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Posted by Alex Lickerman  Print  Email to a friend  Photo: fontplaydotcom I’ve chosen three questions from readers to discuss in this week’s post. To those who sent me these questions, please recognize my answers are by necessity general as I obviously don’t know you personally nor the details of the situations you wrote about. I do hope my answers can provide you new ways to think about the problems you’re facing as well as provide other readers useful perspectives on similar situations they may be facing in their own lives, but please don’t mistake any of the following for my professional medical advice. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  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,” someone, a woman, said. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  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 break in their conversation, as if the cars had somehow forfeited their right of way because the couple had decided they wished to cross the street at that exact moment. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  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, manipulate it, twist it, bend it, and turn it upside down with the same apparent ease as he? Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  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 my patient affected me, I’ve only been able to guess at the devastation these people have experienced. Pain mixed with guilt, anger, and regret makes for a bitter drink, the taste of which I’ve seen take many months or even years to wash out of some mouths. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  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 hop on a plane.
I asked him what was stopping him. He thought about it for a moment and then said: “I don’t have anything left to give.” His answer took me by surprise. I thought his reasons would have been the same as mine: it would have been too disruptive to his life here, too frustrating to go down and be ineffective as a physician without adequate infrastructural support, and too personally uncomfortable or even risky. But what he meant was simply this: he was too tired. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  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 people had actually become less barbaric with time. I do remember I also believed racial prejudice had died out decades ago and that the pronouncement of guilt or innocence by our justice system reflected actual guilt or innocence. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  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 grade mistrustful, fearful, and socially isolated, feeling as if I’d hidden my true self for so long in order to minimize the risk of persecution that I’d lost track of it entirely.
In subsequent years, I’d occasionally look back and wonder how the experience had scarred me, figuring vaguely that what didn’t kill me made me stronger, but never really delving too deeply into the fear that still remained in the pit of my stomach whenever I’d be thrust into new situations. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  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 we choose what’s behind door #1 or door #2?
Every choice we make, big or small, easy or difficult, has potential benefits and risks. Many times we make choices based on emotional biases born of personal experience (we won’t let anyone operate on our herniated disk because we know someone who awoke from the surgery in even worse pain). If we’re not fully aware of the source of our biases, we risk basing our decisions on flawed reasoning. What we really need is a systematic way to sort through the risks and benefits of a choice that incorporates our personal values in order to make choices that give us the best chance to obtain the best outcomes for us. Continue reading…
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…
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