The little man inside me told me not to blow this one off. She said she would stop by during her lunch hour. Donna didn't appear until 5 p.m. The pains had gone away but returned after lunch, and she felt as though she couldn't leave her job at the bank. I put her on Lovenox and a nitro drip and arranged for her transfer the next day for a cardiac catheterization. I have 300-pound smokers with high cholesterol and blood pressure and family histories of heart problems, and they don't have heart attacks.
Life's a bitch.
Dr. Brown, a solo family physician living in Mendocino, Calif., is a contributing editor to Family Practice Management . These excerpts from his journal illustrate the many characters, stories and lessons family practice has to offer. A person viewing it online may make one printout of the material and may use that printout only for his or her personal, non-commercial reference.