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What Running Taught Me About Being a Doctor

A reflective essay by an OB/GYN comparing running and medicine, exploring perfectionism, burnout, joy, and acceptance of forces beyond control in both life and practice.

Family Ties

In a moment of trembling hands and careful stitches, a patient’s patience reveals how medicine is taught through human connection.

Before the Scalpel: From "Cleared" to Truly Ready for Surgery

An anesthesiologist challenges the idea of being “medically cleared” for surgery, revealing why true surgical readiness depends on strength, frailty, nutrition, sleep, and prehabilitation—and how preparing the body before the scalpel's sharp incision can change outcomes, recovery, and lives.

Book Review: The Women by Kristin Hannah

A moving review of The Women by Kristin Hannah, exploring an Army nurse’s service in Vietnam, the trauma of war, the erasure of women veterans, and the lasting impact of PTSD, praised for its emotional depth and historical accuracy.

Those Cigarettes (Part 2)

A reflective essay tracing North Carolina’s Piedmont from Indigenous tobacco traditions to the rise of mass-produced cigarettes, weaving regional history, personal observation, and environmental insight into a surgeon’s meditation on smoking, litter, and the inescapable legacy of the past.

Epstein-Barr Virus Reprograms B cells as Antigen-Presenting Cells in Systemic Lupus Erythematosus.

Stanford researchers have uncovered the pathway linking Systemic Lupus Erythematosus to Epstein-Barr Virus setting up the potential for novel treatment pathways and possible eradication

Physician Burnout by Design: Social Media’s Dopamine Depletion and the Way Out

Physician burnout may be driven by social media–induced dopamine depletion. Dr. Sanj Katyal explores the neuroscience—and a practical digital detox path out.

What Surgery Taught Me About Machine Learning--and What Machine Learning Taught Me About Surgery

A surgeon–AI reflection on uncertainty, bias, and loss—exploring how machine learning mirrors surgical judgment, why feedback matters, and how care becomes the ultimate loss function.

Surface Tension

A lyrical reflection on physicians as droplets of condensation—bonded by trust, strained by fatigue, and held together by the invisible forces that sustain medicine.

Stroke with a Twist

A 62-year-old woman with hypertension and hyperlipidemia presented with 18 hours of fluctuating right-hand clumsiness and word-finding difficulty. What's the mechanism behind her diagnosis?

50 year-old patient with diabetes, urinary retention, and perineal fluid collection

50 year-old patient with diabetes, urinary retention, and perineal fluid collection. What is the next appropriate step?

The Achievement Trap

A reflection on the physician achievement trap—why lifelong competition follows doctors beyond training, and how true wealth comes from relationships, meaning, and giving.