Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Uncategorized”
Status Interruptus combines the symptoms of status epilepticus (interminable shaking) and status asthmaticus (inability to breathe) into one largely debilitating condition preferentially affecting physicians – it’s two great tastes that taste great together! The incidence of this nefarious condition is on the rise, and I have a front row seat in the emergency department. It targets the ostensibly “nice” …
Bringing order to chaos and stamping out small fires as they occur in the emergency department turn out to be great preparation for family travel. It’s like any other shift, only it stains your regular clothes. As I write this on a plane in mid-June, we have just completed our second multi-generational family trip of the summer. The goal was …
My daughter, a budding third grade artist, has begun to reflect on what she likes to do and whom she looks up to as a source of career inspiration. A few weeks ago, without prompting, she announced she was going to become either a teacher or an artist. This led me to do some soul searching about what kind of …
Growing up with immigrant parents, you find that certain “old country” practices your folks learned as second nature don’t always translate so well in the new country. Some concepts that would be perfectly acceptable in the home country were a little off here in the U.S. When my great-grandmother died while my siblings and I were away at summer camp, …
I have a close friend, someone I’ve known 32 years and counting, who is astute and insightful and easily fulfills all those prerequisites for managing his own personal finances. Add to this his MBA from a top 3 business school, and basically there’s no excuse for his not taking on this responsibility. Let’s call him my friend on the fence …
I have an embarrassing confession to make. Despite my otherwise frugal instincts, I’m a sucker for a well-designed Apple product. My brother-in-law, a conscientious consumer, reminds me that the equivalent PC or Android product offers far more flexibility and bang for my buck, but I see a sleek aluminum case and my rational mind turns to mush. The prospect of …
Heading into a recent Monday overnight shift, I was greeted by a six rig salute (six ambulances parked fender to fender in the ED drop-off lot). As is my custom, I bounded down the staircase from the physician parking lot taking two steps at a time. I was psyching myself up for what was sure to be a whopper of …
A recent debate held simultaneously on the WCI forum and PoF blog touched on whether physicians owe a long career in practice as part of a greater debt to society. As a doc pursuing FI/RE, here’s my contribution to the discussion: When my then girlfriend (now wife) and I moved from the northeast to southern California, we rented an apartment …
One of the challenges for a new investor is determining your risk tolerance, which is how aggressively to invest your savings. There are several considerations to factor into determining how much volatility you can handle – in this case volatility means what percent of stocks (vs. bonds) you feel comfortable owning in your asset allocation. 80/20 would be considered aggressive …
One of my favorite attendings in residency used to quip: “Don’t just do something, stand there!” This was said in the Emergency Department at UCLA, not exactly known as a place of passive observation in the face of chaos, but the underlying Hippocratic rationale was solid: unless your intervention is likely to help the patient, first do no harm. Strangely, …