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Latest Voices
Living in a Tub of Sweat
My husband is an air-conditioning contractor based in southeast Florida, where A/C is needed almost the whole year round. This summer has been particularly hot—the temperatures pushing everyone’s A/C units to their limits. He comes home soaked in sweat and arrived on the border of a heat stroke one day.
It’s Just One Pill
When I was deciding what pediatric subspecialty to pursue, one mentor gave me this advice—think what common condition you wouldn’t mind seeing on a daily basis. As I considered various diagnoses, one stood out—iron-deficiency anemia, the backbone of pediatric primary hematology complaints. Indeed, during my fellowship in pediatric hematology-oncology, I’ve seen a plethora of patients with iron-deficiency anemia. The majority are adolescent females, iron deficient due to myriad causes, most often diet or abnormally heavy menstruation.
It Is What It Is
I am not a drinker—not of water, juice, coffee or tea, or alcohol. My children and physician constantly remind me of this unhealthy habit, stressing that my body needs fluids, especially water, to function properly. I hear them, but I do not listen. I have even ignored them these past several months when the temperatures have risen to the high eighties and often middle nineties.
Pills Can Be Dangerous
As a new nurse, I practiced the “Five Rs” of medication administration with religious devotion: right patient, right medication, right route, right dose and right time. Over the next thirty years, I gave thousands of pills to patients.
Early one morning, my fellow RN called out from within a patient’s hospital room, “Getting ready for medical transport, need some help!”
Peeking into the room, “What can I do?”
Tanya replied, “Get Mrs. Smith’s meds.”
August More Voices: Heat
Dear Pulse readers,
Many years ago, while seeking employment as a musician, I spent part of a summer in Minneapolis, a town I associated with cold winters but which, it turned out, also endured hot summers. My quarters had no air conditioning and I was sweltering, so I purchased a fan, which didn’t help much. For some reason, my place just wouldn’t cool off, even at night, and there were moments when I felt I might suffocate from the heat.
It Finally Happened
It finally happened. Three years and four months after the pandemic began, I contracted COVID-19.
I wore a mask longer than most anyone I know. I dutifully received all the booster shots. I was headed to Brazil on a family vacation and decided it was time to relinquish the mask. My teenage daughters had been making fun of me for months. I was more worried about dengue, yellow fever, and zika as I slapped mosquitos buzzing around my ankles on my daily walk by the ocean at the idyllic beach resort of Buzios, a several-hour drive from Rio de Janeiro.
He Made His Own Decisions
My husband knew his body.
When he was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation in his 40s, despite the fact that he was a dedicated runner, every physician he ever saw recommended that he take some blood-thinner or other. Each of them gave as their rationale the fact that he had a five-percent chance of experiencing a stroke without such medication.
Priorities
Two dreaded words for medical providers and patients: Prior Authorization (PA). For the fortunate few who have not needed to engage in this process, here’s a definition from the American Medical Association website: Prior authorization is a health plan cost-control process by which health care providers must obtain advance approval from a health plan before a specific service is delivered to the patient to qualify for payment coverage.
Lifelong Learning
I’ll be the first to admit that I only know a fraction of all there is to know about the wide variety of tablets, capsules, caplets, and other pills out there.
