Tag Archives: Current Trends

Knowledge

Posted on by

“People believe shit and don’t believe sense,” my supervising doctor said. The comment was in reference to patients who believe remedies without any evidence to support their efficacy will treat disease better than medicines which have robust research behind them proving they work. It wasn’t a comment saying patients shouldn’t believe or do whatever they want, it was a comment that each of us should challenge ourselves to investigate the facts behind claims. It was a nod to science – the scientific method designed to prove that observations are (or are not) significant.

Perhaps the statement wouldn’t have caught my attention in a different era, but with the state of current affairs it did. These days there are attacks on science. There are TV stations and online blogs calling themselves “news outlets” yet report nothing but opinion, and poorly informed opinion at that. There are threats against the true investigative journalist; stories based in research.

Current affairs. The thought that one can simply say whole groups of people don’t exist and think they’ll disappear…or assume they don’t have a right to be who they are. The assertation by certain politicians that experts know less about their industry than folks who never studied it or never worked in it. The propaganda that people who move from one country to another didn’t do so in good faith, didn’t have a dream for a better life, and weren’t needed in the country where they arrived. The dangerous opinion that one’s beliefs are the only beliefs; forgetting that we’ve proven time and time again that all humans are fallible and that diversity of thought and world view make our species stronger.

The ability to think critically and analyze the validity of people’s claims is a form of power. It’s powerful to set one’s emotions aside and examine the truth behind one’s feelings. With a critical approach we can gain knowledge, not just vibes. With knowledge we can grow and change. We can learn to better understand those different from us rather than expect everyone to be like us. We can embrace diversity. We can embrace transitions from one identity to another. We can include everyone. Knowledge helps us understand that prohibiting words like “diversity,” “transition,” and “inclusion” won’t make people who live those realities disappear and is a form of coercion and censorship. 

“People believe shit and don’t believe sense,” my supervising doctor said. I laughed at the comment because in the context it was funny. But it wasn’t funny when I thought about how many people have, do, and will suffer because powerful people are unwilling to believe sense. Unable to hear reason. Disinterested in knowledge. We can’t change other people, but we are responsible for ourselves. I challenge you to look for sense, not shit, when making your decisions in every facet of your life. If each of us challenged ourselves to do that, the world would be different from what it is today.

The Floors Don’t Shine Like They Used To

Posted on by

I walked into the Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital where I have primary care clinic. I hadn’t been there for a few weeks between vacation and working in the ICU (critical care unit) at a different hospital. Yet, I’d heard about the budget cuts and other residents had shared murmurs of uncertainty related to what was to come for our patients. Entering the VA hospital for the first time since the budget cuts started to take effect, I was immediately struck by how gross the floors looked. And, as I was processing the dullness of the floors and their peeling finish, I heard a woman next to me comment on the floors too.

I used to joke to my spouse about how frequently they refinished the floors at the VA hospital. Over the past 2 years it seemed that every time I worked nights or left late, they were refinishing the floors. These efforts resulted in a floor as shiny as the shoes of the sentinels at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington Cemetery. And, until the floors looked dull, I’d never thought about their symbolism.

Every patient seen at the VA hospital is a veteran. Some of them wouldn’t have access to healthcare if it weren’t for the VA. Most of them wouldn’t have access to some of the most critical medical resources that our veterans need for good health without the VA. Mental health care is one example of such a resource.

I settled into my day at the clinic. A patient I hadn’t seen before was among my first patients. “I’d like to be screened for PTSD,” he said.

“Okay, why?” I asked. PTSD stands for “post-traumatic stress disorder.” It’s a condition that can occur when people experience things that are mentally traumatic. It can include flashbacks to the event(s) that disrupt life, nightmares that prevent sleep, and mood challenges that make it difficult to function in daily life.

“My daughter thinks I have it,” he said.

“Do you have nightmares?” I asked.

“No. But I think about things that happened. I just push the thoughts out of my head though. You know, I saw people die in Vietnam,” he said.

“How often do you have those thoughts?” I asked.

“Multiple times a day,” he said.

“How long has that been going on?” I asked.

“Years. I also get angry really easily,” he said.

“Do you get angry over things that other people don’t?” I asked.

“Yeah, all the time. I just get angry fast,” he said.

“Any thoughts of hurting yourself?” I asked.

“Hasn’t come to that,” he said.

“What about thoughts of hurting others?” I asked.

“All the time, but I don’t act on it,” he said.

The conversation unfolded. From my assessment he easily met criteria for PTSD. “Well, I think your daughter’s right that you have PTSD. Do you want treatment for it?” I said.

“Yes,” he said.

We discussed our options for treatment. I was grateful that we had options. How awful it was to think he’d potentially lived for 50 years with thoughts of the people he saw die in Vietnam haunting him multiple times daily.

