West Jefferson Medical Associates

02/20/2025

Perhaps Paul Simon's best. Right up there with the best of Dylan, although majorly different styles. Both icons.

10/21/2024

06/27/2024

On Fear:

It is said that before entering the sea
a river trembles with fear.

She looks back at the path she has traveled,
from the peaks of the mountains,
the long winding road crossing forests and villages.

And in front of her,
she sees an ocean so vast,
that to enter
there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.

But there is no other way.
The river can not go back.

Nobody can go back.
To go back is impossible in existence.

The river needs to take the risk
of entering the ocean
because only then will fear disappear,
because that’s where the river will know
it’s not about disappearing into the ocean,
but of becoming the ocean.

~ Khalil Gibran

04/20/2024

Pregnant people who take medications to assist their substance abuse recovery are often reported for child abuse and neglect under legal mandate. But in many hospitals, that’s changing.

04/01/2024

Be careful, you old farts! You can still catch STIs!

Story at a glance Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that cases of sexually transmitted diseases are skyrocketing among older Americans.   Some diseases have seen a …

03/30/2024

Happy National Doctors' Day!

03/26/2024

Here is my take FWIW:
Her "major abdominal surgery was likely a hysterectomy (TAH).
She does not have cervical squamous or (uterine) endometrial adenocarcinoma. Those are both easily diagnosed pre-op, by a competent Gyn.

I don't think it is ovarian either, because an ovarian mass would have been managed by minimally invasive surgery (laparoscopy) and a frozen section (pathology) would have been done if anything looked suspicious. (At least that is how I would manage it.) That would also be outpatient surgery, not requiring 2 weeks in the hospital.

So, if I were a betting person, I would vote for uterine sarcoma (leiomyosarcoma) which would only be picked up by the pathologist when s/he sectioned the uterus.
Hopefully it was small and seemed localized. They would have done extensive sectioning to confirm that.

But I would be interested in the opinions of my Gyn colleagues, as well as Dr. Glenn Hessel (a retired pathologist, who has seen plenty of uterine sarcomas).

I wish her the best with her chemotherapy and long may she reign as (eventual) Queen of England.

Kate announced on March 22 that she had been diagnosed with cancer following her abdominal surgery in January.

01/23/2024

If you have a provider you like, better hold on to them.
Some of you may already know that a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner in Ashe County is retiring in February. I am not sure who will fill that void.

In December, nearly 300,000 people in North Carolina finally got access to health insurance.Medicaid expanded statewide, providing life-saving health care to th

01/08/2024

I agree with Hobbes.

12/12/2023

Give your Doc a hug and say, "Get some rest"?

Doctors are suffering from increasing rates of burnout and depression, which is most prevalent among physicians in emergency medicine, internal medicine, and pediatrics.

10/04/2023

Maternal mortality rates in North Carolina are climbing at an alarming rate. The CDC reports that over just a two-year span, the number of women who have died within six weeks of giving birth doubled — jumping from 22 deaths per 100,000 births to a staggering 44. And the growing lack of access to ...

09/26/2023

My wife is a nurse and one of my daughters. The other is a physician.
I hope that some of my four grandsons continue the medical tradition. There is no greater calling IMO.