Shout Outs

Updated 3/2017 -- photos and all links removed (except to my own posts) as many no longer active.


Better Health is the host for this week’s Grand Rounds. You can read this week’s myth buster’s edition here.

As regular readers of the Better Health blog already know, I am opposed to health misinformation. In fact, I started this very blog because of my disappointment with the sheer volume of false claims, misleading stories, and pseudoscience actively promoted to patients.

It was my hope that gathering together key medical blogger “voices of reason” would promote health sanity on Google. You could argue that we’re tilting at windmills, but tilt we must – and I’m proud to say that our membership now includes contributions from the CDC, the American College of Physicians, Harvard Health publications, Diario Medico (Spain’s premier MD website) and over 100 independent bloggers who are standing with us in an attempt to provide smart health commentary to patients and providers alike.

And with that, let us begin our terrific Grand Rounds tradition (now in its eighth year – which in blog years is about 120) of highlighting this week’s best of the medical blogosphere… (And yes, that’s me with Mythbuster’s TV host Adam Savage, circa 2009).………….

…………………….…

H/T to @MtnMD and @drmlb for the link to this:  Healing power of poetry which features the poem "Lumpectomy" by Joan Baranow

………Below is Joan’s poem.
Lumpectomy
by Joan Baranow
The moon is a little dented tonight
on the right side
where an arm would be
pressing,
and that’s natural
to the moon
as well as certain situations—………….

………………………………….

A heart warming story by MSNBC written by Linda Carroll:  Organ donor's family meet the man their father saved

……….“When we got the letter from the donor’s family, my wife and I just sat there and cried, because I didn’t expect it,” Watson, who received a life-saving heart, liver and kidney transplant, told TODAY. “I didn’t expect it to impact me as much as it did. But it was just emotional realizing that this person gave the last gift to me that he could, and it saved my life.”

Read the letter: Click here to read the Jessica Lyngaas's letter to the Watsons

Organ recipients aren’t supposed to contact the families of donors - those are the rules.

But on rare occasions, when the donor family reaches out as Jessica Lyngaas did and the recipient is willing, institutions can give way. ……

…………………………………

Check out Dr. Wes’s post:   Smile! You're on Candid Camera!

They sat anxiously waiting for their loved one to enter the holding area after the procedure, one nervously clutching her purse, another today's paper, and a third, her cellphone. The air was tense as they awaited the news of how the procedure went. All the preparation, the concern, and the questioning come down to this moment when they learn if they made the right decision to go forward with the procedure. Will there be elation or despair?

So of course they want to videotape the moment.

The door opened, there was their loved one, looking no worse for wear, followed by the doctor. As he came forth to tell them the good news, the cellphone video recorder captured the discussion, ….. The doctor was caught completely off-guard.

In this case, the news was happy. All went well. But what should happen if the news weren't so good or even devastating? …….

……………………………….

Another nice piece from @jordangrumet who blogs at In My Humble Opinion: I Could

Adapted from the poem "I Could"
Cook County hospital 1998
Breast center
Who's next?

He calls to the residents, as if he is a bank teller waiting to accept his next deposit. He walks from room to room with the medical students trailing behind. He enters the cubicle without taking the time to introduce himself. He touches breast tissue with precision and tenderness. Yet to put his arm around the shoulder of a suffering patient would be considered to intimate.  …….

…………………………………

An article in the Chron.com by Melanie Warner Spencer:  Modernism emerges in quilting world

……….I believe I’ve discovered a quilting genre that appeals to my personal aesthetic.

The fast-growing modern quilt movement is inspired by modern art and architecture.

Modern quilters embrace the tenets of modernism, including simplicity, minimalism, clean lines, the use of negative space, experimentation and new ways of looking at old ideas……