Memories, Medicine & Moods
Blogs
- 10/21/2024
New year, old stories
Deliver a baby, get screamed at, all before coffee. All in a holy day’s work - 8/27/2024
Things that could fall apart
When I was a medical student back in the late '70s, the gay people in my class kept a very low profile. They lived in fear of being outed which could have terrible consequences harassment, blackmail even being dismissed from the program. - 8/13/2024
Medical Student Disease changes with age, but doesn’t disappear
Being a physician is itself a risk factor for health anxiety. Before I started in medicine, I had the general obliviousness towards health which is the natural state of the average 22-year-old. Soon, however, that vanished. - 7/15/2024
You seem discouraged
For the majority of my practice, I've cared for marginalized populations, knowing everyone found this kind of work as rewarding as I do. But there consensus used to be that it needed to be done. Today, in Quebec, the message seems to be, if you don’t speak French, please die. - 5/15/2024
A box of dates
Becoming a mother is a rich and complicated source of emotions—including anxiety. - 5/1/2024
Numerators and denominators
‘Of course, we get all these patients, where the GP has completely missed all those symptoms,’ I heard a specialist say. Needless to say, I was fuming. - 2/16/2024
For the love of Spiderman (and the husbands who read his comics)
Two women, both confronting the untimely mortaility of their husbands, meet in a comic book shop and offer each other real support. - 1/23/2024
Please, please don’t ask me
I love being recognized on the street, especially by former patients. But lately, it’s a curse as everyone is begging and pleading for my help in finding a family doctor. - 1/7/2024
The holy grail of patient care
If you know the story of knights seeking the grail, you'll know the lesson Percival learns the hard way by failing to ask awkward questions. - 11/28/2023
Slipping
In the literature on medical errors there is a concept called the ‘Swiss Cheese Effect.’ This happens in real life, too. - 9/25/2023
Lessons on medical education from the tennis court
Last week, I was watching a learner doing a first prenatal visit. She was asking all the routine questions without preamble or explanation. I could see the couple getting more and more anxious. - 8/24/2023
Ethel Bruneau: An elegy to a dance legend
I delivered four of Suzanne's five children over the years—but her mother gave one of my children a magical gift, too.