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In this episode, we welcome Diana M. Girnita, a rheumatologist and founder and CEO of Rheumatologist OnCall. We discuss the challenges facing patients with arthritis and the shortage of rheumatologists. Despite the growing need for specialized care, …
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In this episode, we have a special guest, Laura Fernando, a patient advocate, who shares her heart-wrenching story of her daughter Lily’s medical journey with COVID-19 and other health conditions. Joining her and Lily is Linda Bluestein, …
It’s been over ten years since my life changed forever. In 2012, I was out to dinner with a friend when I developed a rash across my face. Little did I know, this was an early sign of what would soon be a life-altering discovery; I have lupus. Receiving this diagnosis was both challenging and overwhelming and showed me the importance of being your own advocate. It took a fainting …
Social media has really exposed the trauma caused by gaslighting, dismissal, and misogyny by medical professionals. Chronic illness groups are rife with posts recounting the poor treatment they suffered at the hands of doctors. Imagine presenting with extreme fatigue, intermittent balance problems, and tingling in your hands and, after a cursory exam, being told your symptoms are due to stress and to lose weight. Two years later, you are diagnosed …
My first job as a “real” doctor was in 1991.
During one of those early days in my career, one of my coworkers — a woman who worked in reception — approached me for help. Even then, I could recognize a look of desperation. It reminded me of the look I saw in my sister when all she could do to lessen the pain she had suffered for so long was …
It was the best of medical encounters; it was the worst of medical encounters. But it is indeed a story of how two physicians viewed the same situation very differently, and how one brought trauma to a young patient, and one (two) brought healing to that very patient with the same set of information.
My daughter was a healthy and vibrant 12-year-old when she first had COVID in June 2020. She …
Rheumatoid arthritis is a common autoimmune disease affecting approximately 1.5 million people only in the United States. The most common symptoms that will bring patients to the doctor are:
Unfortunately, rheumatoid arthritis is not only a disease of the joints. Chronic, ongoing inflammation …
From an Indian parable dated from before 500 BCE:
A group of blind men heard that a strange animal, called an elephant, had been brought to the town, but none of them were aware of its shape and form. Out of curiosity, they said: “We must inspect and know it by touch, of which we are capable.” So, they sought it out, and when they found it they groped about it. …
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“ME/CFS is a complex multi-system illness that destroys lives (essentially killing the person yet leaving them alive). It leaves patients with unimaginable fatigue, post-exertional malaise (meaning that minor exertion makes them feel worse), cognitive deficits, cardiovascular dysfunction, …
Medical school, residency, and fellowship taught me pathophysiology, diagnosis, and the most advanced treatments for autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis. As an attending physician, seeing my own patients, I noticed that targeted therapy is not able to control the disease in all patients with rheumatoid arthritis. The results varied. I could not stop asking myself, why is it so different?
In my previous article, I wrote about one of my patient’s …
At her Supreme Court confirmation hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson recounted a story from her time as a college undergraduate. She recalled being a freshman at Harvard after having attended public school in Miami, Florida, and her transition to life at the university had been challenging, causing her to question if she belonged at the school and if she could succeed. She was …
Five years ago, I met a patient that changed my view on practicing traditional medicine, especially when it comes to rheumatology. For years, I was proud to be in a booming field that provided patients with a new therapy every few years. As a physician and scientist, I believe that targeted therapy offers tools to treat patients like never before, but I have noticed that results vary over time.
Daniel was …
“If your shoulder were really injured, that maneuver would make you scream in pain,” he told me confidently.
My husband and I recently established care with a new family doctor. I was frightened and scarred from a long history of medical gaslighting that still tightens my throat whenever I meet a new physician.
Will this doctor believe me? Will he understand?
Years of dismissal made me wary of a new start, but we …
Three years ago, I was a physician in the “traditional” medical system seeing 25 to 28 patients every day. I spent hours writing notes to provide proper documentation for the correct billing code. Often, my time was spent calling insurance companies to justify the appropriateness of my medical care. More and more hours were spent on completing tasks for insurance companies rather than patient care. Like many of my colleagues, …
Yet again, while reading an article about fibromyalgia, I was hit with another pejorative term in the first few lines. The authors describe the usual characteristics of fibromyalgia and then say, “and a high level of catastrophizing related to pain.”
If you do a Google search for “catastrophizing,” it tells you that it is “a way of thinking that assumes things are worse than they are or will have a far …
Joint pain, nausea, dizziness, bloating, palpitations, urticaria, headache, and fatigue. Surely this must be a list of the chief concerns for each of your first eight patients for the day.
No, these chief concerns all belong to your very first patient of the day. A new patient is scheduled for a 20-minute slot.
How will you possibly get out of the room in time? How can you ever help this young woman? …
As a clinician, you likely do not have the luxury of playing “Dr. House.” Patients enter your exam room, long story in hand, with a litany of mysterious symptoms involving every bodily system, and you were already massively overbooked. Your patient leaves the encounter no closer to answers despite your best attempts which involved you spending far more time on their assessment than your crazy office schedule allows.
Your staff becomes …
The new reality of medical conferences shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic requires a new language and a fundamental rethink to make these major showcases of medical organizations and societies a place where physicians and patients can share their experiences and perspectives.
We can no longer characterize medical conferences as – in the words of an old Jimmy Buffet tune – “a Holiday Inn full of surgeons” who meet there every year …
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