Weight Loss and Change
I lost quite a bit of weight in the last year. It was on purpose. I started by tracking my intake and monitoring food choices. Before I knew it, the pounds melted away. I dropped two pant sizes and had to completely flip my wardrobe. My body was transformed.Strangely, it didn't always feel that way.After losing twenty five pounds, I looked in the mirror one morning after getting out of the shower. I couldn't discern a bit of difference. I could see the same layers of skin and love handles as before. Although my outsides had changed drastically, my brain was stuck in its former state. My intern...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - November 11, 2016 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs
Glue
As Leila giggles blissfully at something Katie said, I realize that I lost a moment. Maybe I was on the phone, maybe caught up in my own head about some patient conundrum or another.Cameron is tugging at his mother's sleeve. He tries to wile her attention from dinner and across the table to his iPhone where he discovered a new glitch.It's pasta a la vodka night and we are all ravenous. A natural chef, Katie one day glanced over a recipe and created a masterpiece. We long ago lost the actual vodka and other ingredient modifications have taken place. It's now one of our favorites.I tuck my shirt in c...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - October 26, 2016 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs
Evanston
If you walk north from my front door a half block, the sidewalk dead ends into a path juxtapositioned between the golf course and Leahy Park. Continue a few hundred feet and turn east on Lincoln Avenue, and eventually cross Sheridan. Go past the water reclamation building and around the athletic center, and you will come to my favorite place.Wend your way through the ambling students and the outdoor athletic field, and eventually you will reach Lake Michigan. Almost as if by surprise, the incomprehensible body of water jets into view framed by green grass over landfill, a winding path along the waterfront, a...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - September 2, 2016 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs
Sometimes...
Sometimes before I go on a run, I take the laces of my jogging shoes and tie them together in a knot. I wear the pair around my neck with each shoe falling to opposite sides. The heels clunk against my chest as I make my last minute rounds. It's as if running is my job and the shoes are the instrument I use to perform that job. Eventually I slip them off my neck, and onto my soul. It's time to go running.Today started in much the usual fashion. The first few blocks were rocky, but eventually I established a pace. A mile in, I turned the corner, and I was on my beloved lakeside path...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - April 24, 2016 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs
Arms Wide Open
We are born with arms wide open, and we die in much the same way. It is that which we carry, in the time between, that defines us. The new born, caught in the primordial stew of beginnings, is unable to recognize the difference between self and other. She grasps and roots at inanimate objects with the same voracity she reaches for her mother. It is a time of differentiation, a time of definitions The toddler understands more of his surroundings His eyes survey the landscape and fall lovingly on one gleaming object or another. The word mine dribbles from his mouth as he learns the pleasure of l...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - March 25, 2016 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs
Letting Go
Vacation was perfect. We went to one of those all inclusive places. They slip a bracelet around you wrist and a world opens up. The pool. The beach. Bars and restaurants. I lounged by the pool and walked in the sand. I ate far too much and actually slept late into the morning. The staff was as kind and courteous as could be. The kids were almost all smilesPerfectBut as everything in life, even perfection has to end. We packed up our bags, loaded onto the plane, and taxied back home. That evening sitting in bed, I contemplated the little string bracelet that ...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - March 10, 2016 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs
How Good Medicine Has Become The Exception
Joe had one of the best geriatricians in the city. So when he got a call from the pharmacist saying his new prescription was ready, he assumed that it had to do with his recent annual visit and blood draw. His suspicions were confirmed, a few minutes later, when he got through to the nurse at the office. Joe was politely informed that he had high cholesterol and was being put on a statin. Although he hung up the phone satisfied and raced out to the pharmacy to pick up his new pills, a casual observer might find a few things concerning.Neither the doctor nor the nurse actually talked to Joe about the significance of h...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - February 16, 2016 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs
Alarm Fatigue
I felt like the stack of charts rose past my head and all the way to the ceiling. I pulled out my pen, opened the first, and started charting. I took a moment before each note to collect my thoughts. The patients were complex, the problems sometimes insurmountable. The nursing station at the facility was buzzing with activity around me. Phones were ringing, alarms were crying for attention.On the desk beside me was a case filled with a dozen pagers. Every thirty seconds, one of the pagers would sound off and vibrate. The motion would send the case rattling against the desk and not ...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - January 25, 2016 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs
