Posted by Alex Lickerman
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Photo: simminch
Once while I was jogging along Lake Michigan, I came upon a large crowd surrounding a middle-aged man lying supine on the ground. I stopped to assess the scene and saw the man wasn’t moving—at all. Two people were bending over him and trying to shake him awake.
“What happened?” I asked.
“He fell,” [...]
Posted by Alex Lickerman
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Photo: ctsnow
The other week while my wife and I were out jogging we watched a couple in front of us walk across the street against a red light, blissfully unconcerned as two cars had to screech to a halt in front of them. To our amazement, the couple continued on without even a [...]
Posted by Alex Lickerman
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After meeting with an attending physician in a Physical Diagnosis class when I was a second-year medical student, I remember thinking how impossible it seemed that my brain would ever contain as much medical knowledge as his. And even if somehow one day it did, how would I ever be able to call on it, [...]
Posted by Alex Lickerman
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Though I’ve never lost a friend or family member to suicide, I have lost a patient (who I wrote about in a previous post, The True Cause Of Depression). I have known a number of people left behind by the suicide of someone close to them, however. Given how much losing [...]
Posted by Alex Lickerman
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A few weeks ago, a colleague and I were discussing the devastation in Haiti. He told me he thought he should go down there to help out—but that he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. His heart went out to the people suffering there, he said, but apparently not enough to get him to [...]
Posted by Alex Lickerman
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Photo: Jayel Aheram
When I was in grammar school learning about World War II, I remember thinking how grateful I was that society had finally matured to the point in the intervening years that war no longer ever broke out. Today I can hardly remember what bizarre thought process led me to conclude that [...]
Posted by Alex Lickerman
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Photo: Leonidas Tsementzis
As I wrote in an earlier post, The True Cause Of Cruelty, for me seventh grade was a disaster. I was persecuted by anti-Semites and so traumatized that my parents endured owning two houses at once for six months in order to get me into a new school. I left seventh [...]
Posted by Alex Lickerman
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Photo: nutmeg
Life continuously presents us with difficult choices. Do we start our own business or stay in our (relatively) safe job? Do we absorb the high cost of health insurance or risk going uncovered because we’re healthy now? Do we get the screening colonoscopy? Do we get married? Do we have children? Do [...]
Posted by Alex Lickerman
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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 [...]
Posted by Alex Lickerman
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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 [...]