Tagged: first aid

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Wild weekend planned? How to prevent and treat a scalding summer sunburn.

I have weirdly fond memories of my first sunburn experience. After spending an entire day at the community pool for Omeed’s 11th birthday (swimming, movies, and the first of many run-ins with the police), I woke with a strange pain in my back and shoulders. When I ran into Duy and Omeed at school the following week, I realized what the incredible pain in my shoulders was.

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When the deadliest catch is your own finger: how to remove a fish hook

Summer is upon us. So I thought this would be an appropriate post.

While some of you may not need this post, I suck at fishing. I am about as graceful casting with a fly rod as a bull in a china store. (Henry says no one has been to a china store since 1900. Maybe a bull in a Chihuly glass art exhibit is a more hip/modern metaphore?) Anyways, point is, I get a lot of fish hooks stuck in my hand.

If you can’t just pull the thing out (which sometimes you can), the problem is that the barb on the end of the hook is doing its job.

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Does this look infected?

Before becoming a doctor, I never knew so many people walked around every day wondering if some part of their body was infected. Ever since medical school, my family, friends, and (sometimes) strangers alike seem to want to show me their random, often disturbing body parts, and want to know if they have an infection.  Once a stranger in an elevator tore off his shirt to show me his recent surgical incision.