My journey to balance family, work, and water polo.
Patience
Words Spin Float Flutter Suspend Arrange and align into thoughts Need to write them Say them, project them Face them Not the time Not the place They fade away Retreat Hibernate And the ache grows
Throw back Thursday
If I knew then, what I know now... I would hug them more. For longer. Squeeze harder. I would listen more and react less. I would be sillier and goofier with them and pay less attention to the thoughts of others. I would cave in more often when they would ask for "one...
Faces and Futility
The patient, previously a John Doe, is now known. Family now present, when before there was none. A spouse, siblings, and young kids all around. Despite seventy-two hours in the ICU, his lungs have failed, his heart has failed, his liver has failed, his kidneys have...
Looking back to face forward
I’m not sure when Facebook added the THIS DAY ___ YEARS AGO feature, reminding us what we had posted on this day in years past. It is often nice to reminisce about a concert a year ago or some silly family event that a picture captured perfectly. I often stop for a...
“Doctor…She wants a chance. She wants to live!”
“Doctor…She wants a chance. She wants to live!” How often have I heard those words? Or some version of them? The location of the conversations varies. I might be standing outside the curtain of an emergency room bay or sitting on a worn chair inside a cramped waiting...
Quiet voices from the heart
“Why don’t people’s hearts tell them to continue to follow their dreams?” the boy asked the alchemist. “Because that’s what makes the heart suffer most, and hearts don’t like to suffer.” ...
What do you do when you disagree medically on matters on life and death?
"This was published first in the Washington Post electronically on 7/29/2017 and will come out in print this Tuesday. Click here for the link. The comments so far in the paper have overall been quite emotional and angry in their response. I am happy to discuss in...
Will The Adults In The Room Please Stand Up
Uncertainty. In particular, diagnostic uncertainty, would keep me awake at night, early in my career as a freshly minted critical care doctor. Patients who deteriorated without explanation or haziness on CT Scans without an identified cause, fanned the flames of my...
Sleepless Nights
You were closer to one year of age than two. Our family just three. Between surviving a combined internal medicine and pediatrics internship for me and navigating your young world for your mom, our days were challenging. But the nights. Those endless nights. As the...
10 Tips For New Interns For Surviving and Thriving in the Intensive Care Unit
July is just around the corner. For hospitals it’s a dynamic time. A changing of the guard. Graduating residents moving on and new interns, fresh out of medical school with their clean and crisp long white coats, moving in. Out with the old, in with the new. The ICU...
The Moth Video: “Fathers”
About a year ago, I signed up and participated in a local Moth Story Slam here in Evanston, IL. I used one of my posts Family as the source for my five minutes on stage. The theme for the evening was "Fathers." I am currently working on a few stories but none are...
How did I get here?
And you may find yourselfBehind the wheel of a large automobileAnd you may find yourself in a beautiful houseWith a beautiful wifeAnd you may ask yourself, wellHow did I get here? -Talking Heads A middle aged father, critical care...