Memorializing Covid
COVID-19 does not seem amenable to grand memorials, at least right now. Perhaps because the millions of deaths from COVID-19 have been diffused so widely, often in isolation—and of course still ongoing—the memorials that are starting to crop up are very human in scale. More
The Beauty of Medical Language
The clinical language is so dry that it sticks in my throat like the grits they used to serve in our hospital cafeteria. It handily abides by our hospital’s infection control guidelines; the writing is so sterile that nary a staphylococcus could hope to achieve mitosis in its midst. It is as though the practitioners of the scientific literature of medicine reached a covert agreement to ban even the slightest of hint of creativity, the slimmest suggestion of beauty. Of course, it was not always that way… More
Imagining Vesalius
While we typically envision the brain as a palpable whole, the spidery latticework of nerves is a more ephemeral affair. At best the nerves come across as limp linguini, flopping languidly over whatever bone, muscle or organ offers a convenient landing pad. Seeing the nervous system entirely disembodied is revelatory. More
Covid Vaccination: the Last Mile
The COVID vaccine engenders a unique obstinacy that seems to blot out conversation. We doctors and nurses are exhorted to listen to our hesitant patients and hear their concerns, but this is difficult to do when patients don’t even want to talk. More
NPR’s Morning Edition
NPR’s Neda Ulaby interviews Danielle Ofri and Celeste Ng on “Morning Edition” about BLR’s 20th Anniversary (and how a literary journal came to be founded in a storied public hospital). More
White Hot Light
Frank Huyler was different than the other doctor-writers I’d been reading. His patients weren’t named, not even with pseudonyms. They weren’t meticulously described with MFA-honed adjectives. His language seemed ordinary, his sentence structures plain. There was no thesaurus lurking just beyond the page. But it was not a literary laziness. It was a seduction. More
Florence Nightingale in the Age of Covid-19
May of 2020 marked the 200th anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale. That her bicentennial fell during a worldwide pandemic is both illuminating and ironic. Nightingale’s experience as a nurse during the Crimean War led her to three insights that came to define her professional life, insights as revolutionary as they were unpopular. More
The Vaccine Anthropologist
The world’s richest countries are now its most vaccine-hesitant. Can we learn to trust our shots before the next pandemic? Danielle Ofri profiles Heidi Larson, a “vaccine anthropologist,” for The New Yorker. More
Taking Stock of the Second Covid Surge
As the pandemic raged from the winter surge through to the spring slog, my Postmortem folder lit up with a dispiriting regularity. I opened it with dread as it revealed which of my patients had perished that week. More
The Doctors Blackwell
Few people today know much about what Elizabeth Blackwell actually did, and fewer are even aware of her younger sister Emily, by far the more accomplished clinician. More
Covid Duets
Given the death and destruction all around us during the Covid pandemic, it felt unseemly to complain about coming home to a strange cello every night. More
“Frontline Workers”
Even after Covid-19 is tamed by the forthcoming vaccines, health care workers will still be frontline workers. Because you never know what will show up tomorrow. More
Covid Diary (The New Yorker)
During March and April of 2020, New York City experienced the Covid surge that many other localities faced later. I kept a journal during these frightening weeks, talking with my colleagues and patients at Bellevue, as we grappled with how we could manage primary-care medicine during a pandemic. More
M&M
The body wasn’t even cold when they informed me that I would be presenting the case at M & M. I had never killed anyone before, so I didn’t know what to expect. I mean I had been to M & M before, but never as victim. More
Medical Errors during the Covid Crisis
There’s no doubt that what went right during the Covid pandemic was far greater than what went wrong. But things did go wrong, and part of the professional commitment that has been so justly lauded entails an honest reckoning of our shortcomings. More
