Category Archives: Life

Please Make It Stop (Plus One)

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Personal pet peeve: I receive so many unwanted promotional materials from pediatric hospitals and pediatric gastroenterology divisions from across the country. This is such a waste of paper and effort. Presumably, this is an endeavor to raise the profile of these institutions and programs.

If anyone reading this blog has any role in this, please stop sending this crap and only send this material to alumni or those that request (opt-in) it.

From AGA Today:

Good News Stories

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In this past Sunday print edition, it was nice to see the following articles:

AJC 4/18/24: Atlanta’s ‘Magnet Man’ may have saved you from a flat tire

“Alex Benigno, 45, has spent the past 10 months riding his ElliptiGO stand up bike around town, picking up nails, screws and other little annoying things that cost drivers tons of money.” Now he has picked up more than 280 pounds of metal off the street.

AJC 4/13/24: Atlanta consumer guru Clark Howard reflects on 100th Habitat for Humanity home

“Clark Howard gets a hug from his son Grant Howard before the start of the Atlanta Habitat for Humanity dedication of the 98, 99, and 100th Howard’s sponsored homes in Atlanta on Saturday, April 13, 2024.”

AJC (originally in Chattanooga Times Free Press): Chattanooga teacher hauls shower truck to homeless hot spots

My take: Recently, one of my patients who had been neglected was being taken care of by elderly couple. In addition to this infant, this couple had helped about 80 children over several decades. Everyday I see people who are making this world a better place -not all of them are in the news. It really is an inspiration.

Thank You Stan

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After 43 years, Stan Cohen is retiring. He deserves enormous credit for the successes of our group and I wanted to highlight some of his many accomplishments and innovations.

Clinical care:

  • I am certain Stan has seen more kids with GI problems than any physician in the State of Georgia (possibly the entire country). He is well-known for his dedication and caring. Areas of special expertise include children with inflammatory bowel disease and children with special needs

Publications/Research:

  • In addition to his numerous scientific articles and book chapters, Dr. Cohen edited two textbooks for physicians and wrote two books for parents: 1. Healthy Babies, Happy Kids: a Common Sense Guide to Nutrition for Growing Years. 2. What to Feed Your Baby
  • Stan has participated in a lot of clinical research projects. Some notable publications include pioneering the use of the patency capsule for capsule endoscopy, developing a scoring system for capsule endoscopy, and the first prospective study of a specific diet for IBD

Service:

  • He was the founding chairman of the Committee on Nutrition for the Georgia Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and chairman of the Physicians Advisory Board of The Georgia WIC Program. In this role, he developed a cost-sensitive, evidence-based algorithm to assist health care providers select the appropriate infant formula for infants with various problems. It is estimated that this saved the state of Georgia 56 million dollars
  • Nutrition4Kids.com and the Nutrition4Kids Foundation were established by Dr. Cohen (with the help of his son David and Mark Lorimer) to provide medically curated educational content for parents and providers
  • Stan has lectured extensively at local, national and international medical conferences
  • He provided critical input in El Salvador during its civil war to lower infant mortality

Recognition:

  • Premier Physician of the Crohns and Colitis Foundation of Georgia (1995)
  • Turner Broadcasting featured Dr Cohen in 2001 as one of Atlanta’s “Super 17” for his contributions to the community and specifically for his role in starting Camp Colitiscope (now Camp Oasis)
  • Honored by the Atlanta Alliance on Developmental Disabilities for his work on feeding and nutrition for children with neurodevelopmental delays
  • Lay Education Award from the American Academy of Pediatrics for his work promoting a school curriculum to teach and promote non-abusive behaviors which was used in Fulton County and later adopted by other school systems in the country, the state of Hawaii and maternal child health programs
  • He is also a recipient of The Natasha Trethewey Poetry Prize. His poems have been included in various poetry journals. Additionally, several of his poems have been published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, while others are archived and available audibly on TheArtSection website.  

Stan has many interests outside medicine. He has always had an interest in artwork, good eating, corny jokes, and his family. I am so grateful to Stan for helping to develop our GI group, for his service to children/families, his advice, his friendship and even most of his jokes.

Understanding Success and Failure

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NPR (5/1/23): Why an NBA star’s response to a reporter’s question about losing hit a nerve

Some excerpts:

Antetokounmpo, after being asked if he considered the past season a failure:

Do you get a promotion every year at your job? No, right? So every year, your work is a failure? No. Every year, you work towards something, which is a goal: It’s to get a promotion, to be able to take care of your family, provide a house for them, or take care of your parents. It’s not a failure, it’s steps to success. There’s always steps to it. Michael Jordan played for 15 years and won 6 championships. The other 9 years were a failure? That’s what you’re telling me.

There’s no failure in sports. There’s good days, bad days, some days you are able to be successful, some days you’re not, some days it’s your turn, some days it’s not your turn. That’s what sport’s about. You don’t always win, some other people are gonna win. And this year, someone else is gonna win. Simple as that. 

So 50 years from 1971-2021 that we didn’t win a championship, it was 50 years of failure? No it was not, there were steps to it, and we were able to win one, hopefully we can win another one.

Real Madrid manager Carlo Ancelotti’s reaction:

What Antetokounmpo said was fantastic … Failure is when you don’t try to do something as well as you can. When you try to do your best, you have a clear conscience, and that’s never a failure, not just in sport but in life.

My take: I like Giannis’ response so much (there’s a 2 minute video at the link). His sentiments align with my beliefs. If/when I work hard, this often leads to good outcomes. However, even if the outcome is not what I wanted, I have no regrets.

“When You Reach for the Stars You May Not Quite Get One, But You Won’t Come Up With a Handful of Mud Either” – Leo Burnett