One year ago, Hurricane Helene devastated western North Carolina and surrounding states.  Recovery, restoration and revitalization will take years.

As community leaders, we Family Physicians can all contribute, in many ways, to the healing of our fellow mountain towns and neighborhoods.

The American Red Cross is still taking donations directed to our mountains.  And if you know medical colleagues caring for the people affected by Helene, contact them.  They deserve our best wishes and gratitude.

In Shakespeare’s play, Romeo and Juliet, Juliet Capulet says that she doesn’t care that Romeo’s last name is Montague.  She doesn’t care that her lover comes from a rival family.  She offers this famous phrase:

“What’s in a name?  That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

A heartfelt sentiment by a lovestruck teenager, but we know through this timeless Shakespeare tragedy, and our own experience, that words do matter.

In the latest episode of Lessons Learned – Wisdom Shared, Dr. Thomas White talks about the pervasive decline of trust in communal and personal relationships.  Faith in our bedrock institutions, like Congress, the courts, even our churches, seems to be at an all time low.

Medical and scientific institutions have not been spared from this global distrust. A few thoughts on the causes of distrust and what we family doctors can do to nurture trust in our daily work

“Nobody, but nobody, is going to stop breathing on me.”

Virginia Apgar, MD…

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”   Robert Frost

Most of us physicians, including myself, have had a rather linear path to becoming a doctor.  College, then straight into medical school, then residency, then practice.

Looking back, my own training journey seems so clear and regimented. Any struggles I had were in the work itself, not in the career choice.  The path was clearly marked, and the hardships (and there were a few) were strewn along that straight and narrow path.  I never had a full-time, on-my-own adult job until I was 29, as a freshly minted family doc.

But some of our colleagues took a different path, sometimes multiple paths, before their FM career…

An old Seth Thomas clock bought at a flea market.  It doesn’t work, doesn’t tell time; but it looks stately on the hallway table.  I own the clock but I don’t own what it measures.  Time is not owned.  Rather it is a gift, sometimes a burden, always in short supply.

In this December 2024 episode of the Family Doctor, Dr. White shares his personal struggles with time and time management.  As I listened to his story, I found myself muttering, “Yes! Amen! Me too!”…