Archive Posts

Upstate clinical nurse specialist Ann Hendrickson, RN, BSN, cares for medical/surgical, geriatrics, and oncology patients at Upstate.  She shares the results of a study she conducted for her masters capstone project at Upstate’s College of Nursing (CON), concluding that patients who get up out of bed and walk daily improved their recovery and decreased their length of hospital stay.  Hendrickson won second prize for her poster titled, ‘Developing and Implementing an Evidenced Based Nurse-Driven Mobility Protocol’, at the national conference of the National Association of Clinical Nurse Specialists. She is the first student at the CON to win this national award, and the protocol she developed is being adopted throughout the hospital.

Upstate’s Chair of Neurosurgery Lawrence Chin, MD talks about the diagnosis and treatment of trigeminal neuralgia (TN), a chronic pain condition that affects the trigeminal or 5th cranial nerve, one of the largest nerves in the head.  Learn more about the Upstate Gamma Knife Center.

2003 Upstate College of Medicine graduate Patrick Basile, MD, describes a remarkable 13-hour double arm transplant he performed, as part of a large team, on an infantryman who lost all four limbs in Iraq. Dr. Basile is the assistant chief of plastic surgery and director of microsurgery at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.  Read more about Dr. Basile at What’s Up At Upstate blog, read the story: Staten Island soldier and double-arm transplant recipient Brendan Marrocco prepares to leave hospital

Deirdre Neilen, PhD shares a selection from Upstate’s literary journal, ‘The Healing Muse‘ every Sunday on HealthLink on Air. She edits the annual publication featuring fiction, poetry, essays and visual art focused on themes of medicine, illness, disability and healing.

Order copies of ‘The Healing Muse’ through the Center for Bioethics & Humanities.

Snow, by Katharyn Howd Machan

falls outside my safe brown home
and I am weeping, I am crying:
this house holds two black-striped cats
but God is a distant palace of whim

allowing my daughter to long for a drug
that turns her into thin gray smoke,
vague lips that lie for survival.
Crystals? They’re blowing now

swift and silver and silent as hope
only a mother can ask to find
when the body she’s birthed and loves
finds heroin is more important

than giving to the wider world
calling out her name. Snow
beautiful and bright and pure
pours down from a streetlit night

here where I dare write a poem
praying that the girl I bore
is able to look out through a window
and wonder at winter sky.

Things My Daughter Lost in Hospitals, by Toni L. Wilkes

One million twenty-seven strands of hair.
A smooth scalp. Several inches of frontal bone.

A Tiffany bracelet. Thirty-nine liters of urine.
The call button. Her patience. A pear-shaped

Gallbladder. Her husband’s patience. Eight pints
of blood. Numerous stainless steel staples.

Her job. One decaliter of cerebral spinal fluid.
Two blue and white hospital gowns. Her pink

sweater. The ability to have more children.
Twenty-two pieces of Big Red chewing gum.

Forty-one days of consciousness. Names
of night nurses. Names of day nurses. Six

Actiq lollypops. Seven neurosurgeons.
Two hundred eighteen sutures. Her daughter’s

sixth birthday. The desire for sex. Three yellow
bedpans. Her blood-brain barrier. Five years.

Upstate ophthalmologist Anthony Andrews, MD, describes a newly-approved retinal implant for adults with rare genetic eye disease, including retinitis pigmentosa and age-related macular degeneration.  
Read What’s Up At Upstate blog: Eye specialist at Upstate hopes to offer artificial retina surgery
Read: FDA news release about retinal implant
Read: FDA overview of Argus II retinal prosthesis system 
Read/watch: YNN coverage of Argus II

Weight loss surgeon Howard Simon, MD, gives us an update on Upstate’s bariatric surgery program, and looks closely at how effective a popular weight loss procedure really is.  Simon is the director of The Central New York Bariatric Surgery Center (CNYBSC). who looks closely at how effective a popular weight loss procedure really is.

Dr. Derek Cooney, director of emergency medical services and disaster medicine at Upstate, is joined by orthopedic surgeon Dr. William Lavelle, to present another edition of ‘What’s Your Emergency?’ addressing neck and back injuries – potential causes and conditions, symptoms, and when to seek emergency care.

Upstate surgeons David Halleran and Jiri Bem are joined by Linda Veit, special projects manager at the Upstate Cancer Center, to talk about colorectal cancer and the importance of the colonoscopy as a screening tool. The also discuss a study they are involved in to determine what biomarkers might be used to predict/detect colon cancer — perhaps in lieu of a colonoscopy in the future.  For more information, or to participate in the study, call 315-464-1852.

Onondaga County Cancer Services Program on Facebook

Read the study: Study of Biomarkers for Early Detection of Colorectal Adenocarcinoma in Adults Undergoing Colonoscopy

Upstate trauma surgeon Dr. Fahd Ali too often sees the results of violence in our community.  He suggests that those violent behaviors are just a symptom of the underlying problems that face our society today, including mental health issues and video games and movies that desensitize and glamorize violence.  Dr. Ali has established a program within the correctional system that works to educate youthful offenders before it’s too late to turn their lives around.

2003 Upstate College of Medicine graduate Dr. Patrick Basile describes a remarkable 13-hour double arm transplant he performed, as part of a large team, on an infantryman who lost all four limbs in Iraq. Dr. Basile, who is the assistant chief of plastic surgery and director of microsurgery at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, was on campus to address the Upstate medical community.

Psychiatrist Brian Johnson talks about failed back surgery syndrome, a very generalized term that is often used to describe the condition of patients who have not had a successful result with back surgery or spine surgery and have experienced continued pain after surgery.  Dr. Johnson is currently recruiting patients for a new research study for patients who meet this criteria. For more information or to participate in the study, call 315-464-3130 or email johnsopa@upstate.edu.

Distinguished professor Patricia J. Numann, MD, FACS reflects on her career as a pioneering female surgeon, and shares her insights about how medicine has changed since she was in medical school up to today; and what medicine has taught her.  Dr. Numann was also installed as the 92nd president of the American College of Surgeons in October during the opening of its Clinical Congress in San Francisco.

Pioneering woman surgeon to receive honorary degree at Commencement