Mental health is a huge part of health for all people and an especially common challenge for veterans. It has taken years of population education and eradication of misinformation to create an environment where veterans feel comfortable asking medical providers for help with their mental health. In my experience younger veterans are more comfortable discussing things like depression and PTSD than older veterans. But it’s an important issue for all veterans. To put it in perspective, about 18 veterans across the US die by suicide daily.

The VA offers more mental health services than any other healthcare system I have encountered. People using civilian healthcare often wait months to be seen by a therapist and longer to see a psychiatrist. When working at the VA, I can ensure my patients’ mental health is supported as soon as I learn it is a challenge for them thanks to the VA’s dedication to the mental health of our veterans. The VA’s effort to help manage mental health challenges among veterans matters. For example, suicides among veterans diagnosed with PTSD decreased by 32% been 2001 and 2022.

What makes medicine different from most other industries is that we don’t deal in money, property, or things. We deal in lives saved, lives lost, and human suffering. What does the shine of the VA hospital floor say about the future of our veterans’ healthcare? Time will tell. Yet, looking at the landscape of US federal budget cuts and executive mandates, people’s access to healthcare in this country is declining. I suspect that it’s only a matter of time before the health effects are felt broadly. Of course, these federal healthcare budget cuts and restrictions are concurrent with cuts in federal funding for research. As a result, we probably won’t be able to quantify the impact politics today had in terms of lives lost and population health deterioration. Perhaps the symbolism of a floor, which one walks all over for their personal benefit, is fitting symbolism for the value current political figures place on the health of others.

References:

  1. VA releases 2024 National Veteran Suicide Prevention Annual Report: https://news.va.gov/137221/va-2024-suicide-prevention-annual-report/

Over 48 Hours Without Running Water in the City of Richmond

Posted on by

“See these?” my mom asked flexing her biceps, “Hauling water.”  

When I was young, my family lived in rural Vermont in a hunting cabin without running water. My parents hauled water from the stream for bathing and we filled jugs at my dad’s work for drinking water. Those years in the woods prepared me for life as a Peace Corps volunteer in rural Paraguay where amenities were often lacking.

When my mom visited me in Paraguay, I flexed my biceps. “See these?” I asked. “Washing clothes by hand.” But it wasn’t just that. In Paraguay the water and electricity went out often. Just as my parents had done when I was a child, I developed ways of conserving water and making do when the utilities were down. One of my kitchen walls was lined with 2-liter bottles (recycled soda bottles) filled with clean water – so I was ready when the water went out. Some of my Paraguayan friends had different water sources from me and therefore often still had water even if I didn’t. My friends in Paraguay were used to the water outages and had a communal approach to getting through those annoying stretches. I could count on them to invite me to shower or to wash clothes at their homes if my water was out for more than a day.

When I returned to the US after completing my Peace Corps service, I figured my only time without running water would be when I was backpacking or camping. Self-imposed in those cases and short-lived. But Richmond surprised me this winter. In classic southern fashion (being from Vermont, I must poke fun at how the southern US handles snow), all went awry when Richmond was hit with a true snowstorm and sub-freezing temperatures. One of the city’s water pumps broke, multiple backup systems failed, and fixing the problem was harder than officials expected. As such, almost the entire city lost water for just over 48 hours and had to boil water for drinking for almost a week.

In the grand scheme of things, no running water for 48 hours and a boil advisory for about a week are insignificant compared to the water hardships many people around the world face. However, I found it interesting that such a utility failure could occur in a modern US city in the absence of a natural disaster. My husband and I (both from New England and used to winter power/water outages) were prepared. We filled pots and buckets with water just before the city turned the water off. We refilled our buckets in the river as needed to ensure we could flush our toilet. I took a baby-wipe bath one day. I washed my hair in the sink another day when the water was starting to come back but we still didn’t have enough water pressure to run the shower. I’ve known how to take a bucket bath since I was a child. Though it is a nuisance; it is simple.

48 hours did not restore the bicep muscles I’ve lost since returning to the US and living with modern, reliable running water and all the amenities that come with it. Yet, during Richmond’s water outage, I found myself flexing my biceps and thinking about the many people across the globe who have unclean water or minimal access to water daily. In the US reliable utilities are taken for granted. Richmond’s loss of water was a good reminder of how precious functional utilities are. I expect Richmond officials to review how the system failed and take steps to ensure such a failure doesn’t occur again. I also consider the water outage an opportunity for myself and other citizens to reflect on the event. In a world faced with global climate change which is leading to more severe weather and more chance for disasters that could cut-off utilities, how prepared are we if the systems we take for granted fail? How does one function without running water? Without electricity? What do we need to learn to be better prepared to navigate these situations when they arise? What can we do to prevent utilities from failing? How can we protect our water resources?

