The Ear Game
If I could, I would spend all day cleaning ears. Seriously, There is almost nothing I do that makes patients happier. Not diagnosing a rare disease, not treating diabetes or heart failure. Of course, those patients are thankful too. But very little lights up a face more than the instantaneous relief and the rush of sound that comes when knocking loose a particularly egregious glob of cerumen.I figure I could set up four or five rooms in tandem. Each with a its own sink, syringe, and various plastic scooping tools. I would spend all day excavating. Sifting through the mud to expo...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - December 28, 2016 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs
First, Dispense of False Uncertainty
First, dispense of false uncertainty.Your father is dying. I'm sorry. I know this sucks. It is horrible, and unfair, and heartbreaking. I have been there with my own loved ones and counseled many patients through similar situations. Your brain will try to convince you that it isn't so. That cure is around the corner, or that if you just make the right decision everything will be OK.Everything will not be OK. Your father has cancer laced through his bones and inner organs. He is bound to his bed and can no longer feed or bath himself. He has lost interest in eating. Although...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - December 26, 2016 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs
We Were There
Jordan?She peered up at me, her face alighted by the morning haze streaming through an adjacent window. A soft kind face, she had aged over the years. A pair of reading glasses sat perched on her nose ready to be squinted through as she turned her attention to the ever shrinking font on the glowing computer screen in front of her.We had been colleagues once, lifetimes ago. My first job after residency. She, being a few years older than I, was less of an amateur back then. We stumbled and bumbled though those early days of hospitalism. I remember the practice of medicine felt so raw and new.&nb...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - December 24, 2016 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs
Streaming From The Mental Netflix
The memory came unexpectedly. Buried somewhere deeply in the stacks of significant but not often recalled life experiences. My conversation with my son had dragged it up, pushed it forward, and blasted it out into my embarrassingly small space of wakeful consciousness. And I remembered.My son is in sixth grade and goes to the same middle school that I went to as a child. On the few occasions I have visited, a wave of familiarity washes over me. Feelings submersed for decades return with smoothness and clarity. For a few moments, I remember what it feels like to be twelve years old again.My so...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - December 22, 2016 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs
The Data Was Suffering
The notion began early in computer science class during Jason's freshman year. The professor had noticed a certain elegance and zeal in his work and suggested medicine. That was in the days of the giants when clinicians were tied to such clunky programs as Meaningful Use and PQRS. In this antiquated milieu, Jason cut his teeth on basic healthcare architecture.In those prehistoric years, there still remained a bias toward eye contact and empathic expression. Thankfully, over time, the technocrats pushed the boundaries. Jason couldn't be happier. His hands hovered over the keyboard and his eyes ...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - December 19, 2016 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs
Legislated Out
I have a breathtakingly difficult confession to make. A confession, that on its face, seems rather innocuous, but in many ways shakes the foundations of who I always thought I was. How I identify myself.I no longer love being a physician.There, I said it. I winced even as I strung the words together to write the sentence. You see, to admit this is almost inconceivable. So much of who I was and who I have become is enmeshed in this intricate quilt of a profession. I view most every aspect of my life through this lens.How could I not? Wanting to be a doctor is the first cognition I can recall fr...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - December 18, 2016 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs
In Memoriam
The text was innocent enough. Eddie died. Unlike most human beings, there was no dagger of pain or even pang of grief. Those types of feelings had long been subdued. Instead there was just a subtle disturbance, a prick. I found the normal platitudes bouncing through my skull and down the spinal cord, out through the arms into my hands.He was old.He lived a good life.It was his time.He didn't suffer.Words I have said aloud so many times that now I forget to halfheartedly mumble them at all. And of course, the last is a lie. We all suffer. Maybe not during death, but in life. Patients ...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - December 16, 2016 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs
Barren Walls; My Thoughts On Selling Artwork
I bought my first house a few days before starting my second year of residency in St Louis. It was a townhome actually. Two bedrooms, one and a half baths, hardwood floors, and lots of wall space. In fact so much wall space, that I immediately began to look for ways to adorn all those barren surfaces.After visiting a number of local art galleries, I came to two conclusions. I knew exactly what I liked, and art work was exceedingly expensive. Expensive enough to not only prohibit me from decorating my house, but also from buying a single piece for my bedroom.The easy path would have been to obtain a...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - December 13, 2016 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs
Connecting Lines
I both look forward to and despise Sunday mornings. I awake just before the sun and am on the road by 5:15am. Although I dread being upright so early on the weekend, I rejoice because it is the only trip to work, all week, at a leisurely pace. I see the new admits at the nursing home, run by the hospital if necessary, and return just as my family is leaving their beds.The thirty-minute car ride gives me ample time to reflect. I often think of my father. A physician, he died well before I was old enough to understand who he was as a doctor, or a man for that matter. I often wonder about the par...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - December 12, 2016 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs
Spoiled Milk
There is no use in crying over spoiled milk!I have been thinking a lot lately about focus. As a young physician my ability to multitask was breathtaking. I could answer an emergency phone call from the hospital, change a diaper, and mow the lawn while stopping at the store to buy my wife flowers. I was able to navigate the roadblocks of each day without losing stride. Sure I sometimes stumbled, but I was up and running again without cutting precious seconds off my daily wind sprints.Age has changed me. Through the years my career has grown, and the number of pressing professional interruptions has ...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - December 11, 2016 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs
I'm Sorry
Dear Mrs J,I would like to express my deepest condolences in the passing of your mother. A magnificent woman, I had the pleasure of being her doctor for almost a decade. And it was a pleasure. During our short visits she regaled me with stories of childhood and often gently sprinkled in advice gleaned from years of experience. Even as she began to decline, we would sit together in the nursing home and she would reach out to hold my hand. She was a gift, your mother. A gift that I in no way deserved.I'm sorry she got cancer. As a physician, there is no word worse than the wordmetastases.&n...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - December 9, 2016 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs
Writing and Imperfection
For the first decade of life, I had headaches. Daily. Every day. Occasionally they were mild, but often severe. I saw various doctors. Suffered through multiple scans. At the end of the workup, the answers were no more forthcoming than the day we began. There was never a clear antidote. Never a divine potion. Then something magical happened. Exasperated, my parents took me to a biofeedback specialist who taught self meditation. And my life was transformed.I won't say that my headaches went away completely. They didn't. But practicing regular meditation instilled ...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - December 7, 2016 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs
The Shepherd
Mathew preferred using the more biblical termshepherd. After all, he labored his flock through pastoral pastures and meandering meadows. His parishioners, of course, were sheep and not people. But after years of leading them, he could discern subtle differences. The slope of a forehead, the stutter of a step, the variation in bleat. So much so that he had a distinct name for every animal in his flock of thousands.Mathew preferred isolation. From humans that is. But he was far from alone. He spent his days in constant motion among the animals, and nights still, under the moonlight bes...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - December 5, 2016 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs
