Search Results for: Medicine

David Lee Roth Will Not Go Quietly

Longreads Pick

A profile of rock star David Lee Roth, who has had a diverse career and life. He’s now 57 years old and back doing shows with Van Halen:

“He eventually became a certified EMT in New York and then completed a tactical medicine training program in Southern California. Not famous enough to headline Madison Square Garden, plenty famous enough to stand out in a tactical medicine training program.

‘The altitude drop is when somebody realizes who you are and they take you to task. Now you’re the guy who gets to do garbage five days in a row instead of one, and doing ambulance-garage garbage is different from I-just-finished-dinner-and-now-I-have-to-dump-the-garbage-darling garbage. That will test you. But I was old enough and smart enough to know what I’d signed up for. These tactics are of value, they’re a contribution.’ For years he went on ambulance calls all over New York City, and found that a life in the music business was good preparation for rushing to the aid of grievously injured people in the less picturesque corners of the city. ‘My skills were serious,’ he says. ‘Verbal judo, staying calm in the face of hyper-accelerated emotion. Same bizarre hours. Same keening velocity.'”

Source: BuzzFeed
Published: Apr 12, 2013
Length: 25 minutes (6,495 words)

Her Husband Had Taken Their Young Daughter To Iran. She Was Determined To Get The Child Back.

Longreads Pick

A case of international parental kidnapping, and a mother’s fight to get her daughter back:

“To make the plan work, Homaune had to take on a new persona in conversations with her ex-husband. She tried to be calm, helpful and understanding, and mailed him just enough cash, medicine and clothes to keep him interested in a more lucrative rendezvous. She stopped haranguing and screaming, even when her husband threatened to send her daughter home in a ‘box’ or to sell her on the black market, statements he would later admit he made.

“After the most intense calls, Homaune sobbed or threw up. But she refused to stop calling Iran; a key part of the plan involved being in constant contact, wearing him down, taking his demands seriously and convincing him that they were still friends, no matter what.”

Source: Washington Post
Published: Apr 4, 2013
Length: 12 minutes (3,234 words)

A Sin City Savior’s Quest To Cure The Common Hangover

Longreads Pick

An enterprising anesthesiologist is offering hungover people in Las Vegas an intravenous treatment:

“Burke set up an IV bag in his office and inserted a catheter into his foot. ‘That’s really the only place that’s easy to start an IV on yourself,’ he says. ‘I let probably 300 or 400 cc’s of fluid in.’ The hydration offered some relief, but not enough to declare victory over his hangover. ‘I said, “OK, it’s time to put the drugs in. Let’s see what’s going to happen with this.”‘

“First, he added Zofran, an anti-nausea medicine. ‘After about 10 minutes, the nausea started melting away.’ Then, he added Toradol. ‘When I get hangovers, it feels like there’s a vice on my head.’ The impact of the Toradol was dramatic, however. ‘Literally, within three minutes, it was like someone had unscrewed the vice. I was like, ‘Good God, I can’t believe I’ve been suffering all these years when I could have been done with it in 30 minutes.'”

Author: Greg Beato
Source: BuzzFeed
Published: Feb 1, 2013
Length: 25 minutes (6,490 words)

Drone Home

Longreads Pick

On the future of drones in America:

“But the drone industry is ramping up for a big landgrab the moment the regulatory environment starts to relax. At last year’s Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) trade show in Las Vegas, more than 500 companies pitched drones for filming crowds and tornados and surveying agricultural fields, power lines, coalfields, construction sites, gas spills and archaeological digs. A Palo Alto, Calif., start-up called Matternet wants to establish a network of drones that will transport small, urgent packages, like those for medicine.

“In other countries civilian drone populations are already booming. Aerial video is a major application. A U.K. company called Skypower makes the eight-rotored Cinipro drone, which can carry a cinema-quality movie camera. In Costa Rica they’re used to study volcanoes. In Japan drones dust crops and track schools of tuna; emergency workers used one to survey the damage at Fukushima. A nature preserve in Kenya ran a crowdsourced fundraising drive to buy drones to watch over the last few northern white rhinos. Ironically, while the U.S. has been the leader in sending drones overseas, it’s lagging behind when it comes to deploying them on its own turf.”

Source: Time Magazine
Published: Feb 2, 2013
Length: 18 minutes (4,623 words)

Do We Really Want to Live Without the Post Office?

Longreads Pick

The U.S. Postal Service is losing $25 million per day—but its leadership is not giving up:

“The investment in the shipping and trucking and sorting infrastructure has already been made, so they’re exploring whether there are ways to get more value from it. Postal carriers already deliver one million packages of drugs and contact lenses per day. For an aging, longer-living, and ever-more-medicated population, Rx by mail could be vastly expanded. Delivery is confidential, tamper-proof, and utterly dependable. In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, when subways and many drugstores in the Rockaways and elsewhere were shut down, the postal service was still delivering medicine to many of the elderly in the worst-hit areas.

“But there may also be other opportunities outside of mail and packages. The main battle in retail right now is over the ‘last mile.’ Amazon, Walmart, and eBay all want to be able to deliver their goods almost instantly. The postal service is uniquely suited to offer this. The idea would be that if you order a new toaster or jacket in the morning, your mail carrier would bring it to your door by dinner. According to Leon Nicholas, an analyst at consulting firm Kantar Retail, there have been high-level discussions between the postal service and Walmart over such an arrangement.”

