Mea sententia

Every year, as winter approaches, I look forward to big snowstorms. Not just because I love Nordic skiing - though I do. Not just because the individually tiny flakes and their accumulation into deceptively gentle drifts are such a useful reminder of the importance of soft power. Not just because of the quiet, or the magic of moonlight glistening on fresh powder, or even the knowledge that the piles of snow against the foundation will help insulate the basement and protect our pipes.

I wished I hadn’t asked...

Gloria Steinem said: “The truth will set you free. But first it will piss you off.”

Based on my experience, telling the truth is more reliable at pissing others off than setting anyone free.

It always bothers me when patients seem less interested in focusing on their visit than I am.

Sunset

(for KE)

Your sun has set, and I was not prepared.

Your light, hard shuttered, gone missing from my path 

Reveals no more the places you would show.

Your warmth reduced to memory, mere hint of what it was

While yet it burned.

The moon has tried its best, through faint remembrance

Offered up through gentle darkness by the night.

Scarce real enough that shadows come to pass,

It warms me not, nor lets me see what walks outside my walls.

A basic and well documented characteristic of human behavior is that, in any group, most of the activity is done by a small number of individuals. 

"Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof."

John Kenneth Galbraith, economist (1908-2006) 

You can never make the same mistake twice.

The second time you make it, it is a choice.

The leadership where I work likes to claim that our local hospital and I have the same goals. Well, they are wrong.

Drs Groopman and Hartzband, in Your Medical Mind, reference the phenomenon of ‘creeping paternalism’ in medicine. How true.