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Latest Voices
Better Safe than Sorry
When it came time to schedule my fourth COVID booster, I procrastinated. I’d experienced extremely negative reactions to the first two vaccines and the three previous boosters: chills, fever, aches, nausea, weakness. Dealing with those symptoms again did not appeal to me.
But then I remembered what happened to my paternal grandfather and to my beloved father—and I made the first available appointment to get the new booster.
January More Voices: COVID Redux
Dear Pulse readers,
That’s my COVID test from a couple of weeks back. After I’d dodged the virus for three years, it finally caught up with me–disabusing me of any notion that I was somehow more robust, more careful or perhaps cleverer than everyone else who’d come down with COVID.
COVID made me feel crummy–achy, feverish and tired–and without any desire to eat.
My doctor prescribed Paxlovid, and I took it.
Telehealth from the Driveway
My computer chimed a familiar DING, and my patient’s face flashed up on the screen. They were seated in their car, parked in the driveway of their grandchildren’s home, before they went inside for a visit. My patient eagerly declared, “Today is the day!” A broad smile graced their face. “I’m ready,” they said.
Oh, Susanna
Susanna came into the U.S. fighting the mosquito-borne viral disease chikungunya. Her thin body, wracked with fever, shivered and fought off the infection; her family back in her home country called around for a PCP who would see her. They found me and scheduled an appointment. I knew the signs and symptoms of chikungunya, and I knew the hard mass I felt in her belly was something else.
She was diagnosed with cancer two days later and started chemotherapy as soon as she recovered from her infection.
The Scabs We Have
In September, I was called back for dermatological surgery after a biopsy on my left calf revealed a severely dysplastic nevus—a result of the hours I spent tanning in the 1990s.
I canceled my morning clinic while I had the procedure. The surgeon took what she needed and stitched me up. The medical assistant put on a bandage and told me to keep the leg elevated for 12 hours.
Camp Fire Memories
Five years have passed since the morning of November 8, 2018. As I headed out that day, an unusual cloud formation was developing in the eastern sky, over the foothills of the Sierra Nevada range. My colleagues and I would soon learn a wildfire had been sparked and was engulfing the neighboring communities of Concow and Paradise, California. It would become the state’s most destructive and deadly wildfire, killing eighty-five residents, many of whom died in their cars while attempting to flee.
Perception of Pain
It starts as a dull sensation just below my rib cage, as if someone is trying to blow up a balloon inside me. Despite the expanding discomfort, I try to focus on my breathing. Without the ability to fully exhale, it’s difficult to calm my nervous system and avoid the dark places my thoughts are taking me: It’s an abdominal aortic aneurysm, gallstone pancreatitis, a perforated ulcer!
Only 50%: A Failing Grade for a Pharmacy Chain
Due to the war in the Middle East, my family and I had to cancel a much-anticipated visit to Israel this holiday season. Instead, we decided to fly to Bogota. My late father grew up in Colombia, but I’ve never been there; we hope to visit my great-grandmother’s grave and my father’s old neighborhood.
Given constantly evolving infectious risks, we made an appointment before our departure for my older daughter to visit an infectious diseases specialist. The physician sent prescriptions for acetazolamide (for altitude sickness) and azithromycin (for traveler’s diarrhea) to a local pharmacy—part of the country’s largest chain.
My Reprieve
The year 2020 was epic for me—not because of COVID-19, but because my health was being challenged big-time. I’d had a mastectomy in 2017, and a CT scan had revealed a tiny spot on my right lung; my surgeon ordered annual scans to track it—and two and a half years later it had doubled in size. Coincidentally, my gynecologist had been following what she’d diagnosed as fibroids; we talked about a hysterectomy, but it wasn’t urgent.