About Those Weight Loss Drugs

Posted on by

Several friends asked my opinion on a group of weight loss medications called “GLP-1 receptor agonists” like semaglutide (Wegovy). Specifically, they asked me: 1) Are these drugs cheating? and 2) Will these drugs worsen stigma and mistreatment of people who live in large bodies?

These questions are hard to answer concisely. I am going to try. I will first clarify several concepts then answer each question individually.

4 Foundational Concepts

1) GLP-1 receptor agonists aren’t a silver bullet. They can have serious side effects including severe nausea and vomiting, kidney injury, gallbladder disease, and pancreatitis. Some people who try these medications can’t continue them given the side effects they experience. Another challenge is that GLP-1 receptor agonists can be too expensive for patients to afford because insurance companies don’t always cover them and there is no cheap generic version available in the US.

2) BMI (body mass index) compares a person’s weight and height as a tool to understand if their weight has a negative impact on their health. It is flawed. BMI was developed using mostly data from white men. Half of my patients aren’t white. Another half of my patients aren’t men. So, the BMI brackets of “underweight,” “healthy,” “overweight,” and “obese” don’t perfectly describe most of my patients because they aren’t white men. BMI is also flawed because it does not describe body composition (fat vs muscle vs other) which is relevant to how weight affects health. As such, BMI is complex to interpret when someone does not fall at one extreme of the scale. Despite its flaws, BMI is helpful when used with other information (like waist circumference, labs, vitals, history, etc.) to understand how a person’s weight affects their health.

3) Obesity has a specific definition based on BMI and several other factors. The most basic definition of obesity is a BMI ≥30 kg/m2.

4) Obesity is a disease with a multifactorial cause. Obesity is NOT caused by weakness or lack of self-control. There’s growing information about the genetic and environmental contributors to obesity. Additionally, there are certain medications that some people need to live given their other health problems that contribute to weigh gain. Like many other diseases, personal choices can contribute to the development of obesity. Personal choices, however, do not define or explain obesity completely.

Are these drugs cheating?

No. GLP-1 receptor agonists are useful because we know that weight loss is more effective with them than with diet changes alone. GLP-1 receptor agonists are ONLY approved for weight loss in people who have obesity or people who have a BMI ≥27 kg/m2 with a condition that is likely a complication of their weight like diabetes, high cholesterol, or high blood pressure. Weight loss in these populations is important because it will improve their overall health and, importantly, lower their risk of heart disease. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the US so it’s serious.

Note that GLP-1 receptor agonists were first approved to treat diabetes (regardless of a person’s weight) and continue to be used for that purpose. These medications are also recommended as part of the treatment of chronic coronary artery disease in specific situations.  In other words, not everyone on a GLP-1 receptor agonist is taking it specifically for weight loss.

Will these drugs worsen stigma and mistreatment of people who live in large bodies?

They shouldn’t since they are proven treatments for specifically defined diseases (just like most other medications we use). Subjective judgements of body size that classify people as having a large body aren’t good predictors of people’s health status. It’s important to realize that what societies and individuals consider a “large body” is often based on cultural and individual beliefs and is variable. When looking at weight from the medical perspective, we use specific objective data like BMI and other medical information (like body composition, labs, and vitals) to estimate how likely a person’s weight is to negatively affect their health.

While not all people with large bodies (from the perspective of society) have obesity or negative complications from their weight, some do. If my patient’s weight negatively impacts their health, it’s my job as their primary care physician to include weight loss as part of their medical plan to help them live a long and healthy life. Weight loss medications are one tool in the toolbox.

My goal is to treat people with compassion and respect. I believe that if I continue to strive to practice medicine that is fair and kind regardless of my patient’s body size, I can help reduce the stigma placed on people with large bodies. GLP-1 receptor agonists can help people with obesity lose enough weight to lower their risk of developing heart disease and other complications associated with obesity. The opportunity to help people achieve their best health is one reason why I went into medicine. I’m excited that we have the GLP-1 receptor agonists and will continue to recommend them when medically indicated.  

References:

StatPearls, “Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 Receptor Agonists”: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK551568/

Cureus, “The History and Faults of the Body Mass Index and Where to Look Next: A Literature Review”: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10693914/

Clin Med, “Causes of obesity: a review”: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10541056/

New England Journal of Medicine, “Semaglutide and Cardiovascular Outcomes in Obesity without Diabetes”: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37952131/

CDC, “Heart Disease Deaths”: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/hus/topics/heart-disease-deaths.htm#:~:text=Heart%20disease%20has%20been%20the,excessive%20alcohol%20use%20(2)

I Don’t Think That Thought Process Means What You Think It Means*

Posted on by

One day on rounds (the time when physicians, residents, and students discuss the day’s plan for each patient they’re caring for) I commented on a patient’s amazing carpenter veins (colloquial term for veins on the back of the forearm which tend to be prominent in people who work with their hands). Having once put in IVs for a living, it’s hard to shake my deep appreciation for a good vein when I see one. The physician leading the team and a resident both stopped and asked, “What do you know about carpenters?” They asked this as if I couldn’t possibly know anything about people who are carpenters. It was a joking question which is common in medicine when calling out someone’s knowledge gap.

