My Blog
Mad Hatter
The Mad Hatter We all remember the Mad Hatter, the character in Alice in Wonderland. Alice meets the Hatter having tea with the March hare and the Dormouse. He acts erratically, asking nonsense riddles, reciting ridiculous poetry, switching places at the table, biting...
Cup or Cone?
Do you like your ice cream in a cone or a cup? If you were living in England in the 1880’s, your answer could be life-altering. Why? Ice cream was a popular summertime treat in England in the 1800s and was usually sold in a “penny lick”, a short thick glass cup....
Dr. Google and Me
I started practicing as a pediatrician in 1982 and retired in 2021. So, Google, which became commonly used around 2000, has been with me about half of my practice lifetime. Those two halves were startlingly different. Before Google, I gave new parents and...
Artful Germs
Usually, my posts contain original writing, but I'm making an exception this time. I was recently blown away by an article in Atlas Obscura about making art with bacteria. Apparently pioneered by Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin, bacteria art is a thing!...
Medical Misnomers
English is a funny language, an amalgam of many other languages, and always in evolution. Daily, we use words that make no sense, without even noticing it. Most of these misnomers made sense originally, and the words have hung on, even after our knowledge, or the...
Things We Believe That Probably Aren’t True
Mark Twain said, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. “ Let’s have a romp through some beliefs that have NO science to back them up. Burping babies- If you’ve ever been a parent or a babysitter,...
TV Medicine
Clearly, four years of college, four years of medical school and three years of pediatric residency wasn’t a complete medical education. There are so many things I didn’t know until I started watching action-packed TV shows. Especially the ones with SWAT teams,...
Salamanders
The big plastic bag of potting soil had been lying on the coiled garden hose in the backyard for several weeks, leftover from fall planting. Annoyed at the eyesore of my own making, I heaved it up to move it inside. To my surprise, snuggled in between the green loops...
The Nativity
I carefully opened the worn, thin cardboard box, lifting the clumps of excelsior out, to reveal the crumpled tissue paper. I gently unwrapped the tiny porcelain figures lovingly nestled in the tissue, arranging them just so. Mary, Joseph, the baby, the angel, the...
Sun Dogs
It was late one fall afternoon, and I was frustrated, disgusted and ready to throw my shotgun down. My sporting clays lesson had gone poorly, and I felt like I couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. Cody, my instructor, stood patiently behind me while I took a deep...