Mea sententia

I’m not sure where this came from. I found it among some notes and writing fragments. If someone can help me source it, I would love to add a citation. For now, it stands as a tribute to those who have gone before, and a nod to those yet to come…

First you can’t wait to grow up so you can move out. Then you move out and discover you have to grow up.

Then you can’t wait to be a couple so you can start a family, and suddenly you yearn for the days you did things your own way, without a thought.

It was our first summer in Maine, and we were feeling the pressure of time.

Before you decide about treatment, you should ask about NNT and NNH. These are numbers that can help you understand how likely the treatment is to help (or harm) you. They are easy to understand - though they can seem confusing to calculate. 

The model of the expert physician making decisions for a compliant patient and giving orders to obedient nurses and technicians is thankfully disappearing, being replaced by a patient-centered team approach. 

“Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution." 

 Clay Shirky

It’s Father’s Day. My Dad is gone, but not his impact. 

The need for autonomy is one of the most basic and powerful intrinsic motivators of human behavior. One sees this in the plaintive cry so often heard in institutions, large and small:  Why Wasn’t I Consulted (WWIC)?

We all tend to confuse probability with uncertainty.  We shouldn’t.

It happens at least once a week: a patient who equates natural with beneficial. 

Rudiger Dorbusch, a German economist who spent much of his career at MIT, famously said:

“Things always take longer to happen than you expect – but once they happen, events unfold more quickly than you’d ever have imagined.”