In Mom’s Memory
Today marks the fourth anniversary of the day my mother died from a hard fall at a local hospital in Northern Virginia, the day before she was supposed to be discharged from the hospital to a rehab center. She was a poorly controlled diabetic who suffered all kinds of complications from her surgery. Routinely, patients…
Confessions of a Non-Athlete
Do you exercise? If you don’t, is it intimidating to think of getting started? Have you stopped for a while? Isn’t it hard to get that motivation to get moving once again? As I was watching Dr. Tran run ahead of me on the C & O canal, taking pictures as she went, I was…
End of Life: Time or Quality?
The evening before the blizzard, my husband and I drove after work to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore to see a friend who has been hospitalized for a week for her cancer treatment. She was diagnosed with both thyroid and esophageal cancer six months ago. She underwent chemotherapy and radiation. The tumors have made it…
Are You Surviving the First Blizzard of 2016? A Balance of Shoveling and Making Soup
I am fortunately in the comfort of my breakfast room looking out to the beautiful heavy snow. As you all know by now, wherever you might be, we are in the middle of a major blizzard in the mid-Atlantic part of the country. Did you forget your triple A batteries? Loaves of bread? More wine? IT’S…
Has CLL defined me?
Editor’s Note: Although Carol is writing about leukemia, those with other cancers in remission can relate to her thought process. I have CLL, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, the most common form of adult leukemia. Simply defined, it is a white blood cell disease. The white, infection-fighting blood cells run amok. They multiply at an abnormally fast…
A New Year’s Norovirus “Cleanse”
Thursday I tended to my mother who had what I presumed was norovirus. In the middle of the night she had developed diarrhea and later the next day vomiting. She had a low grade temperature of 100F and very little energy. I kept a safe distance but did empty her vomit pot (AKA emesis basin). …
Breast Cancer – A Patient Perspective
I usually write to you about exercise routines but this article shares my journey and experience with breast cancer. I am ten days out from my breast reconstruction surgery. All went very well, and marks the long and challenging six months since my initial diagnosis with breast cancer. In May, pathology reports confirmed DCIS (Ductal…
My New Year Resolution? I Need to Meditate!
I hope you all enjoyed the holiday time you spent with your families. On New Year’s Day, my husband David, a neighbor and I went for a walk to North Beach, half a mile from our house in Chesapeake Beach. We walked past the registration desk for the Polar Bear Plunge to take place at…
Social Connectedness: Journey With Others
Last weekend, one of the last weekends of 2015, was very hectic. By Sunday night, I realized how we didn’t have any dinner at home for three days! On Saturday, I attended a close friend’s 25th wedding anniversary in Reston, Virginia, while my husband and son went out with his family to a holiday dinner….
Can We Please Bring Back the Wild Things?
Twenty-five years ago when I started practicing ObGyn, I had to use my creativity to calm down the children who came with their mothers for their office visits. Some of them would have been perfectly cast for the characters in Maurice Sendak’s children’s book “ Where the Wild Things Are.” The wild things were in…