Dr. Pegs Prescription
Dear Dr. Peg,
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Dear Dr. Peg,
As a medical student I had the great fortune to spend a winter in Beijing, China, at an urban children’s hospital that used traditional Chinese medicine as well as modern Western methods. Eager to learn all I could, I asked one of the doctors to give me an acupuncture treatment. Since my arrival in Beijing I had been severely congested with thick yellow mucous, attributed by me to getting used to the heavy coal-dusted atmosphere.
Recently I had lunch with an elderly friend. I’ll call her Elaine. As we chatted over our salads, Elaine told me about a trip she took over the holidays to visit her sister and brother-in-law in Minnesota. Unfortunately, they got into a huge fight, the visit was a disaster and she left angry.
Everywhere you go on campus these days, people are sniffling and sneezing. Coughs echo in the halls and tissues fill the trash cans. It is the season for respiratory illness. Have you already succumbed? If not, would you like to avoid getting sick? My guess is yes. My basic advice is quite simple; you will figure it out long before the end of this article.
Do you suffer from sour burps and a burning pain under the ribcage after you eat? Do you wake up at night with a cough, or greet the day with a gnawing pit in your stomach? Do you shout, “Yes, that’s me!” at the television when the purple pill commercials come on? If so, you might have heartburn.
Winter in New Mexico brings a double-dry-whammy. The air in our high desert is dry to begin with, and between the cold temperatures outdoors and the heated air indoors, our poor skin suffers this time of year. You know what I mean. The scaly hands, the cracked fingers, the rough soles. It is this last one I want to talk about, and what I have to say may surprise you.
Dear readers,
Dear Dr. Peg,
“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.”
I had a patient last week who told me the story of her illness, ending with, “and then I looked it up online, and that was a bad idea.” She had found that some of her symptoms matched some pretty serious diseases, and suddenly she went from sick to sick and scared. Fortunately, after checking her out, I was able to reassure her that she did not, in fact, have a deadly disease, but merely a run-of-the-mill sickness.
Now it’s my turn to ask a question. Do you tell your doctor the truth about everything?
Last week I saw several patients who were suffering from anxiety.
Oct. 1 was a big day in American health care history, the day the online insurance marketplaces opened up under the Affordable Care Act.
Q: If you are feeling sick, is there a way to determine if you have a bacterial versus viral infection without going to the clinic? For example, temperature? Swollen glands? Green snot? Coughing up stuff?
“After Raymond died, some people thought I should get over it. But you never get over the death of a child,” Elaine Plotkin told me.
Dear Dr. Peg,
I have a soft spot in my heart for veterans, and it isn’t just because they call me “ma’am.” There are many reasons, but one might be because it is thanks to the resilience of a military man that I even exist today.
Dear Dr. Peg,
Welcome back to school. I hope you had a good summer, and are rested and ready to crack open the books and expand your mind. I also hope you had a healthy summer, with time to regroup and take care of your body.
It is finals time. How are you doing? Sleeping well? Eating nutritious meals? Keeping your life in balance? No? If you are like most students, you are too busy to take care of yourself. You have papers to write, assignments to finish, exams to cram for; your diet consists of junk food and soda, and you get up from your desk only to go to the bathroom or get another bag of chips.