Author: miranda

Thanks For Your Support

My husband likes to say, “No good deed goes unpunished.”  I don’t always agree, but sometimes you just can’t argue that concept.  One of my favorite patients, a forty nine year old woman who I treated for head and neck cancer a year ago is a good case in point. Head and neck cancer is… Continue reading Thanks For Your Support

Adjustments

“Old age is no place for sissies.”  Bette Davis I am just getting adjusted to the latest adjustments.  When I was in medical school, I heard that word “adjustment” used as medical terminology for the first time, as in “He’s just having an adolescent adjustment reaction.”  Before that, I had experienced the word more frequently… Continue reading Adjustments

The Waiting

“The waiting is the hardest part Every day you see one more card You take it on faith, you take it to the heart The waiting is the hardest part.” Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers   I’ve never been good at waiting for anything. Instant gratification has been my middle name, and I’ve gotten in… Continue reading The Waiting

Don’t Let Me Talk You Into It

When I was young and foolish and just starting out in my career, I found it very hard to take “NO” for an answer.  If a patient needed radiation therapy, and he or she didn’t want to have it, I did my very best to talk that patient into it.   I have always been a… Continue reading Don’t Let Me Talk You Into It

Back at the Ranch

“The sun is riz, the sun is set, and we ain’t outta Texas yet!” It takes a full day to waltz across Texas.  I’ve been reminded of this twice in the last four years—once in July of 2009 when I drove my daughter from California out to Houston to start medical school, and the second… Continue reading Back at the Ranch

Tchotchkes

I’ve always been a collector.  The first things I remember collecting were trolls.  Does anyone else remember those?  Those little plastic guys with round bellies and wild neon colored hair that stuck straight up from their heads—I would always have two or three of them sitting on the starting block at the end of the… Continue reading Tchotchkes

Deep in the Heart of Texas

One of the things I have learned since starting this blog last September is how many doctors enjoy telling their stories, and how many of them do it very well.  Dr. Kevin Pho is an internal medicine physician in New Hampshire who started a website where he brings together many voices of medicine—doctors, patients, educators… Continue reading Deep in the Heart of Texas

Happy Place

“Think of a place that’s really perfect. Your own happy place. Go there, and all your anger will just disappear. Then putt.”        Happy Gilmore, 1996 I don’t know if I have ever heard my radiation therapists say this to a patient, anxious on the treatment table, “Go to your happy place.”  I think I may… Continue reading Happy Place

How Old is Too Old?

Yesterday I saw a 90 year old woman in consultation.  She presented to the emergency room in September with abdominal pain, and in the process of working her up, a chest X-ray was taken which showed an infiltrate in her lingula, part of the left lower lobe of her lung.  As it turned out, there… Continue reading How Old is Too Old?