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A night on call
I got a thank you card the other day; someone had put it in my mailbox at the hospital. I suppose it was nothing special, but it touched me: a name I didn’t recognize, an enclosed picture of a beautiful baby, and hand-written with unforgettable penmanship a heartfelt thanks that I had helped the couple in their moment of joy and unexpected…
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Nature versus Princess Nurture
I’ve often wondered how much of a role acculturation plays in modelling who we are. Am I a gynaecologist because my mother restricted my prairie play-things to a rather effeminate teddy bear named Girl and a doctor’s bag that probably wasn’t? Or did I choose to play with them -as opposed to, say, waving tree…
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Reflections on the Bell Curve
We -many of us in the Western world at any rate- live our lives on a Bell Curve, thinking -hoping- we occupy a place near an out-lying position: the 5% area that presumes we are not just normal, but rather, exceptional… And given the population numbers, there is time spent worrying that we are inadvertently drifting towards the center…
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The dangers of perceived wisdom
The Court of Public Opinion -an interesting phrase to be sure. It implies the judgemental assessment of an action, an idea -an opinion- by society at large. An interpretation, not necessarily impartial or even appropriate. A reaction, really, to something that stands out as different in some way from that Public’s perceived norms. A Culture’s value system is usually encapsulated in what…
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The Concept of Sober Second Thought in Medicine
Perhaps it is the vain attempt of Age to maintain its relevance in a time of incessant, dizzying innovation, but it seems to me there is something to be said for reflection before action. We have here in Canada, a now much-derided political institution called the Senate whose members are appointed, not elected, and whose purpose is supposedly…
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Taking arms against a sea of troubles
A quasi-existential question: what do you do if you are a doctor dealing with a patient you don’t like? More importantly, however, what if you are a patient, forced by necessity or circumstance to see a doctor you don’t like? This is a question that is often framed in terms of racial, socioeconomic or cultural…
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What’s in a name… Cancer?
Words are important. Quite aside from meaning, each has its own shade, its own temperature. Rose calls forth a mood, an emotion, an expectation that is quite distinct from, say, daisy. Words are little coloured post cards that tell stories and paint pictures; each word elicits a miniature portrait in the brain. Together, they tell stories, individually they hint at…
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Tainted Breast Milk
I have to admit I’m worried. I’m worried that we have so successfully indoctrinated new mothers that their babies will suffer irredeemable hardships if not given breast milk, that they will seek it out whatever the source and wherever the source… My concern is not over the long-since proven benefits of breast milk, nor whether mothers…
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An exploration of Menopause as a Boundary Phenomenon.
For years now, and especially as I age, I have been compelled by the idea of edges. Boundaries. Something different obtains there, something that differentiates them from whatever they demarcate. They are privileged areas, faerie-tale areas. Think, for example of silhouettes -treetops, say, against an evening sky; they are nothing but edges: intricately crocheted patterns, filaments of black against the dying…
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A Canadian stem cell bank account?
There is method in the madness, the desperate rush for ontogeny. Cells huff and puff, some listening for instructions, others heading off in all directions like missionaries to new and just-discovered worlds. It is a busy place, the initial blastocyst turning into a multicelled embryo, as ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, organs materialize out of apparent chaos, and form…
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