decades, I lived the devaluing of nurses. Daily huddles from our nurse managers, ER nurses, ICU nurses, and behavioral health nurses. Emails and huddles about downsizing. Nurse-patient ratios. Decreasing nursing staff and increasing patients. ICU nurses typically had a 2:1 ratio and, depending on the patient’s acuity, a 1:1 ratio. But …
Mary (identifying information changed) was extremely pleasant, to say the least.
By the time I met her on the senior unit, she had seemingly befriended even the orneriest of our geriatric patients. She wandered and danced about the unit, speaking with each fellow patient she encountered in a style one nurse called “cheerfully mad.”
Her strategy, maximalist and crude but stunningly effective, was to talk your ear off in a joyful stream …
I’m usually good with words. The last year and a half of being a “front line nurse” has left me struggling to find the words. The frustration, anger, trauma, and sadness have so muddied my mind that I find it hard to sort through all of the complexities and put a name to them.
A patient told me the other day, “I know at least 60 people who have had COVID, …
You know that if you don’t get vaccinated and you don’t wear a mask, you potentially will die.
You go to super spreader events, big groups at beaches, football games, baseball games … loads of people laughing and clapping, and shoulder to shoulder.
Your refusal of the mask and COVID vaccination almost seems like a passage. Beating your chest. The survivor. It won’t happen to me.
Until you can’t breathe anymore. Delta doesn’t …
Prevention
Our most effective weapons are lockdowns, masks, distancing, ventilation and vaccination, but we can also protect close patient contacts pharmacologically. Subcutaneous REGEN-COV (Regeneron’s monoclonal antibody combo, casirivimab plus imdevimab) lowers the rate of illness by a whopping 81.4%. This has been known since April and blessed by the FDA in July, but has yet to catch on.
Outpatient therapy
A year and …
Wood art
The taxing journey of going through an illness often has the turning point of hearing a “diagnosis.”
Diagnosis locks a person inside a sick body. Diagnosis is a label that dictates certain behavior in an individual and the whole circle of people around that person, including family members, workplace, health care providers, and insurance companies. Diagnosis is a journey from diagnostic …
As a pulmonary and critical care doctor and the mother of three children too young to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, life has been harrowing. At the beginning of the summer, however, I was beginning to breathe a sigh of relief. My children had been in school last spring, and by the heroic efforts of their amazing teachers and staff, completed the school year free of sickness or quarantine from COVID-19. …
By now, many of you would have read my article, “Who needs scientists? It’s not like we listen to them anyway.” So, let me tell you another fiction story. But, first, I need to give you some background to this story.
Many of you would know about the theory of evolution by natural selection and how it explains the diversity we see today. It’s an excellent idea, and …
“Children don’t get as sick with COVID-19” and “only children with comorbidities get very sick from COVID-19” are two statements that have concerned me during the pandemic. They have been used as statements to support loosening COVID-19 prevention measures for children, like wearing masks, and rationalizing arguments opposing vaccinating children against COVID-19. It is true that children, for the most part, do not get as sick from COVID-19. Nevertheless, while …
I used to think, “I had COVID. I don’t need a vaccine… not for now at least, and maybe not ever.”
November 2020: I was a few hours into my 12-hour shift in the emergency department. I had been treating COVID at every shift for about 10 months at that point, and I knew what I was feeling now was more than just fatigue. I took a swab and went into …
I go to the hospital cafeteria to unwind from this night — another unpredictable one with irrational patients that randomly attempt to assault the staff.
This time, they missed. Behavioral health. Land of the psychotics and schizophrenics. But an incredible staff to work with.
This song blares out. “Easy Like Sunday Morning.” And I know that nothing is “easy” anymore.
I’ve heard it all about COVID vaccinations:
“It’s my body.”
“It’s not FDA-approved.”
“I have natural …
Award-winning actress Christina Applegate revealed on social media that she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS). “It’s been a tough road. But as we all know, the road keeps going,” wrote Applegate in a tweet.
Multiple sclerosis is a neurological autoimmune disease that has puzzled patients and health care providers for decades. The disease was first described by the French physician Charcot in the 1800s in the original report “sclerose …
I’m confused and disillusioned. When we were in the throes of the COVID pandemic at the beginning of this year, the talk revolved around when life-saving vaccines would become available for the general public. Thankfully, beginning during the first quarter of this year and continuing through present times, the COVID vaccine is being administered to all who wish to secure it. But unfortunately, in many states across our country, some …
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