It feels like a large splinter jammed under my left thumbnail. From my thumb and forefinger, the skin burns in a strip up to my elbow. Recent shoulder surgery has left nerve damage, not uncommon. During the day, it’s a distraction; at night, much worse. Before bedtime, I swallow two 5 mg oxycodone. At 3 or 4 AM I jolt awake—my arm has turned into an alien serpent, its fangs sunk in my shoulder. . . . → Read More: Don’t Take Away My Oxycodone!
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My brother and I turn, and there is my husband Tom, crumpled in the gutter, a pool of blood spreading under his head. Call 911! In five minutes, there are – count them – three police cars, two fire engines, and a passing Good Samaritan doctor. . . . → Read More: Pearidge, Trauma ; 99 to 1; and The Self-Made Myth Starting in the Colonial Era, New York, Boston and Philadelphia required all fresh meat to be sold by licensed butchers in regulated public markets. New York abandoned public markets in the 1840’s, with disastrous effects on public health. A working paper[1] by economic historian Gergely Baics lays out the story: Travel back in time to 1811, the . . . → Read More: From Public Meat Markets to Derivatives Markets: A Lesson from Old New York David Goldhill’s father, 83 but still working, walked into a non-profit Manhattan hospital with pneumonia. Five weeks later he was dead from hospital-borne infections. Appalled by the negligence and primitive record-keeping of a top-rated hospital, Goldhill spent two years researching the US health system. The September Atlantic features Goldhill’s report on how . . . → Read More: Getting Health Care Incentives Right In the June 1 issue of the New Yorker, Dr. Atul Gawande investigates “The Cost Conundrum”: why some cities in the USA have much higher medical costs per person, and often poorer outcomes. He lands in the dusty border town of McAllen, Texas, located in the lowest income county in the US. . . . → Read More: Collaborative Medicine Two years ago, an urgent call from my father: My mother, then 84, was ill. Gray skin, sunken eyes, confused. At the hospital, her blood tests showed abnormally high levels of calcium. She had calcium poisoning. Calcium poisoning? Six weeks prior, it turned out, the family doctor had instructed her to start . . . → Read More: How Doctors Think, by Jerome Groopman M.D. My mother is eighty-six. Other than needing a walker, she’s in good shape. Two months ago my father fell, confining him to bed on the top floor of their three-story townhouse. With my encouragement, my parents put a deposit on an apartment in Grand Oaks, a posh “assisted living” complex for well-to-do . . . → Read More: Stumbling on Happiness, by Daniel Gilbert My father is 96. A month ago, he shuffled around the house, up and down the stairs, quite well by himself. Then, as he puts it, “I fell on my arse!” Oops! Compression fracture of the spine. Treatment: pain killers and bed rest. But, if he is ever to walk again, he must . . . → Read More: The Drug War Comes Home I remember, in the fourth grade, snipping colored feathers from construction paper to make my Indian bonnet. That was for the annual First Thanksgiving pageant. Dressed up as Indians and Pilgrims, we paraded around a table loaded with pies and a paper-maché turkey. We recited how the Pilgrims had landed at Plymouth . . . → Read More: The Plague before Thanksgiving |
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