Happiness in this World

Several years ago, someone I know told me he was contemplating divorcing his wife.  I wasn’t surprised.  He’d been unhappy in the marriage for some time—and, in my opinion, with good reason:  his wife was jealous to the point of being neurotic, often behaving in ways that were shockingly inappropriate, offensive, and stress-inducing.
Or so he’d [...]

People all over the world know the story of Helen Keller, the deaf blind girl Annie Sullivan taught to communicate by spelling letters on her hands, whose story was depicted in the play and movie The Miracle Worker. What most people don’t know is the story of how Helen’s parents found Annie Sullivan in [...]

For me, this last week has been a little rough.  I’ve been working as an attending physician on an inpatient service populated with incredibly sick patients, several of whom are intensely angry about their diseases and are projecting their anger toward me and the team of residents with whom I work.  The medical informatics project on which [...]

About two years ago a patient of mine, Mr. Burndt (not his real name), committed suicide.  When his wife, who was also my patient, told me the news at one of her visits, I was shocked.  Fully aware that 40% of older patients who are suicidal visit their primary care doctors within one week of killing [...]