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Catatonia: Another Reason to Get the COVID-19 Vaccine
My wife and I have been immunized against COVID-19 and we recognize that people can be hesitant about getting vaccinated. However, I’m remembering my last few months prior to my retirement a year ago working as a general hospital psychiatric consultant and I saw one or two cases of catatonia in the context of COVID-19…
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Reflecting on Ironies
Over the Easter weekend, we drove by James Alan McPherson Park. A lot of people were having a great time. Because it was crowded, we went to Terry Trueblood Recreation Area, planning to return another day. We just got our copy of McPherson’s Pulitzer Prize winning fiction anthology, Elbow Room. We’ve ordered his other collection…
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Shine Your Light
It has been a couple of days since my second COVID-19 vaccine shot a couple of days ago. Consistent with what is known about the side effect profile of the second jab, I had one day of the well-described generalized aches and fatigue besides the sore arm, which didn’t limit my activities. It’s working. I…
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The Most Constructive Force in the Universe
As I struggle to remember to write and say the year “2021” I noticed the University of Iowa Health Care quotation selection by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr this month pertinent to the upcoming MLK Human Rights Week, starting January 18, 2021: “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.”…
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Wild, Flying Tree Warriors
A couple of days ago, Country Arborists cleaned up the debris left behind in our back yard from the derecho that smacked Iowa in August 2020. They are wild, flying tree warriors. That was a scary storm and if the straight-line winds had blown in a slightly different direction, our house would have been all…
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Retirement and Loss of the Crusade
I recently read an article about Maintenance of Psychiatry (MOC) written by Dr. Henry A. Nasrallah, MD and published this month in Current Psychiatry. The title is “Revamp the maintenance of certification program.” It brought back memories of my crusade to do the same thing in past years. I lost my connection to that crusade…
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The Firefighter Retires
I’m writing this post today because this firefighter retires tomorrow—and I’ll probably be very busy and too weary at the end of my last day on the psychiatry consult service to write. In fact, I’ve been too busy and tired to post for the last several weeks because we’ve been in the process of moving.…
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Kudos to the Goodenough Psychiatrist for Blog Post “The Perfect Balance”
I almost never write more than one post a day, but I’m pretty impressed with the blog post “The Perfect Balance” by The Goodenough Psychiatrist. It was very thought-provoking and the Stuart Ablon Ted Talk on Collaborative Problem Solving was refreshing. A little over 3 ½ minutes into the video, Ablon says something interesting about…
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First Day Back in the Saddle
Today was my first day back on the hospital consultation-liaison service and I’m a little tired. I put about 2 miles and 22 floors on my step counter, which was a nice pace for starters. It’ll get busier as the COVID-19 surge develops over the next couple of weeks. Being in phased retirement means I’m…
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The Visible Flame
I began rereading the book Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison today, which is Leap Day. Given what little I know about Leap Day and Leap Year in general, there isn’t a connection. I first read Invisible Man well over 40 years ago. It was a paperback and I took it with me to Huston-Tillotson College…
Go Retire Psychiatrist 