I was completely dumbstruck by their assertion that I couldn’t have interacted with many carpenters in my life. After a long pause, I mumbled something about having put in IVs as part of my work before medical school where I had many carpenter patients with these veins. I was confused because sometimes I forgot that many people assume all med students have no experience outside of university classrooms and have doctor parents, or at least white-collar parents. If I had been less taken aback, I would have told them I know a lot about carpenters in a happy, matter-of-fact tone.

My father is a carpenter. My stepfather and mother don’t call themselves carpenters but they both do a lot of carpentry as part of their regular lives and as part of their work. I, myself, have helped build houses, furniture, and theater sets. In fact, one of the more memorable childhood photos of me depicts an elementary-aged me hammering a bolt into some floor beams. In double fact, my first work was in carpentry helping my parents build our house and working on paid building projects. Which is to say, short of being a carpenter, I feel confident calling myself an expert in what the life of a carpenter is like (without even mentioning all the carpenters I’ve cared for as patients since I started working in healthcare as an EMT years before medical school).

As humans we make many assumptions because it helps us organize the world – for better or for worse. Physicians are trained to come to quick conclusions and identify disease patterns almost as quickly as their patients decide if they like their new doctor or not. This is why your doctor will often only ask four questions before they decide how to investigate your knee pain – their experience has taught them how best to understand medical situations and make a strategy for those situations in a 15-minute appointment. Obviously, there are many medical situations where more than 4 questions are needed, but I say this as an example of how physicians are trained to make even more assumptions than the average person already does.

Often, the assumptions physicians make about medical symptoms are helpful because they lead to quick recognition of life-threatening medical conditions so they can be addressed in time to save someone’s life or allow the physician to develop a reasonable method for exploring the situation further in the confines of an overburdened, short-for-time system like the US medical system. But, as we all hopefully know, assumptions are dangerous when they come to making conclusions about whole persons. Note the difference between assumptions about symptoms versus about people. It’s assumptions about people that lead to biases.

It’s assumptions that play a role in the dark side of healthcare – like black people having their pain undertreated or receiving inferior medical treatment and transpeople receiving poor medical care (Google these if you want to know more, there’s plenty of data. There are also numerous other examples of disparities in health stemming from biases and assumptions about people).

Now, the assumption that I, a medical student, hadn’t interacted with carpenters before was erroneous on the part of my supervising physician and resident, but it doesn’t compare to disparities in care secondary to biases and assumptions. I brought those up in the previous paragraph to illustrate some of the ways assumptions infiltrate medicine beyond what I experienced and beyond their helpfulness in identifying diseases quickly.

What my situation does show is that the mental picture that many people in the US (including physicians themselves) have of who US doctors are is a bit out-of-date. There was a time when almost all doctors were white men, and many were from doctor families. And, today, the percentage of white male physicians is still greater than the percentage of white males in the population. And, separate category, there are still many medical students who have doctor parents or white-collar parents. Yet, while this is true, it is also true that things have changed a lot in medicine.

Today, there are more women than men enrolled in US medical schools. There is also a growing contingency of doctors and medical students who aren’t Caucasian (check out this article). There is also a growing percentage of medical students who will be the first doctors in their families (check out this article and this data)

There was a time when most physicians became physicians without ever leaving school – they’d pass from high school to college to medical school to residency. Today, the average age of people starting medical school is 24, which means that they took 1-2 years off from school somewhere along the pipeline. And that’s the average, meaning a significant portion of people starting medical school are older than 24; people like me, I was 29.

All this is to say that who medical students are now is different from what most of our older patients and seasoned physicians have seen most of their lives. For example, as the carpenter story suggests, my teaching physicians thought I was naiver than I am and had a different background than I do. As a different example, as a female medical student my older patients (mostly the men) think I’m a nurse. I find this particularly ironic and amusing because my husband is a nurse; he has no interest in being a doctor and he is a far better nurse than I ever would or could be given my nature.

Looking at the modern world of medicine and the medical world we want for our future, it’s time to check our assumptions about medical students and reevaluate who they are because their backgrounds may surprise you. And to disclose one of my biases, I think the diversifying of the physician force is awesome and, perhaps more doomsday, the only way we’ll solve many of the medical profession’s problems.

