A couple of years ago I was invited to speak at the annual meeting of the American Medical Association in Chicago, to discuss the morality of whether physicians should ration care from their patients.
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Imagine for a moment that you are an oncologist caring for a 53-year-old man with metastatic cancer, a person whose tumor has spread to lung and liver. With standard chemotherapy, this man can expect to live around 12 months. That standard treatment isn’t all that expensive in today’s terms, only $25,000 and his insurance company will pick up the entire tab since he is already maxed out on his yearly deductible and co-pays.
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Imagine for a moment you are suffering from an illness that makes you feel like your soul has been run over by an angry defensive lineman, a disease that interferes with your desire to sleep, eat and make love. Oh, and this illness will continue to make you feel this way for the rest of your life. How much would you be willing to pay for a treatment makes you feel normal again?
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Here is a news story on a new study I collaborated on with Dylan Smith, which shows that even when people realize how terribly awful it can be to suffer from depression, they don’t want to spend much money on treatments that would rid them of depression. A strange and disturbing finding!
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Bike riding is a lot like life. You spend a lot more time pulling yourself up hill than coasting down hill. So the key to happiness? Enjoy the climb!
I am on vacation in the warm April sun in southern Florida this week. Time to reflect on one of the best things about exercising on a bicycle.
You create your own breeze!
Was I right to prescribe an inferior medication to my patient?
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Carol Jefferson’s right lung x-ray looked the color of a February storm in Northern Minnesota—a blizzard of white making bone and lung invisible. Her lung was “whited out” because she was experiencing a dangerous combination of tumor and infection.
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Susan Holmgren was resting in her hospital bed, a mere 72 hours removed from her first heart attack. She was out of the woods according to her doctors, with her heart having only sustained minor damage. But the next one-the next heart attack-could be worse. Almost 75-years-old now, Holmgren needed to do everything in her power to make sure that her first heart attack would be her last.
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“Misimagining the Unimaginable” – Health Psychology