When I need a cavity filled and get that lidocaine shot in the mouth, I break out in a sweat and get faint, nauseated and pale. It's purely in my head, not a medication reaction, ever since anatomy class in medical school. It's…
This week's guest columnist is Chioma Ekwueme, MD, a family practice resident at Ochsner University Hospital & Clinics.
My son recently had a swollen ear. The parent in me began to panic as the worst possible diagnoses flashed…
When humorist Dave Barry caught Influenza, he called it the Martian Death Flu, like the title of a bad sci-fi movie. He and his wife spent days in bed achy and feverish. “There has been a mound of blankets on my wife's side of the…
In the movie Kindergarten Cop, Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a detective who goes undercover as a school teacher. In one scene, as he's reading a children's book to his class, he rubs his head and moans. The kids ask what's wrong,…
This 16 year-old boy hurt his knee playing basketball, banging it into another player's knee. He was brought in limping by his mom. "Did you give him anything for pain?" I asked. "I gave him one of my prescription ibuprofens," mom…
Yesterday my wife and I were walking our dog on a grey, wintery day. Though only 45 degrees, it was a damp chill that felt like 39, what my wife's Cajun family calls "dat wet cold." She was grumbling about it, having grown up in…
Some years the Influenza virus gets a special name for it's strain, like Swine Flu or H1N1. When he had his bout with flu, humorist Dave Barry made up his own: Martian Death Flu. He and his wife spent days in bed achy and…