*Attempted The Princess Bride reference, not sorry because Inigo Montoya summarizes my thoughts more often than I would like to admit

Rainy Days

Posted on by

The rain fell. It fell hard. It was a mate drinking kind of day. It was a flood-warning day. And the rain reflected my mood. I’d seen a rainbow just before the rain started. With the rain comes rainbows, but on this rainy day I was feeling the grayness more than the light reflected off the raindrops.

And I thought about a text I’d gotten from a friend not many days before the storm hit my town. She’s a good friend and checks in when the world is in shambles and I’m ignoring the news – which is to say, she checks in whenever something happens in the world I should know about because I almost always ignore the news these days. Despite my efforts at ignorant bliss, I’d heard about some of what she said already. And I felt the same as she: what we were doing seemed pointless when so many people were suffering. And yet, it seemed school would give us skills to better help the world. However, the future is hard to predict.

On this rainy day, I thought about allies and who we can trust. I’d recently seen a patient riddled with cancer. It doesn’t require one moment of school to recognize a dying person. This patient was the picture of death. Their eyes were dull, their movements slow, and their skin ashen. The patient couldn’t eat, yet begged for food, and now their cancer had spread so much that it was making connections between their organs. Their pain was barely controlled. They didn’t desire surgery or treatment; they wanted the pain to stop. They wanted to eat. On one hand, the patient and their healthcare team knew exactly when the pain would stop – the word wasn’t mentioned. The family of the patient, on the other hand, pushed for treatment. Treatment in this case meant prolonging life but not ending the pain and not preventing the eventual end we already knew.

Medicine can’t change fate, nothing can. The family had convinced the patient to continue with treatment, and yet the patient wavered. The patient didn’t want to disappoint their family, but they were so tired. I reflected on their family’s choice to push the patient to continue fighting. I realized that I hope that the folks I call allies are there when I need them, when the going gets tough. And I hope that in the tough moments of my battles they think about what’s best for me, even if it’s not their preference.

I wondered if the betrayal of a family wasn’t so different from the betrayal of a country. In this case, though, the patient wasn’t allowed to pursue their end in peace. The news of Afghanistan was quite the opposite. We’d left so many allies to die perhaps avoidable deaths. And I thought back to the day the Twin Towers fell. I was in 6th grade and now I was in medical school. Seeing images of babies handed to strangers on planes in a hope they’d have a better life didn’t seem like much progress from the smoke and rubble that filled New York City when the towers fell. Politics are complicated, but I wondered about the definition of “progress”; was it simply a fiction invented to instill hope? I wondered about trust; which allies are ones we can trust? I wondered what could have been done differently.

On this rainy day, I thought about the good of the individual and the good of the whole. I’d seen a young patient recently walk away from treatment. It would have been a simple procedure with an 80% chance of completely curing their disease without them even needing to stay in the hospital. Declining treatment is a right. But by saying “no” this patient had most likely condemned themselves to metastatic cancer in under a decade. They’d decided to die of cancer well before they turned 50 because their cancer wasn’t curable once it spread. When they declined treatment, the cancer hadn’t spread yet and we most likely could have cured it.

I weighed my feelings about this patient’s decision against my feelings about people declining COVID vaccines. They were both examples of people making health decisions. It is our right to decide what happens to our bodies. But, choosing to die of cancer compared to choosing to put others at risk of infection feels starkly different. You see, the thing about cancer is you can’t pass it to others. The thing about viruses is that they spread. While you might be just fine after catching COVID; others may die when they’re infected. And it could be you who infects them.

The rain fell and I thought about the nature of the world. I had an exam looming and I wanted to ignore everything else. Like rain drops on a rainy day you don’t have to look that far for sad things in life. It’s also true that with rain comes rainbows. And while I’m certain I like rainbows, I’m not certain they make up for whole rainy days.  And it seems that some of us get more moments with rainbows than others. There’s something about the angle between the sun and the water drops. Not everyone has the same angle.

In the World With COVID-19: COVID-19 Continues to Test Our Resilience and Flexibility

Posted on by

Repost of a post I wrote for the Global Health Diaries, the blog of the Global Health Program at the University of Vermont Robert Larner M.D. College of Medicine and the Western Connecticut Health Network. Find the original post here.

When I joined the Peace Corps in Paraguay, we had two mantras: resilience and flexibility. Those words would take on an infinite number of meanings during my service. Spending twenty-seven months living and working in a new language and culture challenged me more than anything ever had. It also allowed me to forge some of the deepest friendships I’ve cultivated, and it pushed me to become a better self. 

