Keep Them In Tim Dorsey and Carl Hiaasen, move over – Florida reality again trumps both fantasy and novelistic legerdemain. Perhaps it’s the effect of earthquakes and oil spills (our one year anniversary of the BP disaster) but strangeness pervades the state. Some weeks ago five teenagers in Silver Springs Shore snorted the remains of […]
The doctor as drug (3/16/11)
Doctors or Technicians? “I don’t feel like I’m a person anymore, just a bunch of numbers. All she wants to talk about is tests and drugs.” That’s how patients describe some of their doctors these days – technicians. Bright, intelligent, often concerned, but technicians – purveyors of tests, gatekeepers of other technicians who will eventually […]
Who’s stealing my sleep? (3/4/11)
Thieves of Rest Who would steal a CPAP machine? One could imagine patients faced with reluctant health insurers might just go out and their own sleep apnea therapy – but lifting 39 machines? Cheryl Pender of Indiana University Health at La Porte has posted bail on the charge of stealing 29 CPAP and 10 BiPAP […]
Take breaks or you make mistakes (2/28/11)
How Can You Keep Your Concentration Sharp? Pay attention! We hear that phrase when we’re very young, but does acknowledging those two words really make focus us better? Probably yes – if they’re a diversion from boredom or mental wandering. People are not machines, no matter how hard we, our parents or our employers try […]
Getting undepressed – by yourself (2/23/11)
Getting Undepressed Without Drugs I treat many, many sleepy people. Many of them, especially those with sleep apnea, chronic pain, and fibromyalgia, are or have been clinically depressed. Lots of them have seen their GPs and been placed on antidepressants without success. They’re already on a laundry list of medications, and in hard economic times […]