For tax purposes, I recently added up all the various sources of income I’d received in 2017. It was a real hodge-podge of a year since I left my appointment at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and started working on my own projects again. This exercise brought home the lesson that […]
family
A good death
You might think, looking at the open tabs on my browser, that I’ve got death on my mind. And you would be right. My father passed away in December from melanoma. The end was about as peaceful as we could have hoped for, but it was still hard to watch. I spent most of what […]
20 minutes
Food Allergy Awareness Week is May 11-17. I decided to honor it by writing my first public post about being a food-allergy mom. Wendy Sue Swanson, MD, aka @SeattleMamaDoc, is generously hosting it on her blog, where I hope it will reach many, many people. I’d love to hear what you think — about being […]
Is there a generational tech divide in medicine? And is that the main problem?
Jay Parkinson recently wrote a post responding to a question raised by Atul Gawande: Can technology be a change agent for health care? Jay’s answer focused on the generational tech divide in medicine today. One quote: “Many of the most influential doctors practicing medicine today have an antagonistic relationship with computers. Change will only come in […]
An unexpected gift
I was 3 when my maternal grandfather died, 40 years ago today. My only memory of Frank H.J. Figge is of him making me laugh. Thanks to M.J. Tooey, my community colleague at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, I learned that his “happy chuckle” was a hallmark, along with his “true research brain.” My mother, […]
Resilience
The following essay appeared in The Washington Post magazine in a column that asks: “So much is contained in such small things. What holds meaning for you?” I wrote it as a tribute to my father’s resilience, which I hope to pass down to my sons: I was 24 and still called Susy when my […]
Recent Comments