Resilience is a word tossed around frequently in medical school, just as in the Peace Corps. The two endeavors have in common a series of obstacles to hurdle. However, “flexibility” faded from my vocabulary when I became a medical student. I first brushed the word aside when I began my premed classes, for which I measured exact amounts in my science labs. As I entered medical school, each minute became precious and tests with multiple choice answers almost erased the idea of flexibility from my mind. Then, COVID-19 arrived. School moved entirely online and everything that had been normal for medical school became a memory of the good old days. 

It’s been about nine months since my classes went online. My friends who work in the emergency department, where I worked before medical school, look tired. Their faces are chapped from wearing masks and face shields. They haven’t been able to see their coworkers’ facial expressions since the pandemic began. My classmates and professors look tired too, on Zoom. My parents, siblings, and friends also look weary when we chat on WhatsApp. These past nine months have been nothing but a test in both resilience and flexibility. 

Resilience is defined in many ways, but I think of it as the ability to endure and still find joy in the little things of life. This past Thanksgiving, I was cheered to see the Zoom collages of families and atypical feasts a Thanksgiving without travel cultivated. I’ve been amazed at how well Zoom can connect us for classes and how easy it makes project planning. While I miss my classmates’ physical presence, I don’t feel disconnected from them because I know they are in their homes studying for classes and STEP (first medical board exam for medical students) just as I am. What’s more is that we can Facetime or WhatsApp at any time. When time is scarce, video calls do afford the benefit of decreased travel time. 

I am surprised to see how flexible medicine can be. Physicians are finding ways to deliver healthcare to their communities even with COVID-19 limiting their options. Those physicians in global health have had the unique opportunity to look at home with a new eye and explore how global health is not only going to different countries but, also, working with communities of new arrivals in their own country. The rise of Zoom has also opened a door for students and physicians across the globe to share ideas and have conversations we might not have had before COVID-19 limited our ability to travel. 

As we look forward to global news that a vaccine to COVID-19 may become available relatively soon, I dream to start my clinical years on time and physically in the hospital. 

Even with the good news, however, I know that we cannot easily predict what will happen in March when my clinicals start. The expectations I have for clinicals, therefore, are largely from watching the students who started their clinicals last spring because they showed that despite setbacks, medicinal learning can adapt to the ongoing challenges of a global pandemic. And while my colleagues, friends, and family look exhausted after these months of weathering the COVID-19 storm, I see the power of their resilience and I am grateful to remember that the adventure of life requires flexibility as it unfolds. As I transition from the primarily academic to the more clinically-focused years of my medical training, remembering flexibility is important.

The False Limitations We Put on Despair and Happiness

Posted on by

The pit of despair and the pool of happiness are bottomless. Which means you and I can both suffer and revel in glee to any degree without limiting the pain and joy of others.  

My partner works in the emergency department (ED) and I used to work there too (that’s where we met). From time to time, our non-healthcare friends will ask, “So if I have to go to the ED, what should I say so my wait is shorter?” When this classic question is asked, my partner and I glance at each other and smirk. Anyone who has worked in the ED can tell you that you don’t want to be the first person to go back to a room from the waiting room…because the people who don’t have a wait are the people most likely to never walk out of the hospital.

No one wants to go to the hospital. It is miserable to be there as a patient. But, let’s say you go to the ED because you broke your arm skiing. Your arm is painful. The friend who accompanied you to the hospital is desperately trying to help you stay calm while also struggling to maintain their own composure because the odd angle of your arm makes them sick to their stomach. While you and your friend wait in the ED, there are others who have been in the hospital for days and there are some who have been there moments; in each of these groups of patients there are people who will die during their hospital stay. I tell you this not to diminish the suffering of your broken arm. I tell you simply to say that we don’t suffer alone. Your broken arm is not made less painful by the heart attack and death of Mr. Doe that occurred while you waited in the ED, but his death might remind you that we do not all suffer to the same degree during a particular patch of time.

The same goes for happiness. Some of the joys of this COVID era are the baby announcements, the engagements, the house improvements finally complete, the adopted fuzzy friends, and the fitness goals achieved. My social media feeds are full of cute kittens, puppies, and shiny rings. One of the things I love about all these great landmarks in my friends’ lives is that the engagement of one friend does not detract from the puppy adoption of another. It turns out that my friend with a fiancé can be dreamy about their forever while my other friend can melt with love for their new puppy.

I think the infinity of the pit of despair and the pool of happiness are important to keep in mind. You can take as much as humanly possible from both or either and there will still be a limitless amount for the next person. Not many things in life are that way.

Since the COVID pandemic started and the death of George Floyd there has been arguing among individuals and over the news about the validity and gravity of the pain and inequity experienced by different groups in America. The argument goes some like, “I’ve also had a hard life. I’ve suffered from injustice. So, I don’t see why their hardship and the inequity they face is special.”

