My blog represents my personal experiences and perspectives. This includes many anecdotes from my life and from my medical practice. I have been scrupulous to anonymize all medical anecdotes and to avoid ever belittling or making fun of patients. (I often make fun of and criticize myself, my colleagues, and the institutions where I have worked.)
f you are silent in the face of evil, or acquiesce to what you know is wrong…
…you have sided with evil and are collaborating with the devil.
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.