There is a trend right now happening on the West Coast for medi-spas to offer what is being called a Blood Facial.  Essentially, a blood facial is a cosmetic procedure where a doctor draws a few vials of blood from your arm, puts it in a centrifuge to separate the plasma and platelets from the […]

In a world in which we only hear negative news, this was a breath of fresh air when we saw this today.  (excuse the pun!) It was a typical day at this supermarket in Australia….but it turned serious when a two year old girl stopped breathing due to a high fever.  At first, everyone thought […]

A community hospital in Boulder Colorado is facing a major challenge this week because it’s computer system has failed.  The IT professionals handling the outage have not been able to determine what caused the issue, or if it is related to hacking.  These types of warning signs should grab the attention of hospital and medical […]

IBM’s brain child, Watson, has been best known as defeating humans on the game show Jeopardy in 2011 where it competed against Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings, two of Jeopardy’s most famous contestants. Watson was made specifically to play Jeopardy by its research team headed by David Ferrucci of IBM. Since its debut on Jeopardy, […]

In my past few posts, I have detailed the discoveries of my son’s two major birth defects, a multicystic kidney and tracheal esophageal fistula, and their impact on us. Today, I’d like to write about two specific moments that let us know that we would be dealing with the fall-out from these anomalies forever. Around […]

I recently heard someone say that “parenting isn’t for the weak,” and this phrase has never been more true than for parents of medically complex children. These last few posts have really gotten me thinking about all that our family has been through –not only Owen, who has been through way, way too much for […]

This is another personal post reflecting on my experience with the health care system. Interestingly, and thankfully, in hindsight, all three of the things said to me below were in times of crisis –times when something said to me really mattered. Again, in hindsight, it was really nice to realize that when I needed kind, […]

Previously on this blog, I have written about our son, Owen, who was born with a multicystic kidney and tracheal esophageal fistula. Today, I’d like to write about how this medically complex child has impacted my psyche and perspective on life for better or for worse. I did everything right, but it still went terribly […]

AMedNews.com recently reported on the occurrence of surgical “never events” –events so severe and egregious that they should never happen. Never. But, never say never, because never happens, in this case, on average, about 80 times per week. Never events include leaving an instrument in a patient, operating on the wrong body part, the wrong […]