Author: John Ingram Walker, MD

Nurses provide the foundation for excellent medical care. Nurses spend 8-12 hour shifts with their hospitalized patients. Doctors see their patients for 15 minutes or so each day. Good doctors

After recently escaping mayhem in an emergency room encounter, I began a search for a health care survival manual. Luckily I found one, The Patient’s Playbook by Leslie D. Michelson.

The online Berkeley Wellness Newsletter from the University of California covers nutrition, fitness, emotional health, community harmony, and self care. A recent edition covered the science of happiness the key

I scheduled a routine colonoscopy at the New River Valley Outpatient Surgical Center in Christiansburg, Virginia. Walking to the entrance I became faint. Only grasping the door handle and dropping

My funeral looms on the near horizon. I’m 71. The United States male life expectancy from birth is 76. If I move to Minnesota I’d live another 2 ½ years

We all have secrets in our hearts. I’ll tell you one of mine. I have struggled with the idea that with enough resolve I could take complete charge of my

A mist. That’s all. Then a few drops of rain. With a few more, a light rain falls. Add more and more drops. A downpour. Then a torrential rain. Dry

I woke-up feeling sad today. Not depressed. Not blue really. Not tearful. Perhaps downhearted…or melancholy might be a better word for the way I am feeling. Then I thought of

Sometimes I tell people, “I’m a redneck Texan with a very thin veneer of culture.”  I especially use this self-deprecating remark with stuffy people, the pompous, the high and the

I’m a semi-perfectionist. I should on myself a lot as in I should read more. I’m a must-tard like I must be the best psychiatrist in Blacksburg. (I am. I’m

The overwork trap weaves its tangled web insidi­ously. We have so much to do we can’t seem to get it all done. We get busier and busier and we fail