Ban Ki-moon likes my tie

My roommate Jordan recently sang the German national anthem for the German Consulate’s party at Central Park’s boathouse.  I think it may have been for  German Unity Day, October 3.
As a member of the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artists Development Program (and, like Renee Fleming, Susan Graham, and Ben Heppner, a winner of the prestigious [...]

Well, if that’s how you feel…

Since the person who is covering the inpatient chronic pain service was post-call today, I rounded on the service.  Tomorrow I’ll go to my usual assignment of the week–pediatric pain.
The first patient I saw is being treated for cancer.  He looked fairly comfortable, sitting in bed, basking in the sunlight streaming in the window, listening [...]

The Age of Turbulence

While my elderly first patient of the day took a quick trip to the lavatory before I brought her back to the  operating room, I noticed her husband was reading Alan Greenspan’s recent book, The Age of Turbulence. The avid Mulberry Street reader will remember this book from my November 19, 2007, post in which I repeated a [...]

Another OB story

Dr S, the chief of the obstetrical anesthesia division, has been promising to tell us the story about F.C., an interesting patient of his from several years back. He didn’t have the time today to tell us the story, but instead related another interesting anecdote.
The day started normally with a couple epidurals for women in [...]

Open mouth; insert foot

Two, yea, three things of note happened whilst on call last night.

I finished a case around 2330 and crawled into bed at midnight. The pager was silent. I awoke at 0757, three minutes before my alarm was set to go off. I got more sleep on call than on any night for [...]

Jonathan 2.0

Ruder. Brasher. Speaks his mind. A real New Yorker. At least that’s what I’m striving for.
Especially when I notice a sign at The Fairway grocery store (essentially a cheaper Whole Foods in Harlem looking out right on the Hudson River) display with several kinds of extra-virgin olive oil and some small bread slices for sampling. [...]

Overheard at the hospital,

or “What not to say to patients.”
Before I recently sedated a patient for his endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (henceforth ERCP), the gastroenterologist was reiterating the logic of the plan to the 80-year-old patient.
“We have to put in the biliary stent first. If we were to place the duodenal stent first and then your biliary system becomes [...]