If you happen to live in Maine (or Washington, Maryland or Minnesota)
A little over a week ago, we went to visit the Better Half’s family. It was one of our niece’s birthday, and all of the various cousins were assembled. As is his wont, the...
Author: Russell Saunders
We are the state
Many moons ago, in the gap of time between when I graduated from medical school and when my residency began, I went on a medical mission trip to Central America. Two of my best...
In anticipation of the coming season — chicken soup the Saunders way
It’s recipe time here at the League! I am pleased to say that I do, indeed, have my own recipe for chili, but since that’s already been done, I thought perhaps I would share my...
Stay classy, Andrew
Did you know that Sally Ride was a lesbian? I didn’t either. I learned it while driving in to work two days ago and listening to NPR: at the very end of their obit...
bin Laden is dead! (Pay no attention to those crippled children)
I’ll just start right out by saying that my sleep is wholly untroubled by the death of Osama bin Laden. Neither the fact of his demise nor the proximate details of how it came...
Thoughts about the Ravi sentence
When the guilty verdict was handed down in the Dharun Ravi trial a couple of months ago, I expressed some concerns. Like many people, including many gay rights activists and writers, I felt very...
My own experience of being gay in medicine
Yesterday Andrew Sullivan linked to an item at WBUR’s Common Health blog, in which Dr. Mark Schuster, a tenured professor and pediatrician at Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital tells his story of being a gay man entering the medical...
I don’t know what your healthcare costs
… and I’ll bet your doctor doesn’t, either. Okay, that’s is a bit of an overstatement. I know what my little bit of my patients’ healthcare costs are. I know what my practice charges...
Vermouth bleg, and cocktail open thread
Way back in the misty ether of the past, Jason posted about the advantages of vermouth in a quality martini. (My apologies for failing to find the link.) Paraphrasing a bit, he noted that...
The Duties of Downton Abbey
[Over at Blinded Trials, my co-blogger Rose wrote the following post about Downton Abbey, with further reflection on the duties of art. Several commenters indicated it deserved a bit more attention, and would be...
Bachmann, Perry and HPV
Let me begin by dispensing with the easiest parts first. Michele Bachmann is an idiot. “I’m offended for all the little girls and parents that didn’t have a choice,” [Bachmann] said. (Actually, any parent...
Recollection
At the hospitals where I did my residency in New York City, the pediatrics department had its Grand Rounds every Tuesday morning. One of my favorite attending physicians was delivering a talk on hematopoietic...
Knock this off
June Thomas at Slate thinks that Dan Savage is behaving like a bully toward Marcus Bachmann. Bachmann, the husband of right-wing firebrand, Rep. Michele Bachmann, and is a proponent of reparative therapy to “fix”...
Department of Sardonic Understatement
In an excellent piece about the judicious pace the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal is taking, Capt. Adrian Bonenberger writes: The vocal minority asked whether soldiers could be compelled to serve alongside people whose...
Because you said so
When I meet new people and tell them I’m a pediatrician, there are a handful of common responses I get. There’s usually a remark about how much I must love kids. (Most of the...
Apostasy: an open thread
I see that the Southern Baptists have re-affirmed their belief in hell as “an eternal, conscious punishment,” following views to the contrary expressed by a pastor in Michigan. When I abandoned the fundamentalist Christianity...
Insufficient evidence
A friend brought this opinion piece in the New York Times to my attention yesterday. Dr. Karen Sibert, a stridently proud full-time anesthesiologist, argues that women who choose to work as part-time physicians are...
On death and dying
Jack Kevorkian has died. From the obituary in the New York Times. From June 1990, when he assisted in the first suicide, until March 1999, when he was sentenced to serve 10 to 25...
