Stock market is not working well for an oncologist/amateur investor

WSJ/Yahoo Finance:

"By day, Brian Abbott is a doctor at a cancer institute in Great Falls, Mont. In his off hours, he invests with borrowed money, shorts stocks and has taken a complex options position called a "short strangle" on wheat. Rather than protecting his $1 million or so in holdings, the 35-year-old physician says he left it vulnerable.

"Things that should have protected me weren't working," Dr. Abbott says of the market in recent weeks. "Everything was seeming to go down."

References:
Small Investors, Too, Get Nailed by Arcane Trades. Wall Street Journal, 08/2007.
When Bad Strategies Outperform. Seeking Alpha, 11/2007.
After a Devastating Trading Loss. TraderFeed, 11/2007.
Image source: Wikipedia, GNU Free Documentation License.

Related:
How Much Do You Save? The Happy Hospitalist, 01/2008.
How to become a stock broker. The Independent Urologist, 02/2008.

Updated: 01/24/2008

Available Online: Proceedings of Cleveland Clinic Perioperative Medicine Summit in CCJM

The Proceedings of the 3rd Annual Perioperative Medicine Summit at Cleveland Clinic are available online at the Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine (CCJM) web site. The access to all CCJM articles is free of charge.

The summit is one of the premier annual events in the field of perioperative medicine and has the strong support of the Department of Hospital Medicine. I have been involved as a faculty member since the beginning and launched the summit web site in May 2007 at PeriopMedicine.org. See the slide show from last year's summit below.



Cleveland Clinic has one of the busiest perioperative centers in the world - the Internal Medicine Preoperative Assessment Consultation and Treatment (IMPACT) Center has 13-15,000 patient visits per year.

My contributions to this year's proceedings include one article and 8 abstracts. Among the abstracts were Systematic Approach to Interpreting Electrocardiograms by Using Two Mnemonics and expanded versions of several of the perioperative cases in CKD.

References:
Proceedings of the 3rd Annual Perioperative Medicine Summit, Cleveland Clinic, September 10-12, 2007, CCJM.
A Systematic Approach to Reading Electrocardiograms by Using 2 Mnemonics. V. Dimov, Clinical Notes, 05/2001.
Preoperative Care of Patients with Kidney Disease. V. Dimov, Clinical Cases and Images, 05/30/2006.

How Do You Treat VIP Patients?

Medscape Roundtable Discussion: How Do You Treat VIP Patients? If a patient is a "very important person" (VIP), do you treat them differently?

The participants are 3 well-known medical bloggers: Robert Centor, Nicholas Genes, Graham Walker, and Theresa Polick, RN. There are some useful thoughts in the opinion pieces as well as in the open discussion at the end of the article.

I have treated several VIP patients and the most important thing to remember is to provide the usual care without cutting any corners. What often puts VIP patients in trouble is the false feeling that the usual rules do not apply to them, for example, let's take the shortcut and skip that routine chest X-ray prior to procedure x (put your choice of procedure here). This is never a good idea. I have read somewhere the story of a German (or Austrian) king who always insisted be admitted under a false name on a regular floor and not be given any special treatment. He was smart enough to know that was the best way to survive a hospital stay.

References:

How Do You Treat VIP Patients? Medscape Med Students, Roundtable Discussion, 07/17/2007.
Another Medscape roundtable. DB’s Medical Rants, 07/2007.
Image source: Dannyman, Flickr, a Creative Commons license.

Related reading:

Dennis Quaid’s Kids: Are VIPs Safer? Wachter's World, 11/2007.
I’ll take $67 million to go with that, please! Notes from Dr. RW, 02/2008.
From Personhood to Patienthood. Physician turned patient describes himself as P.I.P. - Previously Important Person. OUP, 2012.
Treating celebrity patients not all glitz and glamour. AMNews, 2009.
Caring for VIPs: 9 principles by a Cleveland Clinic team who should know all about it. CCJM, 2011.

Map your blog network with TouchGraph

This is the map of the web sites which are linked to/linked by CasesBlog.

You can create a map of your blog network with TouchGraph. There are several other options to replicate this effect listed by PR Thoughts.

References:
Explore web connections with TouchGraph Google Browser. Download Squad.
Link via ScienceRoll.

How to stay healthy while traveling

There are several useful tips by 60 IN 3 blog (whatever that means), including:

"Bring your gym gear—Most hotels do have a gym. It may be small and under equipped but it's still a gym. A simple workout doesn't have to involve much equipment. Pushups, situps, lunges, squats and other exercises can be done with just body weight."

This is a mnemonic for exercises that can be done with just body weight: PLSS

P ushups
S itups
L unges
S quats


Exercises that can be done with just body weight: PLSS.

And finally, what 60 IN 3 means (from About Me page):

"For those of you who are asking about the title of the page, 60 in 3 represents my progress as well as my philosophy. I started on my path to a healthy life style in the beginning of 2004. At the time, I weighed 280lbs. By the end of 2006 I was down to 220lbs. That’s 60lbs in 3 years. I have 30 more lbs to go which I’m hoping to lose over the next two years. It sounds a bit slow, but for me, it was just right. I made slow and gradual changes to my life rather than go on any sort of quick fix diet. I also realized that it wasn’t about being thin, it was about being healthy."

According to a study reviewed by Science Blog, daily brisk exercise reportedly decreases the risk of pemature death by 70%. The study found that “highly fit” men had half the risk of death compared to “low fit” men. For every 1-MET increase in exercise capacity, the risk for death from all causes was 13% lower.

If you need any more convincing, please see this "health promotion" video that clearly shows the benefits of exercise:

If you need any more convincing, please see this Thai Health Promotion Foundation video that clearly shows the benefits of exercise:




References:
Health on the run: How to stay healthy while traveling. 60 IN 3, Fitness For The Rest Of Us.
Conceptual Yoga mat triples as stereo, display. Engadget.com. 08/2007.
Five ways to stay fit on business trips. CNN, 2007.
Link via LifeHacker.com.
Image done with Bubbl.us mind maps.

Further reading:
15 Tips to Restart the Exercise Habit (and How to Keep It). LifeHacker.com.
An Enduring Measure of Fitness: The Simple Push-Up. NYTimes, 03/2008.
29 Exercises You Can Do At (Or Near) Your Desk. LifeHacker.com, 03/2008.
The Five-Minute Prison Workout Keeps You Fit in Any Space. LifeHacker, 03/2009.
Valsalva haemorrhagic retinopathy after push-ups. Lancer, 02/2011.