Tag: shortness of breath
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Dream on
Paul Rousseau Charleston, South Carolina, United States Footsteps in the forest. Photo by Nicholas D. on Flickr. CC BY-NC 2.0. Chart This is a 32-year-old female with widely metastatic breast cancer admitted to the hospital for control of shortness of breath and pain. ____ Melissa sits slumped, mouth open, snoring. I pull a chair…
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Scotland’s Anthrax Island
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden Cutaneous anthrax lesion on the neck, May 25, 1953. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Public Health Image Library. Via Wikimedia. Public domain. “They make a desolation and call it peace.” — Agha Shahid Ali (1949–2001) During World War Two, the British government purchased from its owners the Gruinard…
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Memories of a West Virginia coal camp
Calvin KuninColumbus, Ohio, United States This is a brief account of my experience as a physician at a coal mining camp in rural West Virginia. It is based on my memory of events that took place almost seventy years ago but remain vivid in my mind. The adventure began the day I graduated from medical…
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Remembering Sir Thomas Lewis’ contribution to understanding heart failure
Daniel GelfmanIndianapolis, Indiana, United States Sir Thomas Lewis (1881–1945) has been called one of the “fathers of modern cardiology” due to his many significant contributions to that discipline. In 1930 he wrote a landmark paper clarifying the disease “congestive (heart) failure,” revealing clues that are present in the jugular veins, for making the diagnosis and…
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The talk
Akshay Khatri Valhalla, New York, United States Photo from Pixabay I walked into the emergency department with a sense of trepidation. The patient I was evaluating was Mrs. G, a woman whom I had cared for in the hospital a few months earlier. Now she was back from the nursing home with more shortness…
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The last days of George Washington
When George Washington developed laryngitis and shortness of breath in 1799, his doctors used poultices, enemas, and opened his veins to remove almost half of all his blood in 12 hours. Shown on his deathbed in a painting recently dubbed Death by Malpractice, the first president of the United States was 67 years old at…
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Let us all be well
Michael Konik Los Angeles, California, USA “We need a new heart at the heart of the system, one that is not cold and congested, a heart that is open and compassionate.” Diseases work insidiously, hiding out in hard-to-see places. A badly compromised body often looks normal on the outside, especially if the illness is…