musingsonwomenshealth.com

Reflections on 40 years as a doctor in Women's Health

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  • Autism and Obstetrics

    I’m an obstetrician caring for worried mothers. They’re worried about things that might put their developing foetuses at risk for a whole range of issues and ask me for advice. Obviously I’m neither a paediatrician nor a child psychologist, so questions about autism leave me alone in troubled waters. There are so many rumours of…

    gozzter

    February 11, 2015
    Uncategorized
    ASD, autism, Autism Spectrum Disorder, criteria boundaries, DSM-5 criteria, Julius Caesar, neurodevelopmental disorder, pollution, sensitivity, serpent’s egg, Shakespeare, social communication, specificity
  • The Unexpected

    What I like about the unexpected is that you never expect it. It’s a surprise. A gift. And the world is filled with this stuff. Each day at work –I’m a gynaecologist- there are little treasures hidden within appointments, presents in names. Especially the unpronounceable Persian names that unravel when I try to work at…

    gozzter

    February 4, 2015
    Uncategorized
    cross culture, endometriosis, laparoscope, movie star, names, ovarian cyst, Pain, pelvic pain, scars, surprises, unexpected gift
  • Cohabitation?

    Cohabitation is the bête noir of some cultures and the realization of a belle époque for others. Lascivious as it sounds, it doesn’t necessarily exemplify freedom and liberation, though -it is a direct and unsubtle abnegation of long held moral and religious values for many. But why? Why would the decision to share one’s life need…

    gozzter

    January 28, 2015
    Uncategorized
    civil ceremonies, cohabitation, cultural differences, Divorce in Muslim countries, divorce rates, Iran, liberal western perspective, relational ethics, relationship
  • The Solopsist

    I have always been influenced by something Lewis Thomas, the American polymath writer-physician once said at a lecture I attended. He felt he would be better served by a doctor who had read Shakespeare than someone who had merely focussed all of his formative years on learning medicine. His point, I think, was that to…

    gozzter

    January 21, 2015
    Uncategorized
    Aequanimitas, equanimity, etymology, Lewis Thomas, pelvic pain, philosophy, potentiality, reality-based, Sir William Osler, Solopsism
  • The Loneliness of Social Media

    There comes a time when solitude is not enough. When weekends are deserts that must be crossed to get to people on the other side. Where there are eyes that welcome, ears that hear, voices that desire a response. When your own voice is not rusty with disuse and your mind not imprisoned inside a…

    gozzter

    January 14, 2015
    Uncategorized
    clinical depression, dating sites, DSM-5, Loneliness, online dating, online profile, social media, socialization, solitude
  • The Goddess of Small Things

    Every office needs a goddess. Every doctor needs to see one now and then to keep things in perspective. Separate the two Magisteria. I have a goddess –not self-professed to be sure, but in a pinch, self-acknowledged. She comes to see me once a year or so, for reasons that are not at all transparent. It…

    gozzter

    January 7, 2015
    Uncategorized
    bacterial vaginosis, Brigadoon, goddess, infection, Magisteria
  • Are We There Yet?

    There are some things you just have to get right -or else. But, or else what..?  Continuing exposure, even to the most egregious injustices risks dulling the senses; eliciting not indignant shouts but shrugs, excuses not action. Accommodation. There are benefits that accrue to adaptation, of course –if one lives next to a pulp mill,…

    gozzter

    December 31, 2014
    Uncategorized
    accommodation, adaptation, Canadian parliamentarians, China’s new draft law, cultural folkways, cultural relativism, domestic abuse, domestic violence, folkways, Here be dragons, physical abuse, sexual harassment
  • A Gynaecologic Chapel

    I’ve always been fascinated with the Sistine Chapel in Rome –well, in the Vatican City to be more Catholically correct- but perhaps not for all the reasons you might assume. I have to confess –sorry, poor choice of words- I have to admit that I have little interest in the fact that it is in…

    gozzter

    December 24, 2014
    Uncategorized
    Apostolic Palace, chapel, Gynaecology, Michelangelo, Pope Sixtus IV, sanctuary, Sisitne Chapel ceiling, Sistine Chapel, stained glass, stained glass windows, sunbeams, The Creation of Adam
  • The Size of the Dog

    In the hazy light of retrospect I can still see her lying there on the hospital bed scowling at me. She was clutching her baby as if she’d won it in a game in which she’d cheated. In fact, I suppose she had… But I’m getting ahead of myself. Way ahead. I’d first met Mary…

    gozzter

    December 17, 2014
    Uncategorized
    augmentation of labour, Caesarian section, different names for labour, dress rehearsal, estimated fetal weight, labour after a Caesarian section, litigious, midwife-led care, oxytocin, precipitous labour, trial of labour, ultrasounds in pregnancy, vaginal birth
  • Perchance to Dream

    There’s something about complexity that I find intimidating; impressive as it may be, I don’t crave the complicated. I don’t even understand it. Of course, that may be part of its fascination for some: a facet of the instinct that leads to worship of that which is mysterious. Unknowable to the uninitiated. The awe of…

    gozzter

    December 10, 2014
    Uncategorized
    body temperature, complexity, eclampsia, electricity, Embrace, hemorrhage, hypothermia, incubator, inflatable incubator, James Dyson Award, Kangaroo care, low birth weight babies, Mom, phase-change material, pregnancy induced hypertension, premature babies, shivering, simplicity, skin-to-skin contact
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