Words matter, and even more so in medicine. There has been a movement in the last several years to adopt a person-first language of disease that emphasizes the humanity of each individual and divests them from any diseases they might have. Thus, someone is not a diabetic or a schizophrenic, they are a person with […]
My Blood on the Floor
Each time I visit the Red Cross, I surrender two units of packed red blood cells and am met with the assurance that with each donation, lives are saved. The cynic in me had pictured a freezer-burned bag of my cells tossed in biohazard garbage, but despite my pessimism, or perhaps directly because of it, […]
Reflections on Anatomy
Ever since I was a little kid, I think I’ve been obsessed with words. I loved the idea of capturing a feeling in a sentence or describing a person so completely that you could see them right there in your mind. The perfect words in the perfect order, or at least that’s what I strove […]
