How 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…
Comments closed**update March 27, 2022: Awarded the 2021 Doximity Op-Med Editor’s Pick** originally published on Doximity’s Op-Med under the title When a Patient Wants to ‘Try Everything,’ Including Pseudoscience My patient* wanted to “do everything.” To her, this meant flying to another state and paying out-of-pocket for I.V. alternative therapy. Her cancer was rare, and the…
Comments closed(on why anyone would choose to be an oncologist) Oncologists are often asked our motivation for entering the specialty. My standard response is to smile, and state that I followed a calling. But to explain that calling is a longer story that I’ve never shared. Twenty years later, here is my first attempt to do…
Comments closedupdate 11/2020: recipient of an Honorable Mention Award in the 2020 Writer’s Digest Writing Competition (print/online article category)! My patient is middle-aged, morbidly obese, with undiagnosed (until now) alcoholic cirrhosis, and a vaguely documented history of cardiac disease—per the chart “noncompliant” with medications. “Noncompliant” in this case turns out to mean he had no insurance…
Comments closedA curated list of top 5 articles on physician burnout for the week of October 1, 2019, with a theme: the EHR.
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Spoiler Alert: Contains minor spoilers for the memoir “Educated” by Tara Westover “You seem very angry,” I say to my patient. It’s a basic technique in our physician tool chest, but I’d forgotten to try it—reflection. He hesitates. Surprise crosses his face. “I am,” he says. “But not at you.” I allow the space of…
Comments closedWelcome to Episode 4 of The Prior Authorization Games: where the odds are never in your favor. In this, Episode 4, I explore: What motivates doctor’s to work for insurance companies? And in case you missed the prior episodes of The Prior Authorization Games: Episode 1 Episode 2 Episode 3 The call rang through, and…
Comments closedIn a recent talk I gave for colleagues, I ventured outside the box. I searched for a metaphor to make cancer treatments easy to understand. Around the same time, it so happened my kids decided we needed to re-watch all of The Avengers movies at home. (in order – of course). Here’s where you get…
Comments closedIn celebration of Valentine’s Day this week, it seemed fitting to put together a post on the concept of love in medicine. Only…there’s not many of us out there writing on the topic. After a google search of “love in medicine” and “love and doctoring”, I found the following three posts, and have included one…
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