Author: miranda

Wilderness Medicine

A few years ago I was at a horse show on a really hot day.  As “horse show mom”, my duties were simple:  get up early, drive child to show, groom and saddle horse, and stand around all day while trying NOT to offer helpful advice to said child.  On this particular humid day the… Continue reading Wilderness Medicine

Pass the Butter Please

  With gratitude to Doctors Rafael Espada and Michael Madani, for fixing my father’s heart, twice.   When Michael Phelps was interviewed during the Beijing Olympics, the world first learned about the extraordinary amount of food needed to fuel the swimmer with the wingspan of a pterodactyl. He said that he ate 12,000 calories a… Continue reading Pass the Butter Please

UGET1GO

Since California is the center of the universe when it comes to vanity, there are a whole lot of folks with so called “vanity plates” on their cars.  Here you are allowed a combination of seven letters or numbers and apart from obscenities, pretty much anything goes.  Back in Massachusetts, I had a vanity plate… Continue reading UGET1GO

Dear Catherine

When I saw the peonies just poking their new shoots above the ground next to your house, it was almost too much to bear. I love peonies. In 1991 we bought the house on Strawberry Hill back in Dover Massachusetts. The perennial gardens were seventy years old then, and I had no idea what was… Continue reading Dear Catherine

Denial Is Not a River in Egypt

If you desire healing, let yourself fall ill let yourself fall ill.” ― Rumi Yesterday I saw a patient—an 80 year old woman with metastatic cancer involving her bones.  She had near complete replacement of her twelfth thoracic vertebra by tumor, and also significant destruction of her fourth and fifth lumbar vertebrae, demonstrated by PET-CT… Continue reading Denial Is Not a River in Egypt

Closing up Shop

They say that as we age, time accelerates.  Those endless waits for summer vacations, Christmas and our birthdays that we experienced at age six, become a mere blink of an eye at age sixty.  And if you’re approaching sixty, you will remember, like I do, those old Kodak commercials:  “Turn around, turn around, turn around… Continue reading Closing up Shop

Long Ago and Far Away

I got a call a few days ago from Sandy Arledge.  Sandy is semi-retired now, but when my kids were growing up she was the owner of a magical place called Far West Farms.  Just a few miles from the ocean, between the strip malls of Del Mar Highlands and the housing developments that crowd… Continue reading Long Ago and Far Away

The Irony of It All

My son wants a government job. After obtaining a Masters degree in Public Policy, with an emphasis on economics, he was the envy of his classmates when he actually got a job.  He has been working for the last seven months for a giant consulting corporation.  Early every Monday morning, at the bidding of his… Continue reading The Irony of It All