Doctors, He Felt, Were No Longer Helping People
It was never his intention that the name would stick. A decade ago, when he first began working in the restaurant, some of his fellow employees knew that he was formerly a practicing physician and started to call him "Doc". Although many of his coworkers had since moved on, taking the knowledge of his previous profession with them, his moniker persisted. Doc liked the simplicity and tedium of his bartending job. He spent the majority of his nights doing what he liked most, interacting with fellow human beings. He remembered a time when medicine offered such enticing rewards. When he could sit ...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - January 5, 2016 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs
What I Believe The Public Should Know About Clinicians
The daughter of the patient walked out of the room livid. She was convinced that the nurse had no business taking care of patients. She seethed as she recounted all the supposed injuries and mistakes that had occurred. I took a deep breath and paused for a moment, trying to collect my thoughts.The daughter didn't know that I had watched this same nurse successfully perform CPR on a man the day before, and her quick thinking was one of the factors that save his life. She had once recognized a rare side effect of a medication, and solved a clinical mystery that had hounded doctors, hospitals, and phar...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - December 7, 2015 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs
The Anatomy Of A Home Death Without Hospice
Although his family was convinced that it was the metastatic prostate cancer that would eventually lead to his demise, I had my doubts. His dementia had progressed to the point that he spent all his days in bed. He could no longer navigate the most simple activities of daily living. His caregiver fed him, dressed him, cleaned him up after he went to the bathroom. I visited him in the home. We met eight months before his death. His wife, two daughters, and I. We discussed what dying looked like. We talked of dignity, and what decisions he would make if he had the ability to ration...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - November 25, 2015 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs
Be The Protagonist
I have said many times that we tell the stories about our own lives that make it bearable, or better yet magical, mystical. I often use the death of my father as an example. I was eight years old when he passed away. Instead of embracing his premature demise as the greatest tragedy of my life, I credit this misfortune with my decision to pursue a career in medicine, and hopefully touch countless lives. Reframing of my childhood has allowed me to feel like I grew up privileged. Even lucky.It has occurred to me recently that such story telling does not only have to be reserved for interpreting t...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - November 17, 2015 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs
Building
I have been thinking a lot lately about a dream I had as a first year medical student.My father is standing besides my brothers. We’re all building. Putting the pieces together. But I’m stuck and no longer making progress. My mom stands besides me oblivious to my turmoil. Does she know what I’m thinking? This must be a dream because we are grown up now, and dad died when I was eight years old.Although everyone’s building, I can’t. I watch the way my father moves. Somehow, I know this will be my last chance to see him again. I’m afraid because over the decades his ...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - November 14, 2015 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs
For The Most Part, We Get It Right.
I have two refrigerators.The full size, expensive version, sits in the usual location in the kitchen. The small black one rests idly in the basement. Excluding this morning, of course, when I dragged it up the steps and begrudgingly coaxed it back into action. Let me explain.Six months ago my old refrigerator started acting up. Somewhere around year five, it’s motors groaned, its coolers moaned, and all the sudden the food started to smell. So I called the repairman and hundreds of dollars later, it worked like a dream.Until it didn’t. The repairs held for all of a week. I called the...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - November 6, 2015 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs
Empathy: Are We Asking For Too Much?
As my daughter approached the stage toting her miniature violin, I could feel a flutter in my chest. My palms were sweaty and my feet started to tremble. I hesitated while she played the first note. My heart soared with each rhythmic movement of her bow. I caught my breath when she reached the most difficult portion, and exhaled calmly as she nailed it. At the end, I elatedly stood and clapped with the rest of the crowd. I have learned just about everything I know about empathy by being a husband and father. In no other relationship have I so acutely felt the joys and pains of another pe...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - October 27, 2015 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs
