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On Remembering Faces
Faces are important; they are like little signs we wear to allow others to recognize us. Unlike, say, fish they are distinctive and carry verbal labels further enabling meaningful categorization. A face without a name begs inquiry; a name without a face, recollection or even retrospection… In a way, remembering faces is a sign of respect: you have had dealings…
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The Awe of BRCA
Awe: the word has been pasteurized, connotized almost beyond recognition. But I suppose that’s what happens to all really powerful words. There’s a life-span to language; a generation if you’re lucky; a year if social media gets hold of it –likes it… But I think the ship of awe and all of its elegance went down quickly -even before…
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Questions and Answers in Medicine
Questions, questions, questions… They are the scaffolding that surrounds any medical encounter. One could almost phrase it semi-mathematically: patient/doctor = question/answer. And the success of the relationship -at least at the start- is largely dependent on the answer part of the equation. Patients usually come armed with both a problem and questions about it. That…
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The Feminine Perspective?
“Men and women think differently, doctor,” a patient said to me recently, shaking her head in response to some requested advice from me. “You of all people should know that.” It was stated with a look of smug authority, as if to disagree would have been tantamount to an admission of professional incompetence. And while…
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Health Care Provisos
I think one’s occupation tends to encourage a tightly focussed view of only one lane on the road, and a trust that it and it alone will lead to the intended destination. In my hitherto tunnelled vision, it had always been the Medical Model that dominated -to the exclusion of any rival Magisterium. But as time matures, I have…
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The Medical Illustrator
I am an illustrator, a drawer of pictures, if not by aptitude, then by necessity. Many of the concepts I am required to explain beg for diagrams, for pictures, for some sort of visual representation. It is amazing, for example, how many people do not know what a uterus looks like, what’s attached to it,…
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Mother-Baby Units in Prisons
Mothers keeping their babies while in prison -a great idea? I have to admit that I hadn’t thought much about it until the Media publicized a case being considered by the British Columbia Supreme Court. A mother-baby program was cancelled at a regional institute in 2008 and the contention is that this not only violated an…
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Patient Ethics.
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about ethics; I’m not sure why, although I suppose it’s a common attribute of age: a way, perhaps, of appraising one’s own affect on the world. I’ve written before about the usual constituents of an ethical assessment: Respect of Autonomy -respect, in other words, for a different opinion; Justice -or…
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Sex Selection… or Any Selection
Another day, another march. This time it was the March for Life in Ottawa where the usual Pro-Life rhetoric was rebranded as being against sex-selection abortions. A worthy cause, for sure, and probably more universally palatable than condemning all abortions -whether done for medical, genetic, or even social reasons- as they have in the past. And by aligning themselves with the…
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