Columns
Category: General Medicine
Anxiety, it’s not just a state of mind
Jake McDowell, now 10 years old and a budding author, no less, was only eight when he began to think he was going crazy. It started when he heard that one of his Waltham classmates had an infection in his heart and needed a heart transplant. Jake’s anxiety about his classmate grew into an overwhelming…
Who should you call
After 14 years of the terrifying asthma attacks that have plagued her son since infancy, Patricia Wooten, 31, of Dorchester has become a pro at triage – the fine art of distinguishing between life-and-death emergencies and scary, but less urgent, medical problems. She has learned how to listen to James’ wheezing through a stethoscope and…
Sob story: why we cry, and how
The scene: New Zealand, a wilderness area along the coast. The protagonist: A wet, half-naked Las Vegas psychologist named Jeffrey A. Kottler who was near death from hypothermia, having just waded across an icy bay, his clothes and pack on his head, during a solo trek that rangers said should be safe. The plot: A…
Getting your shots is not kid stuff
“Here’s what got me thinking,” says Anne White of Lexington, who is 63. “I’ve reached the age where I turn to the obits first. And I keep seeing articles about people who die unexpectedly in the hospital.” Often, she finds, it’s pneumonia that delivers the coup de grace, “and you don’t even have to be…
Caregiving from afar isn’t easy
For the last five years, Joyce Antler, a Brandeis University historian in her early 50s, has been living what she calls “a terrible nightmare.” Antler lives in Brookline and is trying to manage the care of her increasingly demented, 84-year-old mother – long distance. At first, the solution seemed to be to have her mother…
Women shouldn’t feel bad about feeling bad
When a stressed-out man walks into Alice Domar’s office and walks out an hour later with a relaxation tape in hand, chances are he’ll do what she recommends — take 20 minutes a day to listen to it. And feel much better. But when a woman with the same — or worse — symptoms gets…
Don’t take privacy for granted at infirmary
You break up with your girlfriend, blow an exam, start drinking every night, then come to your senses: Your friends are right – you’re depressed and should see the campus shrink. But you’re freaked: Can the records of a few sessions with a college counselor today come back to haunt you years from now, like…
Follow the ‘rule of 3’s’ on back pain
Annie Baehr, who works at the Berklee College of Music, figures she has struggled with back pain for nearly 40 of her 55 years. For a while, the Winchester woman says, she trudged to orthopedic specialists, but “nobody gave me any relief.” Last year, when the back pain evolved into daily headaches, she turned to…
Sometimes they need help, often they just need to talk
Suddenly, it seemed as if that old “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” TV ad had sprung to life. Louise Macnair, a widow who is now 93, crashed to the floor in the living room of her Cambridge home and thought, “This is the occasion. I’ve got to push that button.” She did, and…
When a teen-ager’s parent is facing death
Miranda Worthen, now 17 and a senior at Newton North High School, was nine when her mother told her she had breast cancer. Miranda had listened for years to her mother’s stories about her own mother, who died before Miranda was born. Now, as her mother put her to bed that night eight years ago,…
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