How low can you go? Stealing drugs from veterans? I am a proud U.S. veteran, prouder still to consider myself a veterans advocate. I’ve seen too many veterans in pain. I don’t think people who haven’t been there realize how much war is hell. They were stolen by a doctor. A credentialed anesthesiologist.
I remember when I was first hitting dating bars and such, it was not uncommon for a non-doctor to wear a T-shirt that said “trust me; I’m a doctor” that I guess was supposed to induce young women into the early stages of romance. Read more on Stealing Drugs And Eliminating Health Care…
Filed under Alternative Medicine, Doctors, Education, medicine, News, politics by on Jul 18th, 2017. Comment. 
She was an active patient, who I am still trying to see once a week until I direct her in how to survive and flourish in the universe. She was in her forties, depressed and anxious. She had “a little panic attack,” some chest pain and the feeling her breath was cut off. I wasted no time sending her to an Emergency Room, (or, if she really did not feel it was that bad, to an Urgent Care — what we used to call it a “doc in a box”) because it is cheaper, sounds less foreboding, and any doctor who is sentient and has a pulse and is on duty would send her to an Emergency Room if anything was really wrong.
Chest pain or tightness or shortness of breath or a “tight feeling, like a vice” could always be a heart problem, and could always be life threatening until proven otherwise. I tend to send even the most mild discomforts of this nature, that people had for years to primary physicians for a “cardiocentric examination.” For “auscultation,” the old fashioned Latin-origin word for a good listening to the well as generally an electrocardiogram and sometimes even an echocardiogram.
Filed under Diagnosis, Disease, Doctors, End Of Life, Family, life, medicine, News by on Jul 12th, 2017. Comment.
I find a lot of things I like in the New York Times. This article resonated with me as few others. First, there is the purpose of the human profiled. Changing medicine into data science? God save us all.
Sometimes I feel the best thing I do for a patient is to be human. Just to have the pretension (a pretension which I do not take lightly) of being one human being in a room with another human being, trying to make them feel better. This does more, I think, to make most of my patients “better” than all of the pills I have spent years studying about. All those years studying normative use of medications on large populations of humans. And they work enough to please the powers that be.
Filed under medicine, News, Psychology, Research by on Jul 3rd, 2017. Comment.
Too many Americans can’t afford to and simply do not–take their medicines as prescribed. That estimate is based on information from the (American!) Centers for Disease Control). I have had patients come into my office who take their medications –in both cases, for life-threatening infectious diseases — only every other day, simply because that is all they can afford. I explained to each one individually the idea of the half-life of a drug. They only stay in your body for a certain length of time, then they leave your body in waste products. That is why taking a drug every other day is not really effective. They both gave me almost exactly the same response — It was all they could afford, and it was probably better than nothing. Read more on Big Pharma Is Capitalism Out Of Control…
Filed under Alternative Medicine, Diagnosis, Disease, Doctors, Education, Government, Hepatitis C, medicine, News, politics, prescription drugs, Psychiatrists, Psychotherapy by on May 29th, 2017. Comment.
The lyrics start:
Filed under Alternative Medicine, Doctors, medicine, News, Research by on May 23rd, 2017. Comment.
Filed under medicine, News, Research by on May 18th, 2017. Comment.
Filed under Alternative Medicine, Brain, depression, Diagnosis, Disease, Doctors, medicine, Mental Illness, News, Nutrition, Research by on May 7th, 2017. Comment.
My husband loves showbiz stories. He was an avid movie fan while I was studying medicine, which meant he had a whole world to introduce to me, since my education at prep school including being somehow given the impression that cinema was a degenerate form of entertainment, compared to other arts. So my husband was piddling around on the internet when he told me some things about Wally Cox, the comic, and his friend Marlon Brando. I couldn’t imagine two people more-opposite and was surprised to learn what he told me.
Filed under medicine, News by on Mar 17th, 2017. Comment.
I have never told anyone to stop seeing a homeopath who was helpful to them. I decide on the basis of safety and efficacy for every treatment, as best I can. Even if I sometimes have wondered about efficacy, I will admit. But for safety, homeopathy is off the charts. I know of no down-side. I remember looking at the “dilution” level of the remedies. In general, they are so dilute that they could not possibly have any of the “substance” that was used to make them, not even a molecule.
Filed under Alternative Medicine, Diagnosis, Doctors, FDA, medicine, News, Research by on Jan 1st, 2017. Comment.
You may never have heard of bromelain — but then again, we are in a land where big drug companies get all the publicity (and some say suppress their natural product competition). However this enzyme extracted from pineapple is a very powerful anti-inflammatory, and I say this because I have first-hand experience with it, and not because I read it on the internet somewhere. Best of all, it is readily available in most health food stores and pharmacies.
Filed under Alternative Medicine, Doctors, Education, Generic drugs, medicine, News by on Nov 27th, 2016. Comment.