“I didn’t know it would be so bad,” the new mother said to me, whispering so as not to disturb her two-week old infant rocking in her crib in the dark NICU room. Her baby was suffering from neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome, or NOWS, a postnatal withdrawal syndrome that newborns experience after exposure to opioids in utero.
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If You’re Going to San Francisco
I’d been told in my hospital sign-out that Melanie was transgender, but I stumbled on the first day and referred to her as “he” in front of my medical team. “She!” she said immediately. I was a hospitalist teaching medical students at one of the most liberal medical schools in the country — University of California, San Francisco. I should have known better.
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Naltrexone as PrEP
Desperation is not too strong a noun to describe the present opioid epidemic. Emergency calls in the St. Louis region are running 17% higher than this time last year. Many of these calls are a result of the increased supply of heroin and fentanyl, a drug 50 times more potent than morphine.
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Fentanyl at Forty
Matt was 40, my sister’s age. He was training for a marathon and trying to talk his many friends into joining. He lay in bed with his three-year-old son every night to help him fall asleep. It’s hard to sleep train a toddler with a newborn to nurture at the same time, but he loved spending this time with his two kids and being the dad everyone counted on.
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First Initial. Last 4.
“First initial. Last four of your social. Zip code.”
In January 2013, this was my supervisor’s daily greeting to all who visited the van. There was not one “type” of client. There was the man in business attire rushing to work; the old man too weak to leave his car unassisted; and the quiet housewife and hostess of a “knitting circle” for her friends.
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The Overdose Epidemic
Society loves a good drug crisis. Even our current president Donald Trump knows that: “Drugs… have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential. This American carnage stops right here right now.” For decades, this “carnage” has provided politicians, parents, and pundits with a dependable scapegoat for just about anything. A potent mixture of crime, character flaws, and sensational health consequences, drug hysteria consistently delivers.
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