Local Doc on the Block
“You have a nice view.” I say that often to patients at our hospital because it really is a beautiful view. Built in the late 1800s, the hospital has some perspectives which overlook the Brandywine creek and its bank of trees. But the view I am always talking about is…
It has been nearly two years since I last wrote here. Long lapses in writing are common, typically due to the crowding out caused by a mundane sort of busyness. This lapse has been different if not intentional. It is one thing to say, “2020!” with the sort of half-shrug…
It was hard to hear him over the rhythmic humming of the ventilation, so I leaned in as his other classmates filtered out of the room. “How do you be a dad?” As a pediatrician, most of the questions I am asked are technical ones. What is this rash? How do you change the…
This post has been dormant since March 29, 2016, but its title and its content have persistently been on my mind since. The other day at some social gathering someone asked me what my hobbies were and, after thinking for a moment, said that it was studying firearm violence. They laughed awkwardly…
Dwight and I sat in his small apartment and talked about our memories from Pine Street, the neighborhood we had first become friends and neighbors. He was grinning in a mischievous way and I knew something good was coming. “When I first met you, you were juggling outside, and I thought,” he paused to…
The nurse, the wife, the niece, and I sat together in the small family room, quietly thinking. I felt insulated from the sounds of the busy hospital even as my pager chirped a warning that our ICU was about to get even busier. I resisted the temptation to sit on the edge of the seat and betray the…
This is written as a public response to Jonathan Imbody, VP of Government Relations for CMDA, who recently wrote an opinion piece for a CMDA blog titled “Donald Trump got elected and now I don’t know what to think.” As he introduces: If that statement describes how you feel, you are a member…
This Monday our family went to the funeral of Uncle Ron, whom I barely knew. An uncle twice removed, we had met perhaps four times in life: his daughter’s wedding, my wedding, and two family reunions. Our conversations were brief but good. The first one was him telling me how…
