This is my second pandemic Thanksgiving.
As I reflect back on all that has happened since early 2020, when SARS CoV-2 hit our shores in full force, it does nothing if it has not left me awe-struck. There has been so much that we at the bedside have experienced. …
The opioid crisis has taken the lives of thousands of people in our country. In fact, according to the CDC, opioid overdose deaths hit over 100,000 for the first time in the 12-month period ending this past January. That is a devastating number.
I am fully vaccinated and boosted. I’m all in on wearing masks, especially indoors during the winter. If for nothing else, it should help prevent me getting not only a breakthrough Covid infection (which is not fun), but also the flu and colds this winter.
There is just one problem…
“I’m more comfortable with naturally fighting [Covid-19] off than taking a shot that they said [is] 99% effective and no risk, to then track back and say we missed something.”
This is how someone close to me explained why he didn’t get vaccinated against Covid-19. There is so much to…
He was struggling to breathe. His oxygen levels kept declining, and he needed to come to the ICU to be placed on a ventilator. He had metastatic cancer, and his upper airway muscles were so weak that he kept inhaling his stomach contents into his lungs.
When I saw him…
There is nothing I can say. I don’t have to. We can see it in our eyes: the exhaustion; the exasperation; the fatigue; the anger; the anguish at the senselessness of the death all around us. We are done with this virus. …
Spoiler alert: There is no way I can’t spoil the outcome with this piece. Read at your own risk.
It is the #1 show in the U.S. on Netflix: “Squid Game.” It is the story of a series of children’s games that a whole host of people play in the…
It’s all the same. It’s the same path. Patients with COVID-19 get admitted to the hospital, and the ones who become critically ill — the ones I end up seeing in the ICU — steadily get worse, fail conservative measures, require invasive mechanical ventilation, and then die. …
The extent that some people will go to try and prevent COVID baffles me to no end. Now, there are people advocating gargling with povodine-iodine! Oh. My. God.
Povodine-iodine is a skin antiseptic. It kills bacteria on the skin, and we have used it on the skin to disinfect prior…
It has happened to me and my colleagues far too often: watching a patient die from complications of COVID-19. While the ultimate cause of death is multiorgan failure — shock, respiratory failure, kidney failure, etc — the question is what caused this multiorgan failure?
