When you visit 2 North at Westchester, you might find 20 teenagers hanging out in a spacious sunlit living room. There’s a big group crowded noisily around a card table as they play Egyptian Ratscrew, slapping their hands in as fast as they can and laughing raucously as cards fly everywhere. Kids are lounging on comfy couches, some conversing quietly with each other, others idly doodling on folders, others next to them read well-worn paperbacks. One sits at a bay window looking out onto the lush lawns and groves of upstate New York. They’re all clad in pajamas and sweats and slippers, all without makeup, all without pretense. There’s not a cellphone in sight. The place looks so placidly idyllic that you might wonder why a place like this exists in a modern world like ours. Well…
NYP Westchester is a dedicated psychiatric hospital, and 2 North is the adolescent unit. Almost all of kids there are admitted for depression and suicidal ideation.Continue reading The 2 North Milieu→
I dread Type 2 diabetes as a disease entity. It is the most rampant, urgent, yet insidious epidemic of our age. It’s frustrating how straightforward the preventive medical intervention is (don’t eat shitty), but a good diet is low many people’s priorities and taste buds. The disease develops so slowly and silently that the general population too often dismisses its distant consequences, but the medical community is witnessing the deluge of diabetes firsthand. Continue reading Diabetes Details→
After about a month observing healthcare from the inside, I’ve learned the list of the top 3 tricks to living a healthy life! Don’t smoke, don’t eat shitty, and don’t be a couch potato.Continue reading 3 Essential Health Tips→
Of all the diseases, I am most terrified of dementia. Senile dementia is a gradual deterioration of memory, movement, and other mental capacities. It’s extremely common (especially Alzheimer’s the most prevalent etiology). It steals the very essence of your mind. Unfortunately, with no known palliation or treatment, the disease is relentless. I’ve read about the condition, but on Friday I had my first close encounter with dementia in the healthcare setting: Mrs. A, a kind 88-year-old black lady living in the city with end-stage dementia.Continue reading Not Treating Dementia→
This weekend is Cornell’s Accepted Students Weekend, when we invite in all the students who earned our school’s stamp of approval and try to convince them to choose Cornell. We bribe them with lavish food, enthusiastic current students touting their extracurriculars (hi), and NYC excursions such comedy clubs and museums and bars. They also get to meet their fellow prospective students and decide if they are people they can befriend for the next four years. It’s a wonderful two-day ordeal. Continue reading One Vote of Confidence→
Today in the OR, I had a crummy revelation. As you might know, I have GERD (aka reflux, aka heartburn). It’s been developing for years, but I was officially diagnosed in December; since then, I’ve been treating it diligently with medication and avoiding things like eating too late, eating before exercise, or eating spicy or drinking hot foods. It’s been going well, but I just learned that my GERD has a new enemy now: hunger.Continue reading GERD is hungry→
An obstetrician can extract a baby by C-section in a matter of seconds. It’s an unexpectedly rapid and brutal surgery even when medically indicated and scheduled, like for this mother. She had the time to have an epidural line placed into her spinal canal so she could remain awake during the procedure. They checked by ultrasound the baby was head-down, laid the mom down gingerly, doused her abdomen in brown betadine cleaning solution, and draped her in blue. They invited in the husband, dressed in an absurd blue-scrub jumpsuit, and he stood on the other side of the drapes with the anesthesiologist to hold his wife’s hand during the surgery. He seemed anxious, but the mom seemed quite at ease lying on the table considering what was about to transpire.Continue reading Cesarean Section→
