Category: Health
Help My Unbelief
The doctors say she’s dying, but everything looks much the same. A plastic tube continues to supply every breath, various fluids continue to drip into her veins, her legs remain swollen, and an eyelid hasn’t fluttered in days, not even...
Three Challenges for Talking About Health
Sandro Galea. Well: What We Need to Talk About When We Talk About Health. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. 274pp, $28.95. One of my favorite ways to orient new medical students on the clinical team is to riff on...
Why Are Young Conservatives Less Depressed?
In a recent essay, Matt Yglesias attempted to explain the curious but well-documented phenomenon of why younger progressive minded teens are consistently more depressed than their conservative counterparts.
A Time to Die: Reflections on Medically-Assisted Dying in Canada
There is “a time to die” says Scripture (Ecclesiastes 3:2). When is that time? And who decides? I live in Canada, where these questions now seem to have clear answers: you may decide when to die, and whatever you decide...
How to Value Caring Work
Immediately before Jesus institutes the sacrament of the Eucharist at the Last Supper, he kneels before his disciples to wash their feet. Peter objects to being served by his Lord, finding it improper, but Jesus tells him that, “Unless I...
Seminary Anxiety
Everyone here bites their nails. I first noticed this last Fall and the realization was at once troubling and consoling. Troubling, because this is a child’s bad habit; consoling, because at least I’m not the only one who hasn’t used...
Friendship Through a Pandemic: Seeing More Clearly With Stanley Hauerwas
Ephraim Radner and others have recently reflected that the church’s theologians have said shockingly little about the pandemic that’s really been helpful, that’s helped Christians think clearly about this global crisis. To get our heads straight, minds clear, and hearts...
More Than Lip Service: Reviewing Two Books on Holistic Healing
When I started reading Amy Julia Becker’s new book To Be Made Well and Liuan Huska’s Hurting Yet Whole,[1] I was gripped instantly by the opening anecdotes. I had something of a reputation during my Family Medicine residency for attracting...
Trauma, Attachment, and Self-Care: What Everyone Should Know
Trauma. Once a word that solely referred to a physical wound, it is now far more popularly discussed with regards to psychological wounds. One can read dozens of books about trauma and find countless memes floating around discussing it, but...
Public Health After Christendom
How are we to consider public health when the health of the public officials themselves would not be recognizable to prior generations? Are we to simply stick our heads in the sand pretending that everything is normal? The CDC has...