Below you'll find a list of all posts from May, 2020
One of the goals I’ve had since before our kids were born was to travel together as a family when they hit a certain sweet spot (able to handle intercontinental air travel; not yet adolescents). Now that we are in the window period, I’ve had to reconsider how to accomplish the same goals without leaving home. On the up side, …
Thanks to order to shelter in place, spring cleaning has arrived in our household with a rarely seen vengeance. Consequently, my office is in the thick of a massive decluttering effort. One of the casualties is the x-ray file I used to take out at parties. When you are an eligible resident in emergency medicine, you bring a certain cachet …
Maybe it’s an immigrant thing, viewing life through a lens of scarcity. There’s certainly a cultural dimension, an inheritance from serial generations bent on fostering a sense of inadequacy. They try so hard to resist, I know they do. Yet sometimes, without realizing it, they revert to the mother tongue, which is guilt. It plays out like this: Us (via …
At the recent WCI Con 20 (which overlapped with recognition that the US COVID pandemic had begun) I enjoyed Phil DeMuth’s lecture. I was pleasantly surprised that one of the goodies in the swag bag I took home was the revised 2020 edition of his book, The Overtaxed Investor. It’s broad scope and appropriate critiques of the new realities under …
When I started this blog, I was all over the FIRE bandwagon. I felt trapped by medicine, and was looking to load up, cash out and exit as quickly as was financially feasible. Something happened along the way to the early retirement component. Cutting back on my clinical time transformed medicine from a vindictive and jealous ex-mistress whose only objective …
The ED can be a challenging place to work. Patients are anxious, injured, in pain, and may have unrealistic expectations of the services we provide. A smaller number of patients are also drunk, high, or acutely psychotic. Captains of industry feel suddenly powerless to control their circumstances. Said captains are unaccustomed to the symphony that arises when one is situated …
For those in need of a family diversion, may I suggest the following: Take a blank sheet of paper and scribble about a dozen simple forms on it. Make a copy (by hand or with a printer) for each member of the household. This activity requires each person to have access to a digital device that can take photos. Assign …
Yesterday I had three end of life conversation in a single shift in the Emergency Department. I was in the “hot zone,” caring for suspected COVID patients, and all discussions involved goals of care for seniors in their late 70s, 80s and 90s. At the ripe age of 47, those in their 70s (my parents’ generation) do not seem as …