My husband and I travel internationally at least three times a year to give courses with live surgical demonstrations of colorectal conditions in children.
During the past 13 years making those trips, we had our share of hearing the famous announcement in the plane: “Is there a doctor on board?”
Those have happened in many different scenarios including having been on call the night before and therefore being on an almost semi-coma …
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Last week, Lais and Yuri, our five-year-old twins, were volunteers at the school of medicine, for students to learn how to examine children.
Full disclosure: Volunteers do get a gift card. Therefore, I asked them if they wanted to “work and get some money,” and I also told them what they would have to do during that afternoon. They both said yes, and they were truly excited about the opportunity.
When I saw …
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During my flight from Denver to Japan, I watched a movie called Un Traductor. It is a true story directed by the children of the couple who are the main characters in the movie. The reason why I chose this movie was that there was a Brazilian actor in it. Even so, I was not expecting to enjoy it as much as I did.
The story takes place in Cuba, and …
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Yesterday, I had an eye-opening experience that made me reflect once again about relationships.
During the afternoon, I had to attend a mandatory trauma simulation event. Since I am a surgeon, I am referring to physical traumas like traffic or firearms accidents, and just to be clear — psychological traumas are not included in these groups, even when I firmly believe that some of them would justify such an efficient and …
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During my pediatric surgery training, I could easily point out which was the hardest day for the three fellows that were under training on that specific year. It was late evening when I received a call that one of our patients had coded. I was at home, and the drive usually took me exactly seven minutes.
Due to social reasons, this patient was in the hospital with us for months (at …
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