New posts are available every Monday and can be read in under 5 minutes.
|
Posted by Alex Lickerman  Print  Email to a friend  Photo: ogimogi Mr. Sikes (not his real name) came to me complaining of swelling of his ankles (worse as the day wore on), shortness of breath climbing half a flight of stairs, and sudden awakening in the middle of the night from shortness of breath that resolved after several minutes of sitting upright. I didn’t even need to examine him to know he’d developed congestive heart failure. Later that week, an echocardiogram confirmed moderate systolic dysfunction. Because 75% of all congestive heart failure is caused by coronary artery disease, I told him I wanted to send him to a cardiologist, who I expected would perform a cardiac catheterization to determine if and where he had coronary blockages.
He readily agreed. “Who’s the best heart man you know?” he asked me. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  Photo: Tasslehoff Burrfoot It seems almost every few months a story of a child abduction saturates the news. Amber alerts occur several times a year in many localities. Stories of children who vanished years or even decades past re-run every so often as reminders that some families remain locked in grief even as the rest of us have moved on—all of which leaves many of us with the impression that none of our children are really safe. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  With all the shouting going on about America’s health care crisis, many are probably finding it difficult to concentrate, much less understand the cause of the problems confronting us. I find myself dismayed at the tone of the discussion (though I understand it—people are scared) as well as bemused that anyone would presume themselves sufficiently qualified to know how to best improve our health care system simply because they’ve encountered it, when people who’ve spent entire careers studying it (and I don’t mean politicians) aren’t sure what to do themselves.
Albert Einstein is reputed to have said that if he had an hour to save the world he’d spend 55 minutes defining the problem and only 5 minutes solving it. Our health care system is far more complex than most who are offering solutions admit or recognize, and unless we focus most of our efforts on defining its problems and thoroughly understanding their causes, any changes we make are just likely to make them worse as they are better. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  Photo: DerrickT “The absolute truth, Dr. Lickerman?” Emily (not her real name) said to me, tears sliding down her red, swollen cheeks. “It was a relief.”
She wasn’t referring to being fired from a job she secretly despised or having a divorce finalized from a husband she no longer loved. She was describing instead how she felt about the death of her mother.
Her mother had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s dementia ten years earlier and had finally died after a short seven day stretch of refusing to eat or drink. Emily had debated whether or not to have a feeding tube placed in her mother’s stomach to keep her alive but ultimately decided doing so would only prolong her death rather than provide more meaningful, quality-filled days of life. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  Photo: poeloq Few concepts are as misunderstood or difficult to define as the concept of karma. Like love and happiness, it seems to mean something different to everyone, even as most would probably agree it has something to do with the principles of destiny, fate, predeterminism, and even reincarnation. If we define karma according to the philosophy of Nichiren Buddhism, however, and take the admittedly challenging step of accepting that it functions as a real phenomenon, it becomes apparent few principles are as important to understand correctly if we want to become happy. Continue reading…
|
|
