fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

Paul Gross

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An Editor’s Invitation: Code Red–Our Changing Climate

Dear Pulse readers,
Early this past month, more than 200 medical journals collaborated in publishing an editorial that cited a rise in global temperatures as the “greatest threat to global public health.” It called on governments to cooperate and to combat climate change with the same urgency and vigor that they’ve used to fight COVID.
Pulse would like to lend our voices–yours and mine–to this critical conversation.

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An Editor’s Invitation: Being in the Minority

Dear Pulse readers,
In this country one associates the word “minority” with a skin color that’s different from some shade of pale.
Recent events and the Black Lives Matter movement have underscored the fact that being a Black, brown or Asian person in the US entails more risk, more hurdles, and more daily affronts and assaults than had been previously acknowledged.

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An Editor’s Invitation: Behind Closed Doors

Dear Pulse readers,
To me, there is something sacred about closing the door to an exam room. In my time as a physician, the exam rooms I’ve worked in have never been luxurious. But even under shabby or cramped conditions, there is always something powerful and symbolic about closing the exam room door.
Now you have my full attention, the gesture says. Tell me things that need to be said in private.

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An Editor’s Invitation: Silver Linings

Dear Pulse readers,

I’d like to think that every cloud has a silver lining, and every unfortunate occurrence brings moments of grace.

That’s sometimes true with illness.

When my Belgian mother became ill with Alzheimer’s, it brought headaches and heartaches. After every fall or episode of getting lost, we’d try to talk with her about the future. Her answer was always the same: “I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.”

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An Editor’s Invitation: Healing

Dear Pulse readers,
I spent most of my boyhood with a scab on one knee or the other. There were two reasons: First, I must have fallen down a lot; and second, it was hard to resist picking the scab that formed over a bad scrape.
Picking at or pulling off the scab meant fresh bleeding, a brand-new scab and delayed healing. But it was hard to leave well enough alone and have the patience to let nature do its required work at its own pace.

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An Editor’s Invitation: The Vaccine

Dear Pulse readers,
A New Year is upon us. I hope that it finds you well so far.
It’s an old saw in medicine: Never be the first doctor to prescribe a new medication–nor the last.
It’s advice that I take to heart. I generally wait a few years before offering the latest, greatest pill to my patients. On more than one occasion that strategy has saved me the guilt and shame of violating the most sacred medical directive: First, do no harm.

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An Editor’s Invitation: Endings and Beginnings

Dear Pulse readers,
A colleague who is leaving our practice for California asked me today if I would be willing to assume the care of one of his patients–someone who asked him specifically if I could become her new doctor.
I warily perused her chart and counted forty-one medical problems, from the trivial to the life-threatening, anxiety prominent among them. She seemed a busy bee of a patient, with eleven appointments scheduled for this coming month alone. She’s keeping a lot of doctors hopping, I thought. And soon enough, I’ll be one of them.

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