Live each season as it passes;
breathe the air, drink the drink,
taste the fruit, and resign yourself
to the influences of each.
Orchid Society of Miami from Robert Caine
Rosy Fingered Dawn, 12.21.09 Williamstown
Tutulemma: Solar Eclipse Analemma from APOD
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The snow has hardened in banks by the side of the street. We push ahead, the dog straining at the leash into the wind which cuts at my throat. Instinctively, I reach for the zipper at my neck and close the collar of my vest. Soon we are off at a trot down the tarmac. At the end of the street we turn the corner and don’t stop running until the end of the block.
Garrison Keillor once remarked that winter is the only season of the year that is actually trying to kill you. Not that I have beaten Death—but only once more succeeded in postponing that final inevitable rendezvous. >>more
Brian T. Maurer has practiced pediatrics as a Physician Assistant for thirty years. His "Marginal Notes" column appears periodically in the Cell2Soul Blog. The title "Marginal Notes" is taken from a quote by Henry David Thoreau: "I love a broad margin to my life."
As the Gregorian calendar year morphs from old to new, some of us are wont to take stock of ourselves. Gauguin did this with a great painting D'où venonsnous? Que sommes-nous? Où allons-nous? (Where Do We come from? What Are We? Where Are We Going?) which hangs in Boston's Museum of Fine Arts.
Len Hoenig, an internist and writer from the environs of Miami, presents a fitting parable for this season. It resonated with me as I consider the medical student I was and the practitioner I became.
Here is Len's essay A Physician Speaks from the Heart: Download Hoenig Heart
You can contact him at: gooddocljh@yahoo.com
Rivers are not the only things that change over the course of time. Medical knowledge morphs with each new piece of data that is discovered. Just when we think we’ve got it all figured out, voilà—a piece of information gleaned from the latest research hints that we’re probably off the mark; and so we set off again, chasing a new lead. >>more As a young man, Samuel Clemens spent two years learning the lay of the Mississippi River to become a licensed riverboat pilot. No sooner had he completed his apprenticeship than he realized that the topography of the river had changed. In order to maintain his proficiency, he would have to continue to study the waterway, which remained in a constant state of flux.
Brian T. Maurer has practiced pediatrics as a Physician Assistant for thirty years. His "Marginal Notes" column appears periodically in the Cell2Soul Blog. The title "Marginal Notes" is taken from a quote by Henry David Thoreau: "I love a broad margin to my life."
Stacy Nigliazzo
is an ER nurse and a lifelong poet. Her work has been featured in
Pulse, Creative Nursing, The American Journal of Nursing, Blood and
Thunder, the Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine, the Annals of
Internal Medicine and the Penn State International Journal of
Healthcare and Humanities. She is a graduate of Texas A&M
University and is a 2006 recipient of the Elsevier award for nursing
excellence. You can email her with comments: srnigliazzoATgmail .
Ms. Nigliazzo has sent us three poignant poems which we gratefully publish. To read them, you will need to click on the links.
Parlay: Acute Myeloid Leukemia.
Finally, a reason why she loves to sleep all day
and why there is sometimes blood in her bathroom- Download Parlay
Scratch:
Together, they find
the doorstep.
One cries and whips her tail
along the icy, silver hinges. Download Scratch
Cormac McCarthy’s typewriter is to be sold at auction, the Olivetti through which flowed five million words over the course of his literary life. I recall Hemingway’s Royal, on which he banged out his early journalistic copy and later short stories and novels; and Don Marquis’ archy the cockroach, hopping from key to key, leaving behind his trail of thought. Helen Miller, big bosomed, sitting at her desk, hair pinned up, writing copy in the 1930s for the West Schuylkill Press: did she touch type or, like Hemingway, hunt and peck? >>more
Brian T. Maurer has practiced pediatrics as a Physician Assistant for thirty years. His "Marginal Notes" column appears periodically in the Cell2Soul Blog. The title "Marginal Notes" is taken from a quote by Henry David Thoreau: "I love a broad margin to my life."
In her book The Gift of Thanks: The Roots and Rituals of Gratitude, Margaret Visser examines what gratitude is and how it functions in our lives. “Gratitude is always a matter of paying attention,” Ms. Visser observes, “deliberately beholding and appreciating the other.”
Humility is a prerequisite to being genuinely grateful. If we are to become humble, we must learn to esteem others more highly than ourselves.
One afternoon this past week three patients appeared on my schedule for physical examinations. The first was a 10-year-old boy. His father suffers from paragangliomatosis, a genetic condition in which tumors arise from neuroendocrine tissue in the body. >>more
Brian T. Maurer has practiced pediatrics as a Physician Assistant for thirty years. His "Marginal Notes" column appears periodically in the Cell2Soul Blog. The title "Marginal Notes" is taken from a quote by Henry David Thoreau: "I love a broad margin to my life."
Sixty years ago, W. Eugene Smith, eulogized the old-style doctor in his iconic photo-essay of Ernest Ceriani, the family doctor of Kremmeling, Colorado. Today's caring physician is likely to be a retired old-school physician with skills honed by years of diligent practice.
Susan Kaplan shares with us a harrowing medical (mis)adventure. Reading it will be enlightening and may well help you, a patient, friend or famiiy member lost in the country of illness. Her story is a tribute to the intuition of a caring physician who listened when others were rushed and formulaic.
"As I pulled into our driveway that summer evening at the conclusion of my bike ride home from work, I felt a sudden stabbing pain in my right chest. Climbing the stairs to my second floor bedroom, I began to feel light-headed. I was breathing in and out rapidly but the air didn't seem to stay in my lungs and I began to panic that I might be having a heart attack..." So begins
Full "Good Old-fashioned Medicine:" Download OldFashMed
Sue Kaplan may be reached at: sue.kaplan@post.harvard.edu
Back in my room on the 14th floor of the hotel I stood at the window and looked down on the gleaming streets of the city. I thought about the man I had seen slumped over a makeshift cardboard sign on which was scrawled one word: “Hungry.” A tangled mass of black hair emanated from the back of his stocking cap, his coat was marred with grease stains, his ankles showed white between the tattered cuffs of his trousers and the tops of his dirty sneakers. When I dropped a few coins into the plastic bowl in his lap, he barely stirred. In thirty years the streets of Philadelphia haven’t changed much. >>more
Brian T. Maurer has practiced pediatrics as a Physician Assistant for thirty years. His "Marginal Notes" column appears periodically in the Cell2Soul Blog. The title "Marginal Notes" is taken from a quote by Henry David Thoreau: "I love a broad margin to my life."
Julianne Anderson-Mann and her husband, Britton Mann, are studying dermatology and Chinese medicine respectively in Portland, Oregon. Early winter sunrises in the Pacific Northwest can be spectacular, and they recently sent us these dawn photos from the Willamette River. Viewing them, brought to mind some great lines of G.M. Hopkins:
O morning, o'er the brown brink eastward springs
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent world eastward
breaks with warm breast and ah! bright wings. (see "God's Grandeur")
You may contact them at Lili and Britton.
