The Summit Situation on Everest

Traffic is a B—-! In the last couple of days over 200 people summitted the highest mountain in the world. Elaine Yu wrote about it in Wilderness Medicine Magazine, where many of the details from this post were first reported yesterday. That volume of climbers heading up and down the same fixed route means a bit of a traffic…

Wilderness Medicine Education is Alive and Well

Early this morning, I turned on the John Denver station on Pandora to keep me company and inspired as I caught up on life and emails and updated a talk on Wilderness Medicine (WM) I gave to medical students today. Reviewing the slides  for this “Overview of WM” took me on a sweet stroll down memory lane into how I landed in this wild niche of…

Whatever Happened to that NYC Doctor who Got Ebola?

Emergency Medicine residency training, an MPH from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and years of practicing medicine in Africa prior to the fall of 2014 prepared long-time Wilderness Medical Society (WMS) member Dr. Craig Spencer, to be part of the international emergency response to the Ebola outbreak in 2014. While we watched the epidemic…

Wild World

Outdoor Life in SoCal For the outdoor enthusiast, San Diego is arguably the greatest city in the U.S. Within San Diego County, you can hike up trails taking you above 5,000 ft elevation requiring snowshoes, and in the same day, take a sunset stand-up-paddleboard (SUP) or kayak in fairly temperate Pacific waters, finishing up with some fantastic grub fit…

Out of Africa

If it wasn’t there before, the past two weeks have brought Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) to the world’s center stage. Index cases from outside of West Africa occurred in Spain and the US. There is now transmission of disease outside of West Africa in exposed Healthcare Workers (HCW).

Barefoot in the Sand

Ocean breeze, 80’s and sunny, dogs playing in the surf, life doesn’t get any better. It’s all fun and games until someone steps on a Stingray. Or a rattlesnake. In the few short months I’ve been working in California, I’ve seen three patients present to the Emergency Department (ED) with rattlesnake bites – two envenomations. That’s three…