In the early morning hours a sweaty, blue, and suffocating COVID-19 patient arrived unannounced and lay waiting outside my ER, spending precious life saving moments on the cold concrete as my team and I hurriedly donned our personal protective equipment.
In the days before COVID-19, he would have been rushed into a room and within thirty seconds had cardiac monitors placed, oxygen delivered, and two IVs coursing through his veins. But now, because of the danger he posed to everyone in my ER, and even to my family members awaiting me at home, and because we don’t yet have adequate treatments for COVID-19, he had to wait until the department was ready to see him. …
Darragh O’Carroll M.D. is an emergency physician in Honolulu, Hawaii, and served as a medical consultant for Netflix’s recent medical documentary series “Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak.”
The new coronavirus, aka COVID-19, has spread deeper and farther into our communities than currently known. It will infect a majority of Earth’s human population-many estimates say up to 70 percent of us. …
Ask ten different people their opinion on ketamine and you’ll get ten different answers. It’s a tribute to the drug’s muddled popular conception as a horse tranquilizer, club drug, and cure for refractory depression.
Regardless of modern placards, the World Health Organization lists ketamine as an “essential medicine,” and among the safest and most efficacious ones known to science. Originally derived from PCP, ketamine possesses a versatility in the medical world like no other drug, and research on its many benefits is exploding.
Navy Seal medics carry it in their pockets, as an ER doctor I routinely give it to toddlers, and if the above reasons don’t make it planet Earth’s most interesting pharmaceutical I’ll go one step further and deem ketamine my favorite medicine of all time. …
I first met Valery as I assessed her asthma on a small corner of Abaco Island in the Bahamas, sitting dazed on what was left of her porch, eyes fixed on her husband Eric’s overturned Honda CR-V. With an N95 breathing mask over her face she described life before Hurricane Dorian tore through her town of Marsh Harbor. She was elegant, regal, and spoke with flawless British grammar and diction, but just ten days after the colossal storm hit, her tired eyes and quivering voice hinted she was struggling to process the momentous shift in her and her husband’s future.
“So, we’re an elderly couple, we met in Nassau and came to Abaco in 2000, more or less about that time” said Valery. “We started to develop a farm out here, just small crops. …
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