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Arghavan Salles, MD, PhD Profile picture
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2 Jan, 7 tweets, 2 min read
Can we all stop playing the suffering Olympics? You know this game. It’s the one where everyone fights with their friends to prove they have it worse than everyone else.

In a world full of suffering, no one wins this competition.

Empathy, on the other hand, may help us heal.
It goes like this:

Person A: I can’t believe I lost my job. I don’t know how I’m going to pay my rent.

Person B: Well, at least you’re still healthy. With my arthritis I can’t even work.

Often Person B goes on to explain how their suffering is more extreme/sad/awful.
This leaves Person A feeling invalidated when what Person A actually needed was some emotional support.

Person B is also struggling and in need of support. Rather than competing about who has it worse, maybe it’s “yes, and”?

YES, you are suffering. AND so am I.
If we can agree to that, then we can move forward and help each other. But as long as we’re trying to prove our situation is worse, we can’t make progress and get beyond our suffering. After all, we don’t want to stay in the suffering, do we? What does that gold medal get you?
So who’s in? Can we stop invalidating each other’s pain chasing the “most suffering human” award?
(I’m mainly thinking of this in an interpersonal, rather than cross-society perspective. I believe life is hard for everyone, but I also know some people (🙋🏻‍♀️) have more privilege bc of social class, race, gender, etc. I’m just talking about within our own social circles.)
It also plays out like this 😂

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More from @arghavan_salles

Arghavan Salles, MD, PhD Profile picture
9 Dec 20
The other day, as I was walking into the hospital, I saw that when someone shared one of my tweets as evidence of how real COVID is, another person said mine was a parody account. What, exactly, I was supposedly parodying, I don’t know.

THREAD
Here’s what happened that day. We evaluated a new patient early in the morning. He’s in his 80s, and he’s breathing between 40 and 50 times a minute. Try doing that—it’s barely more than a second per breath for both the inhalation AND exhalation.

2/
He says he feels fine and has no problems with his breathing. But looking at him huff and puff, trying to get oxygen into his lungs and carbon dioxide out of them, we know he’s not fine. And at his age, he can’t exert that much effort for long.

3/
Read 15 tweets
Arghavan Salles, MD, PhD Profile picture
23 Nov 20
This thread is based on conversations with doctors at 3 large metropolitan hospitals, all in the position to know what’s happening with their ICUs. Here are some important points that endanger the public’s health NOW in these and many other hospitals across the country.

1/
Even if hospitals are relatively empty prior to a #COVID19 surge, it is very challenging to manage the surge because of how sick the patients can be, how quickly they come in, and the high volume of deaths.

2/
If hospitals are already full prior to a COVID surge, it is not hyperbolic to say that more people will die. And in all 3 of these hospitals, that is the exact problem.

3/
Read 12 tweets
Arghavan Salles, MD, PhD Profile picture
12 Nov 20
There were plenty of obstacles to women’s careers before the pandemic. When schools went remote in the spring, it was theoretically possible that childcare would be distributed among genders. It is 2020, after all.

THREAD

1/
It didn’t take long for womxn to share their struggle to work from home without the support of childcare. Pieces like this one, from @500womensci, sounded the alarm about the negative impact this all would have on womxn’s careers.

blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/scienti…

2/
8 months after sheltering in place, anecdotes like this one from @GretchenTG are supported by data.

3/
Read 14 tweets
Arghavan Salles, MD, PhD Profile picture
8 Oct 20
It’s become clear to me that Trump/Pence don’t believe in/understand social science. How can we move toward a more just nation with leaders who deny the existence of the very issues that are tearing us apart?

1/
In the #VPDebate, Pence said it was insulting to suggest that law enforcement has implicit bias. That’s like saying it’s insulting to say that law enforcement officers have two eyes and a nose. These are facts. Along with our facial features, we all have implicit bias.

2/
That’s why it’s so insidious and problematic. Indeed, the Executive Order on stereotyping also reveals a complete lack of understanding of these issues.

whitehouse.gov/presidential-a…

3/
Read 9 tweets
Arghavan Salles, MD, PhD Profile picture
7 Oct 20
Given all that is going on in the world these days, many of you may have ideas for writing. Great! We need to hear more from healthcare workers. But, especially if you haven't done it before, you may have some questions about where to send your work.

THREAD 1/
In advance of my session with @drjessigold on writing (for @WIMSummit), I thought I'd address one of the most common questions I get asked. Usually it goes something like this: I've written about abc. Where can I publish it?

womeninmedicinesummit.org

2/
And the answer is: it depends. What is your intended audience? Is it a narrative? Is it academic? Is it making a persuasive argument?

3/
Read 16 tweets
Arghavan Salles, MD, PhD Profile picture
19 Aug 20
People are bustling around in the room, going from the computer to the counter to pick up supplies, to the patient or the IV pump to deliver meds. The ventilator is making the sounds of inhalation/exhalation, persistently pushing oxygen into the lungs & evacuating the CO2.

1/
There is a heart monitor that keeps alarming—a persistent ding, ding, ding--until one of the bustlers temporarily silences it. There is a continuous dialysis machine running, & blood fills up the tubing. The IV pole is overwhelmed due to the number of meds that are needed.

2/
The nurse brings in a second IV pole for additional meds. In the middle of all this activity is the patient. Everything we do in that room is to try to keep the patient alive. As the oxygen level goes low, the monitor alarms again.

3/
Read 13 tweets

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