Until Tuesday, A New Book About a Very Strong Person

A short note on a book party, fundraiser and warm celebration I attended yesterday evening. My first Facebook friend, Luis Carlos Montalván, an acquaintance from my experience at Columbia’s Journalism School, has published a wonderful book, Until Tuesday (Disney-Hyperion). I received a copy of the book at the gallery, and couldn’t put it down. Luis, […]

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New York City Reports Long Delays for Mammograms

A recent audit of nine NYC’s Health and Hospitals Corporation found City Comptroller Liu described as dangerous delays in women’s health care. It takes too long for women to get screening and diagnostic mammograms. The 2009 audit found women at Elmhurst Hospital had the longest waits – 50 working days (that would be 10 weeks, […]

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Portrait of a Peculiar Relationship at the End of Life

Last weekend I went to see a strange, slightly unnerving play, The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore by Tennessee Williams. It’s a sad take on the end of life, and desperation in some lonely characters. Olympia Dukakis plays an aging, vain, older woman who’s dying of an unnamed condition. She takes morphine injections help […]

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On a Velázquez Portrait, and the Value of Expertise

This is an unusual entry into a discussion on the limits of patient empowerment. In late December the Times ran a story, beginning on its front page, about a portrait in the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Diego Velázquez, the 17th Century Spanish painter. The news was that the tall representation of the teenage Prince […]

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Twitter, The Notificator, and Old Social Media News

A series of clicks this morning brought me to an interesting web finding in a Wiki-like Dead Media Archive that links to NYU’s Steinhart School of Media, Culture, and Communication. And there rests the Notificator, said (by me) to be Twitter’s great-great-great grandfather, with details: On September 9, 1932, the London Times printed an article […]

Posted in Communication, Health IT, Life in NYC, Medical History, Social Media, Wednesday Web SightingTagged , , , , , , , , , Leave a Comment on Twitter, The Notificator, and Old Social Media News

No Quick Fix

“If it’s chafed, put some lotion on it.”

– some practical advice, offered by the character portraying Andrew Jackson, speaking toward the audience in the last scene of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, a play written and directed by Alex Timbers

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A Walk, or Race, for the Cure

“You can get discomboobulated in this place,” a NYC police officer told me today.

This morning, some 25,000 or so men, women and children converged on Central Park for the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s 20th annual Race for the Cure. It was my first time witnessing the event:

Posted in Annals of Pink, Breast Cancer, cancer awareness, cancer survival, Life as a Patient, Life in NYCTagged , , , , , , 2 Comments on A Walk, or Race, for the Cure

A Tapestry, and Double-Dose of Magic (on Carole King and James Taylor, Troubadour and Breaking Addiction)

My plan for today was to write on evidence-based medicine. But that can wait, at least until the morning comes. I came upon the most wonderful recording of a concert by Carole King and James Taylor played in November, 2007 at LA’s Troubadour Club, a place I’ve never been. PBS aired the video, about an […]

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About Those Skipped Heart Test Results

Harlem Hospital Center stands just three miles or so north of my home. I know the place from the outside glancing in, as you might upon exiting from the subway station just paces from its open doors. The structure seems like one chamber of its neighborhood’s heart; within a few long blocks’ radii you’ll find rhythms generated in the Abyssinian Baptist Church; readings at the Schomburg Center and artery-clogging cuisine at the West 135th Street IHOP.

So I was saddened to hear about the missed heart studies. Or should I say unmissed? No one noticed when nearly 4,000 cardiac tests went unchecked at the Harlem center,

Posted in Cardiology, Communication, health care costs, health care delivery, Ideas, Life in NYC, Medical News, Patient Autonomy, Under the RadarTagged , , , , , , , 2 Comments on About Those Skipped Heart Test Results

On Precious

This is my first film review, if it is that.

I was tempted to write about Ethan Hawke, hematologist among vampires in Daybreakers, but gore’s not my favorite genre. A mainstream choice would have been Harrison Ford solving the enzyme deficiency of Pompe disease in Extraordinary Measures, but I didn’t get sucked in.

I chose Precious, instead. This luminous movie relates to the practice of medicine everyday, big-time.

Posted in Communication, Essential Lessons, Life, Life as a Patient, Life in NYC, Medical Education, Medical Ethics, Movies, Patient Autonomy, Reviews, Women's HealthTagged , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment on On Precious
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