To all well meaning opponents of Obamacare: cease and desist, now! The end is near. This will end on its own. A DNR (do not resuscitate) order is imminent. Robert Kocker, a physician and one of the architects of the bill, has buyer’s remorse. I guess he just didn’t think his grand plans through, didn’t consider how real folks might react to this top down monstrosity. I guess he was just too smart to consider any contingencies. He was warned….
My father was a doctor. I received by doctoring interest from him. My brother was similarly influenced. He was a pediatrician. He knew most kids in town and their mothers and fathers. He treated thousands of them and calmed a similar number of mothers and fathers. When he was out of the office at night or on weekends and someone needed his services, he would meet them at the top of our driveway in their cars and administer his treatment…
We have been following Janice Dickinson through her breast cancer diagnosis and treatment. Ms. Dickinson has been more than open about her silicone breast implants. Thus, we have discussed difficulties in patients with implants regarding diagnosis and surgical treatment. We last checked in with Janice after she was diagnosed and had a lumpectomy and as she was starting radiation therapy. She has likely finished this, although there has been nothing in news reports. She is probably experiencing skin changes from…
Early in my career, years ago, I had done a lumpectomy on a patient. It didn’t look great afterwards. That happens. She finished her radiation therapy, waited a few months, and then showed in my office with the lumpectomy scar incorporated into a swirling floral tattoo. You couldn’t see the incision. All my work (disappointed as I was with it) was florally camouflaged. A bad scar into a work of art. I loved it. I wish I had taken a…
With her implants in place, would I want to be the one performing the lumpectomy on Janice Dickinson for her breast cancer? I don’t know Ms. Dickinson, but there is enough information in the public realm to comment on a few of the surgical issues for the treatment of breast cancer in patients with implants. A few years after replacing her thirty year old implants and enduring a cancer scare at the same time, she developed a real breast cancer…
Janice Dickinson went public a few months ago about having breast cancer. It seems that there is a celebrity or public person every week who goes public with their breast cancer story. It shouldn’t be surprising. Celebrities and public figures are not immune from breast cancer. After all, it is the most common form of cancer that women develop What was striking about Janice Dickinson’s public story is that she zeroed in, perhaps unwittingly, on the problems of implants…
My father was a pediatrician. When I was growing up there were always incoming calls into our house from patients of my father. When my father wasn’t there, my mother would take the calls and dispense worldly and medical advice (after all, she brought up five children) to anxious patients. She wasn’t a nurse, but could have been. Mothers nurse their children at birth and nurse them when ill. I guess for all of us the first nurse we encounter…
Breast cancer patients have enough to consider without being confused by claims of improved outcomes of their breast cancer if only they….now fast at night at least thirteen hours. In a recent study early stage breast cancer recurrences were significantly reduced if you fasted at night for at least thirteen hours, which seems to be the magical time span. I’ll bet you didn’t know that. Neither did I. No doubt, a portion of early stage breast cancer patients who have…
Wednesday is the day I go to the operating room to treat breast cancer. Breast Cancer Removal and Treatment Day. Inevitably, each breast cancer patient will ask, “Doc, did you get a good night’s sleep?” Of course, I appreciate and understand their concern and try to laugh it off saying I was up all night partying and that my hands aren’t very steady…but things will be fine…don’t worry.. I walked away from one of these encounters and had a flash…
Breast Cancer and the lives of Husbands, Boyfriends, Fathers and Sons…. A breast cancer diagnosis creates fear, anxiety, and turmoil in a woman’s life. Understandably so. Less understood is how a breast cancer diagnosis impacts the lives of the men that surround her. I am sharing (with permission) a handwritten note I received from the husband of a patient I treated. It is not often in the internet/email age that one is sent a handwritten note, especially from a man:…