jjablkowski's blog

I have never been much of a runner, let alone a long-distance runner. Still, the title of Alan Sillitoe’s rather sad short story, “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner,” has become a metaphor for my current mental state. I am the runner at my wife’s side as she sinks into deep dementia. The long distance is the 7 or 8 long years of my run so far, and the loneliness is the painful feeling of the loss of my intimate other. It is hard to describe this feeling because it is not constant. It is a form of sadness, yet I don’t feel self-piteous or depressed.

As fall arrives, I look forward to new rhythms and routines. This fall will give us the spectacular foliage and beautiful, crisp mornings and evenings. It will also give those of us in medical fields an ongoing opportunity to hone our virtual care skills.

Thanksgiving Day is on Monday 12 October. There are plenty of things to worry about right now, but there are also things to be thankful for. This year I hope to raise my glass to Dr Edward Jenner (1749–1823), the titular father of immunology, of smallpox vaccination fame. I have kind of a spiritual connection to him. In 1956 and 1957, at the start of my medical career in North Vancouver, I still had time on my hands and I did some part-time work for the North Shore Health Unit. For 2 years I was the doctor in a white coat vaccinating grade-5 pupils against smallpox. 

Even though our professional lives are so much intertwined with society, it has taken a pandemic for the physician workforce to enter the parallel universe of social media and digital socialism. Despite the exponential growth in popularity of social media in the last decade, most doctors have practised social distancing from Facebook and even microblogging sites such as Twitter.

Do you still remember what is the innervation of the flexor digitorum superficialis? The author of a recent Medscape article complains that students are asked to memorize facts that have quite limited clinical relevance, yet they have been deprived of basic concepts used to understand evidence and make decisions. His article, “Anatomy factoids do not create great physicians,” made me think and ask myself: how do we define a good doctor and how do we make one?