As a fairly new attending physician, I’ve taken to the habit of asking some of my more senior colleagues for tidbits they wished they had known when starting out. One wise practitioner told me, to never forget to practice some “grandmother medicine”. Having grown up in a traditional Jewish family, […]
Hal Newman
157 posts
A nugget of Big Medicine every day. #72 Collateral damage We got the news just before the start of another day shift. We cried like babies. I remember sitting on the back bumper of my rig with Blake Camp and trying to make sense of it all. Every rig in […]
A nugget of Big Medicine every day. #71 Don’t say this at home In learning the french language as a paramedic with Urgences Sante [Montreal EMS], I had several linguistic misadventures. These are two of my most spectacular wipeouts. On a night shift we pulled into Le Chalet de la […]
A nugget of Big Medicine every day. #70 Men with guns Men with guns are seldom rational. I knew something was wrong the moment he came into the store. It was just a few days before Christmas and while it was cold outside on the streets it wasn’t cold enough […]
A nugget of Big Medicine every day. #69 Crashing “Overall, though, it’s the bigness of the car that counts the most. Because when something bad happens in a really big car – accidentally speeding through the middle of a gang of unruly young people who have been taunting you in […]
A nugget of Big Medicine every day. #68 CSB Syndrome The first time it happened I freaked out. I’d never seen anything like it. One moment she was walking across the porch. The next she was down on her side taking slow breaths, eyes partially closed, and looking like she […]
A nugget of Big Medicine every day. #67 Hurricanes happen On my way back home after working on the ground as part of the NOD’s SNAKE [The Special Needs Assessment 4 Katrina Evacuees] team immediately post-Katrina, I stayed overnight with some friends-of-friends in the Florida panhandle. I was standing in […]
A nugget of Big Medicine every day. #66 Codes Code 99, Code Blue or just Code. Shorthand for cardiac arrest. An absence of life signs. No respirations. No pulse. Seldom as simple or as clean as the previous description. Often comes as a surprise to both the patient and the […]
A nugget of Big Medicine every day. #65 Hark the herald angels sing We live in the country. The only traffic lights in our town are the ones at the Canada-U.S. border stations advising you whether or not it’s your turn to pull up and chat with the agent. You […]
A nugget of Big Medicine every day. #64 Look for the clues A long time ago, I worked with a paramedic named Mike ‘Elwood’ Crowley. I loved that I was The Jake* of the team. While we called ourselves The Blues Brothers, we were known to the cops as The […]