The Short Telomere Double Whammy of COVID-19
Study Finds Shortened Telomeres in Patients With Severe COVID-19 – a recent article discussing a study in the medical journal Aging. Scientists found that people with COVID-19 have shortened telomeres – think of these as the “edges” of your genes that can unravel. Long telomeres mean your body has the capacity to recover and generate. […]
From Polio Survivor to Adaptive Sports Athlete
Check out Tony’s Wheels, a new bilingual (English and Filipino/Tagalog) children’s book. I love this! Because: #1 it’s a book about a polio survivor getting around in the world and into adaptive sports, and #2 my Tita (Aunt) Mila Bongco-Phillipzig wrote it and I’m proud of her. From the book webpage: Mila Bongco-Philipzig | AuthorMila […]
Under-appreciated and Underwater, Plus Muppets
The 1981 movie The Great Muppet Caper has a clipped dubbed “Miss Piggy’s Fantasy” in which she takes part in some synchronized swimming (also known as artistic swimming – because solo events don’t really need you to be “synchronized” with anyone else, but then you synchronize with the music… I digress). A somewhat random thing […]
Handel’s Messiah for Our Time (the COVID-19 Edition)
The Handel and Haydn Society of Boston, Massachusetts presented an annual Handel’s Messiah concert for the holidays last December 20, 2020; they have done so since 1854. Like so many performances in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, it pivoted (and overall quite successfully) to an online format this year. From a Performing Arts Medicine […]
Medical Humanities at the Philippine General Hospital, in the time of COVID-19
In April, 2020 a call went out for photos and written pieces chronicling the pandemic experience at the University of the Philippines and Philippine General Hospital (UP-PGH) – the plan was to collect these for the PGH Human Spirit Project. The pandemic isn’t over yet, but here are the fruits of that labor: a 3-volume […]
When Algorithms Fail
After approval by the United States’ Food and Drug Administration on December 10, 2020, the Pfizer vaccine made its way to hospitals all over the country. By Monday the 14th, I started seeing colleagues and friends’ social media posts about receiving the vaccine – all very uplifting: excited, ecstatic, emotional about what people called the […]
Racism Issues and COVID-19
I read this article today about pulse oximeters, and I thought of several articles I read previously in September. Pulse oximeters are borne of racist bias in technology. I was today years old when I found out. And it makes sense. They work by sensing the color of blood flowing under the skin, based on […]
How does a spinal cord injury affect your body? Part 4 of 4.
Fourth of a series. Read part one (mobility, spasms, skin), part two (bowel, bladder, sex), and part three (heart, blood pressure, breathing). This post will deal with musculoskeletal issues: muscles and bones. In addition to problems with mobility, not being able to use all four limbs has its other medical complications. Overuse Humans are meant […]
The Irony of Being Filipino in a world with COVID-19
Today, I read this article on COVID-19 and how it affects Filipinos in the diaspora, by Filipino-American Susan Araneta (she has a Masters degree in Public Health so she certainly knows what she is talking about). Access full article here: http://www.positivelyfilipino.com/magazine/a-virus-among-us-filipinos-and-covid-19 In her introduction, she writes about the first COVID-19 vaccine administered in the United […]
How does a spinal cord injury affect your body? Part 3 of 4.
Third of a series. Read part one (mobility, spasms, skin) and part two (bowel, bladder, sex). There are some things in the human body that you don’t think about until there’s something wrong… then you notice. A spinal cord injury can do that and be the “something wrong” that messes things up. This blog post […]
