Category: Common Child Illnesses
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If Your Child Needs an Inhaler… It’s Asthma. I Don’t Make the Rules
Asthma: the diagnosis nobody wants, so we dress it up, rename it, and pretend it’s something else. “Reactive airway disease.” “Bronchospasm.” “Bronchitis.” “My favorite: “He just has a little trouble breathing when he’s sick.”You know what all of that usually spells? Asthma. The word everyone is apparently allergic to. The Inhaler = Asthma Math: Here’s…
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The Ivory Tower Has Wi-Fi, Not Waiting Rooms: Meet America’s TV and Internet Medical Experts
Academic physicians can be brilliant. They train students and residents, run clinical trials, publish important research, and care for children with diseases so rare that a typical community pediatrician may never encounter one in an entire career. For those patients, academic medicine is not optional. It is lifesaving. But then a television producer needs a…
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Amoxicillin Is Cheap, Boring, and Right — Fight Me
Amoxicillin: The Beige Cardigan of Antibiotics (And Why That’s a Compliment) Every few weeks, a parent sits across from me, phone already open to a Facebook mommy group, and says some version of: “Can we just do the stronger antibiotic this time? Amoxicillin never seems to work.” I get it. Amoxicillin has the branding problem…
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Lactose Intolerance Is Not an Allergy, Just a Biochemical Tantrum
Lactose intolerance is one of those medical conditions that gets mangled almost immediately by the public. A child has gas after ice cream, and suddenly the family has declared a “dairy allergy,” as if the immune system has stormed the castle and launched a full-scale attack on cheddar. It hasn’t. Lactose intolerance is not an…
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Return the Diaper Cream. Keep the Diapers
The Unfiltered Pediatrician’s case against everything in that diaper caddy except the diapers. At every baby shower, someone shows up with an entire gift basket of diaper creams, balms, oils, and “soothing” ointments, and every new parent nods along like they’ve just been handed the secret to skin peace. I am here to ruin that…
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Every Other Kid Is Patient Zero, But Not Yours
A pediatrician’s unsentimental guide to daycare exclusion math I want to start by saying I understand. Truly. You have a job, a calendar full of meetings you cannot reschedule, and a toddler who woke up looking like they lost a fight with a garden hose. And I get the call, every single time, that goes…