Blast from the Past
Revisiting some of my favorite essays
While All Science Great & Small was technically launched in July 2022, it lay mostly dormant until six months ago today when I re-started regularly writing. Since then, my audience has grown from 19 subscribers (all friends and family) to thousands of readers a month, and the vast majority have probably never seen my earliest articles. So I wanted to take this opportunity to re-post three of my favorite essays from the very beginning.
Each of these is deeply personal. In “Back From the Dead,” I write about my first year of pathology residency and a dog that had a miraculous recovery after diagnosis. “Quitting Time” tells the story of why I decided to leave traditional small animal veterinary practice. “When Pathology Becomes Personal” is a meditation on the passing of both my cats last year.
I hope you enjoy reading these as much as I loved writing them.
— Eric
Back From the Dead
“The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.” — John 11:44 “Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.” ―John Milton, Paradise Lost Affliction Lazarus had an inauspicious start to his life: As a puppy, he was rescued from a meth house in central Alabama during a police drug bust. Animal control often worked with a local veterinary clinic that pitied the poor creature and took him in.
Quitting Time
My patient was dying. She lay on her side in the emergency triage area, hyperventilating as much as I was while I tried to figure out what was wrong. To go along with the rapid shallow breaths, the dog’s pulses were fast and weak, her blood pressure nearly unreadable, and her gums were pale. Giving multiple boluses of IV fluids did not help her. A blood gas confirmed what was obvious: the dog was not getting enough blood and oxygen to tissues throughout the body. Clearly, she was in shock, but why?
When Pathology Becomes Personal
Autopsies give us the facts but not the truth. — Richard Selzer, MD I. Anamnesis 1: a recalling to mind : REMINISCENCE 2: a preliminary case history of a medical or psychiatric patient This is my first post since last August. One of the main reasons I got thrown off track with this site was the death of both my cats in 2022—Phoenix in March, followed by Ezra at the end of August, one day after my birthday. Their passing, along with travel and other events in my personal and professional life, distracted me and gave me a case of writer’s block. For a long time it was hard enough just to talk about their lives and deaths with family and friends, let alone discuss it with strangers. Weighed down by loss, the idea of writing anything, especially an irreverent science blog, felt pointless and trivial. Now that some time has passed and I’ve been able to process the grief, I feel ready to share some thoughts about what their lives and illnesses meant to me as a pet owner, a veterinarian, and a pa…
Love that you quote Richard Selzer in one of your epigraphs. Such a powerful essayist. I've never taught his work, because I don't think it plays well with undergraduates. But if I ever have a chance to teach a medical humanities course to med students or a more diverse group of adults, I'll have to include Mortal Lessons or The Exact Location of the Soul.