A Writer’s New Year’s Morning Walk

Jan 1, 2015 | Writing

The sound, muted but insistent, fractured the early morning quiet. I followed the gulp-croak, gulp-croak into the front hallway in time to place a towel under my vomiting dog’s muzzle. It was four-thirty in the morning. I could hear the churning of his intestines. He...

Writing about Old Age

Apr 12, 2013 | Aging, News and Updates, Writing

In the New York Times review of A History of the Present Illness, Abigail Zugar noted that I write “lovely, nuanced description” and have joined “the ranks of those immortalizing the small, realistic retails of modern medical care.” That was...

Pain

Mar 26, 2013 | Patients

We all know what pain is. And we know it comes in many different flavors – physical, psychological, emotional; acute, chronic; sharp, dull, burning, searing, excruciating, etc. – anything and everything that includes suffering or discomfort of any kind....

Burnout

Mar 6, 2013 | Doctoring, News and Updates

When you hear the same comment from two very different places/people in a short space of time, you need to take it seriously. First, a friend/colleague at Brown said she loved the book, couldn’t put it down, but felt it didn’t paint a very optimistic...

Food, Songs, and Stories

Feb 23, 2013 | News and Updates, Writing

I love food: how it looks and how it tastes, that when done well it relies on science and requires art, how it’s both essential to life and one of the life’s great pleasures, that it embodies cultures and family traditions, and how easily it communicates...