Notes on life, philosophy, and medicine

Starting to feel the fish bowl effect of isolation. I like it. It's fascinating. I do have a room with a lovely view of calm rippling water moving gently with the wind, glowing lines of reflections undulating, a line of tall evergreens, and shades of gray/blue skies. The sound of water hitting water playing softly from my fishtank. The mild yellow hue of a lamp on my desk. Smiling faces of some of my most valued humans staring back at me from their frames.  If in the end I will settle in one room, I would have more photos. I would want to see it all and remember all the wonderful times. I would wish for all the above. Perhaps not in isolation but one does not know but most certainly in the presence of angels. I had never really put much thought into this, I wonder if that would be such a useful exercise. To manifest and visualize so that you can appoint that day.  Well I would probably get rid of a lot more junk, there is trash strewn about, a few dishes to be put away, and bag ful

I once said that I wanted to experience what my patients experience, that in knowing, I could have a deeper appreciation, deeper understanding of the disease process and therefore 1) I could diagnose it and give people clarity and 2) hopefully have the read enough, learned enough that I could present the cure or treatment plan toward healing.  So, over the last few days, I've been home experiencing some of the symptoms of Covid-19, I suspect the omnicron variant as it spread relatively quickly through the home I was staying in, regardless of the mindset I took in staying and visiting with family I suspected having it, I am here now.  I started with a slight cough but mostly noticed deep aching pain in my back/left thigh, wondered if I could just be feeling run down from the trip. I can't recall if I had headache yet, if anything it was mild and intermittent, similar feeling the next morning but headache was more noticeable, and now I felt certain that the ache was not just from

My 8 year-old son bought this sweater for me with the help of one of his grandmas and this is where my story will always end.  I was thinking I would post a photo of me in my mask + N95 looking absolutely ragged because I've been sick. I caught Covid. Hindsight is always 20/20. Knowing what I know would I make the same choices?  I have no idea, help me walk through this. Talk therapy.  I recently looked at the death count in the United States, we have definitely had more deaths in 2020 than we did the year before but if this macro trend website is correct  U.S. Death Rate 1950-2022 | MacroTrends We had been having a decline in death rates until about 2007-2008 (the housing market crash?) and it has been uptrending since taking us back to around 1975 levels. I've heard several years ago that the generation I was living through was the first generation to have die younger than our parents. What does that say about our country and where we are going? That said, we have much to mou

My son started posting videos on youtube just a week ago; he's really enjoying it and so I'm supporting his efforts but I asked him today if he has shared any of his videos with his friends,  he said "no, I am scared."  I know the impact of pursuing "likes" and "subscribers" so we talk about it incessantly, I tell him his value is not derived from on screen likes or the number of dislikes; I know he hears me.  But he challenged me to whoever can get to the first 10,000 subscribers so we are constantly checking; I have all of 1 subscriber and 4 videos, he has 30 videos.  Pretty cool and pretty fun but beholden to that comment is a glimpse of the deep dark world the internet has allowed us so many of us to hide, to be "seen" but not really, to see only what we want others to see, and to be seen by people we cannot have meaningful relationships with.  So as we start out this year, I hope we rise to the challenges of our day, pull back the co

This nation and its people have been undergoing major pressures. For me here, in this little part of the world, I have to admit it has felt pretty lonely at times, but I've eaten my fair share of holiday desserts and I'm ready to dust myself off and put on my working gloves.  My hope is in Christ and through him I know it is for us to find common ground.  Can we all not agree that how and why George Floyd died was wrong?  Can we all not agree that moments like that in our present history is a symptom of things that are still broken in our country?  Can we generally agree that many of us, myself most certainly included, don't actually have a good grasp of history and perhaps are even so distracted by the noise that we are not even aware of our own part in history?  Can we agree that it's really nice to feel and be safe doing things like going to school, church, or shopping? And that when we don't, that there's a problem there?  Here though are a few things that I