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Showing posts from September, 2018

Patient Burnout

As I sit down to write this entry it's 4:42 in the morning. I've been up since around 2:30. Insomnia is nothing new to me, if anything it's odd for me to go more than a month without it. I guess that makes it a frenemy of sorts. Tonight I assume I woke up because I fell asleep in my almost-4 year old son's room because he wanted me to lay with him and I'm a sucker for that kind of thing.  Even though young children sleep like they're the star of a 1980s kung fu film. I often scroll through Twitter when I'm up early and I keep seeing stories about the epidemic of physician burnout. I'm glad this is being talked about more openly. It's not a new concept, but the way our health care system is run these days seems to be piling on more and more mundane bullshit and physicians are growing weary, to put it mildly.  I even did a study in burnout in gastroenterology back in 2011 (Link:  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21336143 ) which is still my favori

When I'm 64

As I approach my 43rd birthday this December, I've been thinking about what life might be like in a couple of decades.  Not a mid-life crisis, there's no new convertible in my garage.  My kids will hopefully be functioning adults. I'll be contemplating retirement.  The usual stuff most people face as they age. I'm thinking about what the hell is my digestive system going to look like when I'm 64? (For the young readers, "When I'm 64" is a Beatles song.  The Beatles are a pioneering rock-n-roll band from the 1960s.  They're on Spotify.) If you haven't read my blog before, I have 2 chronic digestive diseases - Crohn's disease and eosinophilic esophagitis.  Neither are great things to have, but I am fortunate to have what I'd consider relatively mild to moderate disease.  For some people these diseases are a complete shit show.  I've had 1 surgery and 1 hospital stay. But CD and EoE are somewhat progressive.  When I'm 64, I