A nurse shouldn't smell like she just smoked an entire pack of cigarettes. If my nose wrinkles at the foul odor of stale smoke on one of the hospital caregivers, imagine how the patient struggling with nausea must feel as the same nurse leans over them to listen to their...

"An ounce of humility is worth more than a ton of arrogance." -- Jack Coulehan, M.D.

I am a physician, and I don't think I am more arrogant than non-physicians. While patients and media frequently accuse us of behaving arrogantly or poorly, I'm not sure these are...

Much of life has become a game show, our fingers perpetually poised above the buzzer -- James Gleick, Faster

We would all like to believe that there must be some way to "save time" -- to wring just a bit more out of every day. While that may sound good,...

"Serious illness threatens one's place in the human community." -- Rebecca Dresser President's Council on Bioethics 2008

I never should have let it happen. A few months ago my wife became critically ill and was hospitalized for an extended period of time. She received spectacular medical...

I have heard people rant and rave and bellow, That we're done and we might as well be dead, But I'm only a cock-eyed optimist, And I can't get it into my head -- "South Pacific" (Musical), 1949

We all know a certain type of person -- we can see...

"Red Bull and vodka is terrible for you. It's popular, however, because it makes you drunker, faster. While I don't enjoy that particular deadly cocktail, I like many college students, survive on energy drinks during finals, Sugar free Red Bull being my poison of choice. After two weeks of drinking...

Last week, I walked into one of my examination rooms and sitting across from me was a young man who shouldn't have survived his college fraternity's hazing prank. After being forced to consume large amounts of assorted noxious substances, he developed uncontrolled seizures and brain swelling. He was already in...

Chris Stewart was looking forward to starting on the Douglass High School Trojans football team this year. Instead of basking in the roar of the crowd, the 17-year-old honor student had 500 people attend his funeral yesterday. The 6-foot 1-inch, 291-pound lineman, died of heat stroke last week after a...

I can predict the answer every time I ask the question. Whenever I give a lecture on stroke prevention, I ask the women in the audience to raise their hand if they worry that they might get breast cancer sometime in their lives. I then ask everyone to raise their...

Jake and Eleanor loved their home, a collection of their 45 years together and the four children that they raised there. Their home was filled with not only their own treasures, but also those of their parents. They were willing to live with the outdated bathrooms, narrow halls and assorted...

I have the good fortune to work with many young people. I like to tell them that I wish they had known me when I was younger and my mind was as agile as theirs. Although experience and judgment allows most of us to continue to function at a high...

When you walk in the front door of our hospital, my office is just a quick left turn off of the lobby. For the past 25 years, the waiting rooms and lobby for both my practice and the hospital have been peaceful settings with up-to-date magazines, thriving plants and muted...

Carlos was accustomed to dealing with stress and deadlines. As a systems engineer he lived a life of details and constant interruptions, but this new project seemed to be pushing him to the edge of his patience. The headaches started a few weeks earlier and were affecting his ability to...

"In my wildest dreams I never could have imagined that I would have a stroke. One day I was a successful salesman who was the strength of my family. Then one morning I fell as I tried to get out of bed. I called for help but no words came...

Everyone I know is cheering for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. After a life-threatening gunshot wound to the head she was transferred from Arizona to a first class rehabilitation hospital in Houston where she could undergo her rehabilitation and at the same time be close to her astronaut husband's workplace. We continue...

"We must become the change we want to see in the world."
--Mahatma Ghandi

My last HuffPost blog elicited a wide variety of comments about whether someone would want to live after a catastrophic injury. There was a thread in the comments from able-bodied individuals that suggested...

It seemed like a routine day. I had just finished speaking at a meeting and I had a few hours before I needed to head to the airport. The next speaker was lecturing on how to wean a quadriplegic patient off a ventilator. I was only half-interested in the topic...

Every day, I sit down at my desk and reach for the stack of mail, magazines and "junk." After a while I develop a rhythm where, in one fluid movement, I can extract the slick advertisements and float them into the trash can next to my knee. The other day...

"A moment please," my mother says to the nurse, pressing a tissue to my face, and I understand that she is the perfect person for this moment, that she is the perfect person to tell someone news so bad that no one else can even form the words. I wonder...

It was one of those weeks. The same issue pounding at my brain, assaulting my sense of right and wrong and annoying the hell out of me. If the phone rang one more time it might become an unwanted missile.

I had just spent a considerable amount of time on...