A Country Doctor Writes:

Pain and suffering are warning signals that something has gone wrong. We can alleviate them to a degree, but so far, none of these treatments have brought back health.
— Read on www.kevinmd.com/blog/2020/06/theres-a-code-for-pain-but-whats-the-code-for-suffering.html

CONDITIONS – Diseases and Other Life Circumstances is the first in a series of books based on this blog. The eBook is available for preorder with a release date of 7/4/20 and I expect the paperback edition to be available around that time. Here’s the blurb about it on Amazon:

“A hundred short essays on diagnoses made, missed or just encountered and some of the human circumstances, destinies, tragedies and victories a country doctor has encountered during 40 years in Family Medicine.

Based on his blog A Country Doctor Writes, these vignettes by Swedish born physician Hans Duvefelt range from Alexithymia to what doctors call Zebras, exotic conditions they always look for but usually never encounter.

From delivering babies to attending timely and untimely deaths, they touch on many stages of life. Some pieces describe overlooked diseases and disease mechanisms and some describe heart rending life circumstances caused by both rare and common diseases.”

(Click cover image to link to book listing)

EARLY PRAISE:

“Hans is a wonderful storyteller. As a primary care physician myself, I look up to the wisdom, insight, and inspiration that resonate from his stories.”

(Kevin Pho, MD, Founder, KevinMD, Keynote physician speaker)

“Whether you are a college student or a medical student considering a career as a Family Physician or if you are a resident looking to learn from a master clinician or someone who enjoys stories from the world of practice, this book is for you.”

(Laurence Bauer, MSW, MEd, CEO Family Medicine Education Consortium)

“Hans is a great writer. His pieces capture the essence of being a Family Doctor in a small town.”

(Zoya Khan, Editor-In-Chief, The Health Care Blog)

Like so many other things in the new reality we find ourselves in, what constitutes a proper medical visit has suddenly changed and will probably continue to evolve.

We have all heard that 90% of the time, a patient’s history provides the diagnosis before we even perform a physical exam or order any tests. At the same time, much of our reimbursement used to hinge on how many body systems we examined.

As so many other things in the new reality we find ourselves in, what constitutes a proper medical visit has suddenly changed and will probably continue to

I suspect, and hope, that the way we have now tried to work will bring a lasting shift in how we view the process, and the art, of medical diagnosis.

— Read on www.kevinmd.com/blog/2020/05/will-telemedicine-make-us-better-diagnosticians.html

From the vantage point of our self isolated shrunken universes, we cannot see even the immediate future, let alone what our personal and professional lives will look like some years from now.
— Read on thehealthcareblog.com/blog/2020/05/22/the-new-normal-is-still-unknown-on-earth-as-it-is-in-healthcare/

As the twelve year anniversary of “A Country Doctor Writes” has now passed, I have made the decision to conclude this chapter in my life. There are many more ideas I could put in words, and perhaps I will – in some format and venue – but the regular dispatches from the life of a country doctor have served their purpose for me.

I started writing during a time of internal doubt about where medicine was taking me. Writing helped me get some of the frustrations I experienced off my chest and allowed me to move past them. It also helped me refocus on the deep, almost spiritual, rewards doctoring continued to bring me, sometimes when I least expected it.

Over the years I have maintained that polarity, trying to illustrate both the silliness, what I call Metamedicine, and the profound satisfaction of being a doctor. My statistics have strongly favored the polemical posts and I sometimes fancied myself as a consistent voice of reason in a crazy environment.

But as I look forward to the remaining years of my life and career, I want to live even more in the moment as I described in the last segment of my previous blog post.

(Here I am, unpacking boxes, mending fences, cleaning stalls, reorganizing closets and cupboards; life is happening in a humble red farmhouse with peeling paint and a sagging front porch. It feels a lot like moving out to camp every summer when I was a young boy, before I started to think I had to be a knight and a dragon slayer…

To quote James Taylor, not for the first time:

“The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time. Any fool can do it. There ain’t nothing to it.”)

A more or less regular publishing schedule, I realized in these past few weeks, no longer fits with who I am, or have become. I’m sure I will never stop writing, but I will do it at my own pace and I will make sure that it doesn’t in any way get in the way of what is happening in my real, non-literary, life.

When my occasional writing is published elsewhere, I will post excerpts and links here.

In the coming months I will also put together a book or two of collected stories, based on my 650+ blog posts, and I will announce them here for my small number of faithful subscribers.

After that, who knows, life will happen. I will live in the moment, quietly enjoying the passage of time.

Thank you for reading.

Hans Duvefelt, MD