Thank you to CLOSLER for allowing me to contribute my essay of a “day in the life” reflection on rural oncology practice. “With the broken healthcare system crumbling, rural outpatient pharmacies shutting down, and labs and urgent cares intermittently closed due to staffing shortages, it’s easy to feel that the dwindling resources mean even our best is too little…
Comments closedAbout five years ago, I did the first public reading of my non-academic writing. I was a 40-something-year-old physician, and I was terrified. It was at a narrative medicine event, and I’d been selected to read one of my personal essays. A few days earlier, an experienced performer had given me some pointers. Identified which…
Comments closedI haven’t done one of these year-end round-ups before, but given 2022 marked the five year anniversary of the blog, it seemed a good year to start. For each post, I’ve selected a favorite passage to highlight (different from the preview passage you’ll see on the home page). First, the top five most read blog…
Comments closedOriginally published on Medscape Blogs on June 8, 2022 Last week, after the multiple recent tragedies in our nation, I found myself turning to my laptop to write the feelings that were too big. But instead of my usual prose essay form, what came out was a poem. I also had been thinking a lot…
Comments closed“We only want to hear positive information.” “Don’t tell him about his prognosis.” “We don’t want to hear any doom or gloom.” This is what it’s like to be a cancer physician in America. As a medical oncologist, I spend much of my time helping people navigate the (for many) uncharted waters of uncertainty and…
Comments closedThere is a two-lane bridge in my town. It is quaint and picturesque, and when we first moved here, I would gaze out at the water as I drove, letting my mind wander along with the seagulls drifting alongside the car. Until one day, crossing back over, I passed a school bus stopped in the…
1 CommentOn my way to work, I drive by an abundance of water — a bay that changes with the seasons’ moods. Some mornings, the wind whips up tall waves, and I grip my steering wheel against the gusts that shake my car. Other mornings, the wind is absent, and the water placid and smooth. On…
Comments closedMany of us, if not all, learned in our medical training about the Kübler-Ross five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about grief during the pandemic and how it seems that what we might be missing is collective grief. But what could collective grief look like for the world?…
Comments closedHow body image and unhealthy societal ideals affect women undergoing cancer treatment “I want to stop this treatment.” These are not the words I’m expecting to hear from my patient. She has advanced stage IV cancer, and the third-line endocrine (antihormonal) therapy I recommended a few months ago is working. The imaging shows a significant…
Comments closedAs a medical oncologist, science denialism from my patients is all too familiar to me. Cancer misinformation is, unfortunately, endemic in our society. After 18 years as a cancer doctor, it sadly doesn’t come as a surprise anymore when a patient declines treatment recommendations and instead opts for “alternative” treatment. When it happens, I explain…
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