TSMD July 2021 Newsletter - A Month of Wonder
July Greetings
July is a time ripe for wonder. It’s a month of summer celebrations. In my family, that means weddings and birthdays and anniversaries.
This year, there are extra doses of joy and wonder to be had.
Here in the United States, each day brings with it signs of normalcy.
We’re outside.
We’re hugging.
We’re together.
We owe the strides we’ve made since last summer to the incredible scientists who developed the vaccines and the deep well of strength healthcare workers and caregivers turned to in the most trying months of the pandemic—truly astonishing feats.
We must allow ourselves space to wonder at all of the ingenuity, innovation, and perseverance that has delivered us here.
Stay open to this wonder and amazement this month. Here is some wisdom from Mary Oliver to take with you into July:
“When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it is over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.”
Around the Web
Traveling This Summer? Here’s What You Should Know About the Delta Variant
“With vaccinations on the rise and mortality rates related to Covid-19 going down in Europe and other parts of the world, many people are making plans to travel this summer and beyond. But experts say the quickly circulating Delta variant is a new concern for travelers, particularly those who are unvaccinated.”
“Medicine is, ironically, a profession that punishes some doctors for getting mental health care. Many physicians work under intense pressure and are exposed to trauma on the job. A worrying number of doctors die by suicide each year. Yet structural barriers — enforced in part by medical boards and hospital systems — frequently discourage doctors from accessing care that could save their lives.”
‘It’s infuriating and shocking’: how medicine has failed women over time
“Cleghorn’s new book, Unwell Women, enumerates a litany of ways in which women’s bodies and minds have been misunderstood and misdiagnosed through history. From the wandering womb of ancient Greece (the idea that a displaced uterus caused many of women’s illnesses) and the witch trials in medieval Europe, through the dawn of hysteria, to modern myths around menstruation, she lays bare the unbelievable and sometimes horrific treatment of women for millennia in the name of medicine.”
“All told, by the end of 2020, sales of hand sanitizer had increased by 600 percent.
Some of this sanitizer is presumably still sitting untouched in people’s pandemic pantry stockpiles. But much of it also went onto our skin, where the alcohol hastily dissolves most of the viruses, bacteria, and fungi it encounters. This dramatic increase in personal sterilization—combined with many other microbe-reducing habits, including masking and physical distancing—have prompted some biologists to wonder, in academic papers and prominent op-eds, about the extent of the ‘collateral damage’ to our immune system.”
Where to Find Me
Here are a few of the places you can find me speaking this month:
Shady Grove Medical Center
Litigation Stress: Risk and Risky Behavior: How to Navigate in the 21st Century
Northwest Seminars
Topics in Emergency Medicine
Hershey, Pennsylvania
July 12-15, 2021
Co-presenting with Dr. Valerie Dobiesz
Need a speaker for an event? Learn more and get in touch!