The suffering you’ve faced does not neutralize the suffering of others. The suffering you’ve experienced does not lessen the burden of suffering for the rest of humanity. Suffering and happiness have no bounds. The argument for equity is not that your suffering does not matter. Your suffering does matter. The argument for equity is that the systems we’ve developed so far to organize our government, personal lives, education, and work make it harder for certain people to access the pool of happiness while at the same time making the pit of despair easier to fall into. The underpinning of equity is simply that there should be no gatekeeper to happiness and no funnel to despair and, therefore, where they exist they should be eliminated.

COVID-19: Oddity of a Shared Experience While Living Continents Apart from My Paraguayan Friends

Posted on by

Reposting a post I wrote for the Global Health Diaries, the blog of the Global Health Program at the University of Vermont Robert Larner M.D. College of Medicine and the Western Connecticut Health Network. Find the original post here.

In early March, I had a Zoom call with the other community health Peace Corps volunteers I served with in Paraguay from 2014-2016. One of my colleagues still lives in Paraguay and he shared his impression of the Paraguayan response to COVID-19 compared to that of the US this spring: “Here [Paraguay] everything is locked down. Police will stop you if you’re on the street to ask why you’re out. People are getting restless because, as you know, here many people don’t eat if they don’t work. But Paraguay is taking this seriously. It’s mind-blowing to hear what’s happening in the United States. It’s hard to believe the news of people protesting masks and attending large gatherings during these times.”

At the time of that comment, the US was still widely debating the validity of masks and COVID-19 cases and deaths were still increasing. Vermont, where I live, was among the US states that chose a more aggressive public health approach with the hope of containing viral spread. For much of the spring and summer most business in Vermont were closed, including gyms and many restaurants. There was no curfew, however school was cancelled or switched to completely online and wearing masks in public places was mandated. The almost complete shutdown only lasted a few months. In late summer, many businesses in Vermont started to open again. Now, schools are back in session (many school districts have a hybrid of online and in-person classes). As a second-year medical student, I have in-person classes twice a week and online classes three days a week. I am required to get a weekly COVID-19 test and report any new symptoms and contacts daily.

The short shutdown and recent opening of Vermont is in stark contrast with the experiences of my Paraguayan friends during these past 6 months. I’ve remained in contact with friends in the Paraguayan community where I worked when I lived there during my Peace Corps service.

This fall, just as in the spring, my friends in Paraguay are mostly restricted to their homes. When my friends and I spoke in early summer, they said that only a few members of their extended family were still allowed to go to work. One friend shared her perspective on Paraguay’s infrastructure, “Our hospitals can’t take care of people if they get sick,” she said. “We are worried.”

In early September, I got a voice message from one of the Paraguayan women who is like a mother to me. She was on the verge of tears. She is the primary caretake of her 90-year-old mother. In my friend’s message she told me that she is scared that her mother will die of COVID-19. My friend does not have a car. The nearest hospital is 2 hours by bus. I don’t know if the buses are running right now.

I’ve returned to Paraguay twice since leaving, once for a friend’s wedding and once to meet a friend’s son before he turned one. I was planning to visit again this year because two of the children I taught when I worked there will turn 15. In Paraguay, 15 is considered an important birthday and some families have a large, wedding-like birthday party to celebrate. The two children turning 15 are like younger siblings to me and I wanted to see them during their special year.

In late September, realizing that I probably won’t travel anywhere outside of the US soon, I made a traditional Paraguayan drink called cocido. It is a warm beverage made from steeped yerba mate (similar to tea) and burnt sugar. It’s a perfect study beverage for fall and it reminds me of my Paraguayan friends and our times together. I shared a video of making cocido with my Paraguay friends. One of them mentioned that I should make chipa, a traditional Paraguayan biscuit that is often eaten with cocido. “I miss chipa!” I said over text. “I haven’t made it because it’s better in Paraguay. I’ve been waiting to visit again so I can have it there.”

My Paraguayan friend responded, “You should make chipa. Don’t wait to come to Paraguay. You’re not going to be able to come for a long time. Things are not well. Lots of people are getting sick here now. We don’t know what is going to happen with this virus.”

My friend’s comment was in stark contrast to any previous conversation we’d had about me visiting Paraguay. My Paraguayan friends remind me often that I am always welcome in their homes. Before COVID-19, every time we talked they asked when I was returning to Paraguay. Now my friends seem too far away to visit. Yet, despite the feeling that travel to Paraguay is morally forbidden during these times, there is something novel about sharing the same public health crisis in my home country as friends abroad. It is not often that the primary public health concern in the United States is the same as that in Paraguay. It is the first time since I’ve left Paraguay that I feel my life is still intertwined with the lives of my friends in Paraguay. It’s not reassuring, but it is interesting to consider how interconnected our global community is despite the borders, oceans, and mountains that separate us.

