Reliable, Trustworthy Reporting, Capturing The Heartbeat Of Our Community
Reliable, Trustworthy Reporting, Capturing The Heartbeat Of Our Community
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Aristotle is said to have referred to the female as a mutilated male, and this philosophy seems to have carried forward into much more modern times. In 1977, official FDA guidelines recommended that women of “childbearing potential” be excluded from early stage clinical trials. Men, particularly white men, were considered the ideal model, from which the success and side effects of any particular treatment could be judged. Somehow, women’s menstrual cycles made them too difficult to study, while...
My mother had six siblings, 16 aunts and uncles and innumerable cousins. She was the first of them all to be diagnosed with breast cancer. I think of my mom every time one of my patients tells me they aren’t concerned about breast cancer because it doesn’t run in their family. Unfortunately, that is true of most people who are diagnosed with the disease. I also think of my mother every time I do a breast exam or teach someone else how to do a self exam. Her breast cancer was one not det...
If I asked you to name a chronic disease, you would probably think of conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer or dementia. The odds are, one of the most common chronic diseases would never cross your mind. Worldwide, this condition affects more than 3 billion people and causes significant physical and emotional suffering. Annually, it costs the American economy upwards of $45 billion in productivity. Our children miss nearly 35 million hours of school. Our emergency rooms field...
At my house, classic TV is a given. My 93-year-old father-in-law enjoys watching reruns of westerns, Perry Mason, Andy Griffith and Gomer Pyle. With these old favorites come commercials targeting an aging population: Medicare Advantage plans, reverse mortgages, and miracle solutions for neuropathy, with free consultations for the first 250 people who call. Every time we see one of these neuropathy advertisements, my father-in-law looks at me hopefully. His neuropathic foot pain has been...
One summer during my college years, I had a roommate who suffered from suicidal thoughts. She’d attempted suicide before we met, and been hospitalized, but continued to struggle. Back in the late 80s, there was very little public understanding of mental health issues and the stigma was even stronger than it is today. Our other roommate and I didn’t know what to do or where to turn. Not surprisingly, we didn’t handle it well. However, we did one thing right: we restricted access to lethal means....
It’s been a long time since I’ve worked in the ER, but some stories stay with me. One such story belongs to a woman in her early 30s. After a year of trying to conceive, she was finally pregnant. Then she started spotting. When she developed severe pain and almost fainted while putting their toddler to bed, her husband brought her to the emergency room. It didn’t take long for us to identify an ectopic pregnancy. The fertilized egg had implanted in her fallopian tube. Our obstetrician took...
