I haven’t been blogging much lately.  Twitter has for better or worse become my forum even if I usually only comment on topics, like, retweet and occasionally forward articles to Facebook.  I only have a few hundred followers. I got up this morning and checked my emails to find that my account had been suspended  for offensive content.  Further exploration found that this was due to a Tweet in a conversation about a month ago. I got in a discussion about a potential malaria vaccine.  I made the flippant remark that more white people had to die for researchers ..read more

I don’t do much chronic pain direct patient care anymore but I do still work for one clinic in Northern Alberta.  I got a call from the nurse a couple of weeks ago telling me a former patient’s family doctor was desperate to get in touch with me.  I gave her my cell phone number and littering within 5 minutes he called me.  It seems the former patient who was on oral Demerol for her headaches had been told by her pharmacy that oral Demerol was no longer available and he was wondering what he could prescribe.  I told him any short acting opioid would be okay and it would be ..read more

As usual I am late. My mother would have been 91 yesterday had she not died last summer.  She had aunts on both sides of her family who lived to be close to 100, so I always thought she would be one of those bright ladies living on to 100 or later.  Sadly she developed dementia around her 88th birthday and slowly declined. While clearing my electronic schedule which has been decimated by the COVID crisis, I noted my mother’s birthday.  I deleted it.  It was a recurring event so my computer asked me if I wanted to delete all future events so I did that.  I felt a lit ..read more

Despite what some people will tell you I have said, I had never gotten a job based on my own merits prior to graduating from medical school.  Most of the jobs I have gotten since medical school were based on the fact that nobody else was available or that the other applicants were really horrible.  I accept this. I worked 6 summers prior to and during medical school.  Every single one of those jobs was due to nepotism.    My father worked for the Forest Service.  He had without any nepotism risen very high in the hierarchy on his own merit.  This did not stop him from resorting to nepot ..read more

On 8 I was injured in a major bicycle accident which required surgery.  My wife and I go to the Edmonton Folk Festival every year.  I have only missed 3 festivals since 1995.  Since moving to our current home in the West End, we have usually ridden our bicycles.  It is 12 km each way on quiet roads or paved trails.  This means riding home in the dark or twilight.   We went as usual this year for the Thursday evening concert.  We left a little late, wanting to avoid the line-up to get in.  We don’t do the tarp run.  With only two of us we can usually squeeze in between tarps.  We arrived ..read more

I trained as a medial student and intern in 3 different labour suites, caserooms whatever youThe unifying feature of caserooms was the The Board. While The Board slightly varied between sites, there were constants.  The patient’s name, attending physician, Gravida and Parity, gestation and dilatation.  There was usually room for other info such as pre-eclampsia or VBAC.  It was such a valuable source of information for seeing what was going on and predicting workload.  The Board when I was junior was a blackboard with chalk.  Lately it is a whiteboard.  Such a low tech but effective way of com ..read more

The Edmonton Journa didn’t publish my letter but I have a blog: My wife and I cancelled our subscription to the Edmonton Journal. Since moving to Edmonton in 1992, we have subscribed to your paper.  I remember it as an excellent paper with balanced coverage of local, national and international news and issues.  The large Saturday and Sunday editions were a true joy to read,  taking several hours. Over the last few years, the quality of the paper has declined, there is no longer a Sunday edition and the size of the paper has decreased to the point where the flyers deposited in our mailbox alon ..read more

About a year ago I applied for a licence in my neighbouring province (where I was born, went to school and worked for a while).  This was an interesting experience  which I should blog about some time.  The caper was in addition to having to get a criminal records check, having to be fingerprinted.  This was because apparently a sex offender has the same birthday as I do.   I quixotically phoned the agency, knowing that it wouldn’t change anything but I needed to yell at someone on the phone.  They were very polite; it was like I wan’t the first person and I went down to my local police statio ..read more