Betrayal

Posted on by

I didn’t cry but my heart was heavy in November 2016 when I carefully folded up the American flag I’d always hung in my room and placed it safely in a box, making sure it never touched the ground. I folded it the way my father had taught me, which was the way his father (WWII and Korean war veteran) had taught him. As I folded the flag, I looked for tatters suggesting it needed a proper retirement—it didn’t. I swore that I would not hang the flag again until my country made me proud. Until my country no longer betrayed the promises on which it was founded.

The election in 2016 felt different than the others I’d experienced. There was a pit in my stomach about the future after November 2016 even though as a dreamer I am always hopeful about the future. It was uncharacteristic of me to care much about politics. I felt heavy. I told myself to wait and see how things unfolded. I told myself that US institutions were strong so it was unlikely that much would really change.

I was raised to believe the reality of the American dream. I took it as actuality that you could do anything and be anyone if you tried hard enough. However, as I grew older, I came to wonder if that was actually true.

My skepticism of the American dream increased as I worked through college. We all have our own challenges, but it’s hard not to notice how easy it is for rich kids to do unpaid internships and lead organizations that set them up for great success after graduation while poor kids work and try to fit in the internships and organization memberships they know are key to getting their dream job. That’s if the poor kids were lucky enough to go to college at all.

This year I no longer question the American dream because the beat of the American dream fell silent as a heart monitor goes flat when a heart stops forever. What took the place of my old belief that in America hard work is rewarded and anyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps was a bitter taste. The bitterness was a truth I’d always known but refused to look in the eye: the American dream is an illusion. We don’t all have an equal crack at reaching our dreams. Some of us can climb, but the journey is largely about luck. Hard work pays, but being born the privileged sex and gender, class, and color pays more.

In the past 4 years I’ve seen America steal children from their families and put them in cages and call it justice. I’ve seen men supported and allowed to take positions of power despite overwhelming evidence that they had sexually abused women. I’ve seen the armed forces deployed against citizens, and I’ve seen military members accept that deployment.

I’ve seen so many people of color jailed and killed in the name of justice we could erect a memorial like that to the Vietnam War on the National Mall with their names and it would be more impressive than any war memorial. Just like for the soldiers who died in Vietnam, the people who were killed for their skin would have their names written on panels of black stone. Roses and notes would rest at the panels’ base, a tribute to the years the humans named there weren’t allowed to live and to the loved ones who miss them. When I lived in DC I visited the National Mall and Arlington Cemetery often. I visited these war memorials because it seemed the worst fate was to die and be forgotten. To have your name unspoken and your life discredited.

I’ve seen open fire on people in schools, places of prayer, and movie theaters. I’ve seen cities stopped by a pandemic, a virus that continues to kill and, yet, Americans would rather endanger grandmothers and grandfathers (possibly murder them with their breath) before wearing a mask.

I’ve seen taking part in global organizations and dialogue, environment protection, and offering refuge from persecution declared as no longer American.

Every time I’m bold enough to open the news I see more evidence that the American dream is not only dead but was never alive. Have we always been so cruel and hateful toward people different from us?

And I am angry. I know anger accomplishes nothing. Yet, as it becomes clearer how far America is from a country whose flag I’d proudly wave, I am angry and weary. I’m angry because so many of the horrors we’re seeing unfold today have always been there unaddressed. I’m angry because those in the highest places of power are clinging to the status quo which is one where only a select few are favored. I’m angry because the institutions I thought I could trust are weak.

Somehow, in the middle of a pandemic that has killed many globally and protests demanding equity long overdue, we must continue to live our lives. To love, work, study, and play. In some ways it is so easy to continue as if life were normal, even though 2020 has exposed many things that need our attention. Despite the desire and freedom to ignore what has been exposed this year, it would be an error to pretend that everything is okay. Should we choose to punt addressing our problems to a distant future, then it is not just the American dream but also America that has died. America is a place where all people have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and our country isn’t there yet.

I can’t help but reflect on how my life in a rural town is so different from that of someone living in NYC were people died in droves from COVID-19 and more people than the population of my hometown marched the streets to protest violence and inequity these past months. And just the tranquility of my life this year compared to many of the lives led by NYC dwellers illustrates how far we have to go to ensure that we all have a crack at life, liberty, and happiness.

As I slide closer to my second year of medical school, I continue to wonder what more I can do and what my role is in making America a place I’m proud to call home. When I think of action I am less angry, still weary, and very determined that though it will be a long journey, I might fly my country’s flag again. And while I don’t think I’ll live to see the American dream feel real again, I hope that we will lift ourselves closer to a society where every person is judged more for their work and kindness and less by factors present at birth such as the wealth of their parents and the color of their skin. I think if we can move forward, change, then we might call ourselves Americans with the meaning the American dream implied.