A great deal of the time I find myself metaphorically banging my head against the wall in despair at the stupidity of much medical thinking. This is not, I would suggest, a new phenomenon. It always seems to have been thus. Go back 5,000 years….

This time I want to tell a simple story, exactly as it happened. It was 1989. I was living in the West Village in New York City in a tiny studio with the shower out in the hallway and going by day, to my day job. It was a very strange job now that I look back: I was gathering tales from the Forbidden Zone about AIDS and its drugs and its rapidly solidifying belief system and pressing them into a monthly column in the rock magazine SPIN. This helped me develop a healthy skepticism toward mainstream medicine, and begin to understand the psycho-dynamics of it, and how much it revolved around doctors’ sense of power and authority and patients’ sense of guilt and surrender.

What if the Father of Medicine could time travel and found himself in the USA today? If he experienced our health care system, he would have to come up with a brand new oath, wouldn’t he? It wouldn’t be the one that has lasted for over twenty centuries and is still used by graduating medical students today. It would be a reaction of horror and fury -- unprintable Greek blasphemies.

Our family experienced something last week that no family should experience.  My husband had surgery for bladder cancer and the family gathered round.  Three of his five children were there before and during his surgery, along with a daughter-in-law and son-in-law.

Are you depressed that your once-vibrant, “with it” parents are now old and frail? Are you running errands for them and contending with the needs of your children? Do you often feel alone, isolated and alienated?   You must understand that you are not alone. Many are sandwiched between the diverse needs of aging parents and children.

It is almost inevitable that you will be called upon to become a caregiver for an aging parent, spouse, single friend or an ill child in the future. Are you prepared for that reality?   I was thrust into this role quite suddenly when my father died two years ago. After 63 years of marriage my mother was alone. I suddenly had to deal with the emotional, legal, medical, psychological and financial issues. What complicated matters was the fact that my parents lived out of town. I became a long-distance caregiver. I felt guilty for not being immediately available to handle all the needs of my mother. The daily phone call wasn’t enough! The psychological baggage began to affect me physically and emotionally. I realized that I could not be there quickly enough all the time. I concluded that if I didn’t take care of my own needs, if I became ill, my ability to help my mother would be greatly diminished. I had to steel myself and develop an out-of-town caregiver gameplan.

As health care systems continue to fail in their ability to deliver the necessary care to those in need, more and more pressure is going to fall on family and friends to support loved ones who are ill.

Too many Americans stuck on Dr. Kildare, Ben Casey, and Marcus Welby?

Why do people still have so much faith in doctors? Ever wonder about that?

This question came to mind when I happened upon the results of a recent Harris Poll. It found that a whopping 76% of the 1011 people questioned said they felt doctors had very great prestige!

When I was pregnant with my first baby in 1990, I decided against having a scan. This was a rather unusual decision, as my partner and I are both doctors and had even done pregnancy scans ourselves- rather ineptly, but sometimes usefully- while training in GP Obstetrics a few years earlier.

Intensive Care Units May Be Doing Patients More Harm Than Good

When I was a houseman on the cardiothoracic and vascular units at St Mary’s Hospital in London in 1966, there were no intensive care units. On those days that open heart operations were performed the patients were kept in the recovery room overnight and the senior registrars in surgery and anaesthesia slept in the recovery room. It was not the custom to ventilate patients after surgery, except on occasion for a short period in the recovery room. All patients, except those who had had open heart surgery, were managed on the wards, albeit a very closely supervised thoracic ward. That included all patients with chest drains.

The Medical Neglect Of A Quiet, Friendly Family Man

My Uncle Joe lived for his garden, and his garden lived for him. He supplied his family with the most beautiful organic veggies, before anyone knew what organic meant, and also the world’s most beautiful flowers. When he got up there in age and had to have back surgery and had to use two leg braces, he gardened from his little plastic chair which he dragged around the yard. He was a quiet, friendly, family man who had a blue collar career after serving his four years in World War II.

The way things are going in medicine, everyone is going to need a medical professional in their immediate family for post surgical treatment or other medical emergencies. Last week, my 26-year-old son’s pilonidal cyst surgery made me extremely thankful we had one. Although my husband is retired, he was an ob-gyn surgeon and knows wound treatment. And although I am a licensed RN, I haven’t worked in nursing for 28 years.

What Do They Tell Us?

Last month, the Boston Globe and the New York Times reported on a new medical phenomenon: "boutique" or "deluxe" medical practices, in which patients pay from $1,500 to $4,000 yearly, on top of their regular health insurance, for extra services.