Source: Esquire
Published: Jan 26, 2013
Length: 39 minutes (9,958 words)

Pardis Sabeti, the Rollerblading Rock Star Scientist of Harvard

Longreads Pick

On trailblazing geneticist Pardis Sabeti, who balances being in a rock band with her work in computational genomics:

“There’d be plenty of people eager to talk to Sabeti before long. That October, she was the lead author on a paper published in Nature that laid out her discovery’s ‘profound implications for the study of human history and for medicine.’ For the first time, researchers could look for evidence of positive selection by testing common haplotypes even if they didn’t have ‘prior knowledge of a specific variant or selective advantage.’ By applying this approach to pathogens, there was the possibility of identifying how diseases had evolved to outwit the human immune response or develop drug resistance—knowledge that would open up new avenues to combating disease.

“All of a sudden, the previously unknown 26-year-old was a superstar. David Hafler, a Yale neurologist and immunobiologist who has worked with Sabeti, compares her approach to that of a preternaturally gifted athlete, the hockey great Wayne Gretzky. ‘He was asked, ‘Why are you always where the action is?’ And he responded, ‘I don’t skate to where the puck is, I skate to where the puck is going to be.’ That’s the reason she’s able to make all of these fundamental contributions.'”

Source: Smithsonian
Published: Nov 20, 2012
Length: 11 minutes (2,962 words)

Longreads Best of 2012: Edith Zimmerman

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Edith Zimmerman is founding editor of The Hairpin and a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine. She’s also written for GQ, Elle, The Awl and This American Life

I’m not a doctor, but … (always a confidence-inspiring way to start a sentence!), these pieces on healthcare were two of the best articles I read this year.

Atul Gawande’s “Two Hundred Years of Surgery,” New England Journal of Medicine

I like everything by Atul Gawande, who is somehow both an accomplished surgeon and a New Yorker staff writer—I don’t know if I’d rather be his mother, wife, or patient, although I would DEFINITELY not want to be his daughter. (“Hey Dad, I just got eight retweets for my joke about yogurt, are you proud?”) Anyway, this piece was a fascinating look at the history of surgery, told with warmth and humor.

Michael Wolff’s “Let My Mother Die,” New York magazine

On the current state of end-of-life care in America, and how it can and should be improved. One of the most affecting, excellent articles I’ve ever read.

Read more guest picks from Longreads Best of 2012


(Photo by Victor G. Jeffrys II)

Our Top 5 Longreads of the Week—featuring The New York Times Magazine, Washington Monthly, The New Yorker, Spirit Magazine, Stanford Medicine Magazine, plus fiction and a guest pick by TIME’s Kate Pickert.

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A group of young doctors from the Clinical Excellence Research Center at the Stanford School of Medicine are looking for new models to make health care better and more affordable:

Patel was second up in the presentation, a little nervous and barely tall enough to be seen behind the podium. She stated the problem in her target area: Cancer is the second-leading cause of death in the United States, with costs estimated to be $173 billion by 2020. These rising costs are unsustainable.

And what do many poor-prognosis cancer patients get for all the money spent? ‘Horrible treatment,’ she said, citing a statistic that silenced the room: Seventy-three percent of terminal cancer patients never have an end-of-life discussion with their oncologists. ‘Many patients are rushed off to chemotherapy without understanding the big picture. And when predictable treatment side effects happen at night and on weekends, patients who are unable to reach their oncologist end up in misery in emergency rooms and hospitals. Later in their illness, many die painfully in intensive-care facilities that bankrupt their families emotionally – and sometimes financially.’

During her presentation, Patel’s eyes became dark pools that threatened to overflow. A few people in the audience wept silently, perhaps remembering loved ones who had similarly suffered.

‘Overall, these added services improve the quality of life of patients, giving them what they need and want without delay,’ she added after describing her model. ‘And best of all, we lower health insurance costs … simply by doing the right thing.’

“Against the Odds.” — Kris Newby, Stanford Medicine

See more from Stanford Medicine

Against the Odds

Longreads Pick

A group of young doctors from the Clinical Excellence Research Center at the Stanford School of Medicine are looking for new models to make health care better and more affordable:

“Patel was second up in the presentation, a little nervous and barely tall enough to be seen behind the podium. She stated the problem in her target area: Cancer is the second-leading cause of death in the United States, with costs estimated to be $173 billion by 2020. These rising costs are unsustainable.

“And what do many poor-prognosis cancer patients get for all the money spent? ‘Horrible treatment,’ she said, citing a statistic that silenced the room: Seventy-three percent of terminal cancer patients never have an end-of-life discussion with their oncologists. ‘Many patients are rushed off to chemotherapy without understanding the big picture. And when predictable treatment side effects happen at night and on weekends, patients who are unable to reach their oncologist end up in misery in emergency rooms and hospitals. Later in their illness, many die painfully in intensive-care facilities that bankrupt their families emotionally – and sometimes financially.’

“During her presentation, Patel’s eyes became dark pools that threatened to overflow. A few people in the audience wept silently, perhaps remembering loved ones who had similarly suffered.

“‘Overall, these added services improve the quality of life of patients, giving them what they need and want without delay,’ she added after describing her model. ‘And best of all, we lower health insurance costs … simply by doing the right thing.'”

Author: Kris Newby
Published: Oct 26, 2012
Length: 16 minutes (4,103 words)