Tumor. Cancer. Surgery. Disorder. Disease. Treatment. Doctors have the responsibility to tell their patients “bad news” all the time. The “news” is not some abstract story that can be simply watched out of boredom or skimmed over with glazed eyes. The “news” is about one’s future of living or dying. Far more difficult to swallow…
“We don’t have time to wait for the ambulance to get here. We’ll just take her ourselves.” The nine-year-old, curled into a fetal position on the table, didn’t care which vehicle would be transporting her to the nearest trauma center. She just wanted the pain in her abdomen to go away, so she could go…
My College Writing assignment is due in two weeks. Feeling confident with the time remaining, I casually dismiss it and decide to watch the final game of the World Series, only to see the Nationals defeat the Astros in disappointment. One week later, I check the assignment again and decide to postpone it. Instead, I…
When Jason Dahlke, an emergency paramedic in Portland, Oreg., was called into an emergency call for a black man around 60 years complaining of extreme pain in his hands and feet, Dahlke “followed the standard procedure and gave the patient a blood glucose test” in which the test showed low blood sugar levels. Although he…
Mental health encompasses more than just clinically diagnosed conditions that don long, scientific titles. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, mental health is an umbrella term used to characterize any “condition that affects a person’s thinking, feeling or mood” (1). Mental health struggles can present in drastically different fashions for different populations. For…
“Know every student by name and by story.” Students at WashU have had the phrase engraved into their minds after hearing it many times over. However, while students know the phrase, do they truly understand it? While most people can learn someone’s name fairly easily, knowing their story is more complicated. A story can include…
Arachnophobia? A valid fear: the long legs and erratic movements of tarantulas are enough to send chills down my spine. Heights? Also reasonable— just the thought of bungee jumping makes my stomach queasy. But vaccination? It’s surprising that the agent responsible for eradicating such fatal diseases as smallpox is at the root of great controversy….
“I am not a disease,” as Nancy Mairs wrote in 1986 as a person living with Multiple Sclerosis. This syndrome is characterized for unknown causation and non-fatalness, bringing carriers a broad spectrum of symptoms, most of which involve exacerbation, the sudden onset of worsening, and the recovery from it (1).Diagnosing someone with MS can be…
We are facing an epidemic – one that, ironically, both damages our healthcare system and stems from the healthcare system itself. This epidemic is a large contributor to the variability of healthcare effectiveness, the perception of overall health status, and the presence of higher mortality rates. The system we initially established to help others is…
An alarmingly small fraction of physicians are familiar with the concepts of evolutionary medicine. Why? Because evolutionary medicine is rarely included, especially in the form of full courses treating the topic as a basic science, in medical schools. Nearly half, 48%, of North American medical school curriculum deans stated that they “anticipated igniting controversy at…