I am no hero.

I don’t break down doors and run into the fires of my patients’ lives.

I have made some sacrifices. In twelve years of training to be a doctor, I missed weddings, baby showers, and funerals, experienced my own health cyclically decline and recover, lost sleep in quantities of years of my life I’ll never recover, grieved the loss of patients, mentors, and peers, witnessed the deterioration of my relationships, and worked through my own traumas as a women’s health care provider in a world that insists on terrorizing women [1]. As an obstetrician-gynecologist, I am finding…

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which led to the forced relocation of Japanese Americans living on the West Coast to concentration camps. Now, 79 years later, the tendency to imagine hostile enemies within our own nation has not changed.

In response to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Executive Order 9066 authorized the military to forcibly evacuate all persons deemed a threat to national security. This is how some 120,000 Japanese Americans, the majority of whom were U.S. …

Netflix’s trending docuseries and the exploitation of mental illness

If you have heard about Netflix’s new true crime docuseries featuring the story of Elisa Lam, you’ve also likely heard scathing reviews detailing the many ways in which the producers missed the mark. If you plan to watch the series, I don’t feel bad for spoiling the end. The documentary should not have been aired as a mystery in the first place.

A summary of the story can be found in many other articles.

The tragedy of Elisa Lam is that, like 5.7 million adults in the U.S. and 45 million…

What substance use and Instaglamour might have in common

“I’m so sorry,” she apologized profusely, catching her breath between sobs, “I’m trying my best.”

She called the hospital in a panic. Her neighbor had stolen her buprenorphine, a medication needed to prevent cravings and withdrawal for people who suffer from opioid addiction. The last time she went through withdrawal was three years prior, when she was using heroin and almost died from overdose. She got herself into treatment, and was abstinent from illicit drugs ever since. Now out of medication, she was in a physical turmoil of withdrawal symptoms —…

When I was a kid, I liked watching weird, gory television shows, mostly to see whether my tolerance for creepiness and guts could match that of my older brother. Children’s entertainment seems to frequently include a monster narrative. For centuries, we’ve introduced our children to themes of morality, good versus evil, heroism and heritage through the lens of monster tales. Ugly, unseen, and unexplained, they are the perfect metaphors for our worst traits. When I had nightmares, my father always calmed me by saying, “Remember, no matter what you see in your dreams, monsters are not real.” But aren’t they?

…

Getting to work after 2020

“Heed my words,” said my housemate, ominously, “watch your cars.”

Neither of my two housemates nor I have been driving much. We live in a typical, wooded suburb in North Carolina where the houses seem to have snuck in quietly among the native trees. Critters walk around the yards, all day and all night, housecats being the least comfortable among larger, wilder beasts. Our cars, parked outside on a gravel path, idle as we live our work and social lives at home.

I got in my car one morning to go to clinic, pressed the…