I find it somewhat ironic that Onchocerciasis a.k.a River Blindness is a neglected tropical disease simply because there is sad poetry in being blind to the second most common infectious cause of blindness. The disease of river blindness itself occurs when larvae of the parasite Onchocerca volvulus. Beyond this basic pathogenesis, in terms of […]
Book Review – Strangers Drowning
“Being ethical was not about being pure, he realized; it was caring about suffering.” Strangers Drowning was a read outside of the realm of genres I am accustomed to and was suggested by the professor of a Public Health ethics course I took several months ago. It covers the philosophical concept of the “do-gooder” the […]
Racial Disparities in Preventative Care
Yesterday I had the opportunity to virtually attend a lecture on racial disparities in colorectal cancer screening. This was purposely scheduled to fall in line with Black History Month, which was much appreciated. One of the quotes that I have heard many times previously and still holds so much impact each time I hear it […]
Emotional Triage
Triage is the act of assigning degrees of urgency to patients or situations, and at each stage of medical school this has consistently been an important skill to master. In my first two years, this involved learning specific groups of facts, in my third, this expanded to clinical care, and in my fourth-year, began to […]
Book Review – Enviromedics: The Impact of Climate Change on Human Health
Enviromedics: The Impact of Climate Change on Human Health by Jay Lemery, MD, and Paul Auerbach, MD, is a wide-reaching yet concise review of the evidence for the health consequences of climate change. One of the strengths of this work is the authors’ assertion that while the environmental, geopolitical, and economic consequences of climate change […]
Diet as a Treatment for Depression?
Around the turn of the fourth century BCE, Hippocrates wrote, “Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food,” and with this same frame of mind, pondered the nature of mental illness. He believed that depression was caused by an overabundance of black bile and that insanity (hysteria) was, at least in females, due […]
The Path not Taken for Path
As many of you likely know, for those like me who are in their last year of medical school this month contains Match Day, when we will be notified of where we will spend our residencies and potentially our fellowships and beyond. While those familiar with my posts know that I applied into and will […]
February Favorites During Residency
Given all the hardships in residency, I wanted to write a fun blog where I talk about all the fun parts of my life that I enjoy during residency…. because regardless of a pandemic and intern year, there are parts of my life that I enjoy. I think that it would be a good idea […]
My 2021 Plans!
With the new year and the vaccine coming out for COVID-19 I think that we can expect to see a bright future ahead especially in surge areas. That does not mean that we can stop wearing our masks, social distancing, and taking cautionary measures as we need to. I wanted to discuss some of my […]
Lessons from Wuhan’s Past and Present
To those familiar with the city’s history there is poignant poetry in the fact the pandemic which has rocked the world for the last year emerged from Wuhan. More than 50 years ago in the midst of the cultural revolution, the city bore witness to another health crisis an analysis of which in addition to […]
