HIV and ID Observations

Last week, I wrote something I really wanted my long-time friend and colleague, Susan Larrabee, to read. Susan is the HIV social worker-extraordinaire I’ve been working with for a million years, give or take a few.

The piece covered how rewarding it is to care for people with HIV. If anyone could affirm that view, it’s Susan. She’s the kind of cherished colleague who provides an instant antidote to burnout. If you’re working with someone like that, lucky you!

But here’s how our conversation went when I popped into her office looking for her approval:

Me (hopefully):  So what did you think of that piece?
Susan:  What piece?
Me (trying to hide my disappointment):  The one I wrote on my blog — you know, on caring for people with HIV. Thought you’d really enjoy it.
Susan: Didn’t see it. And I was wondering — why did you stop writing your blog? Too busy?
Me (annoyed):  @#$%&!

(Those punctuation marks, by the way, are called a grawlix — used to represent expletives or swearing in comic strips. Now you know.)

The reason Susan thought I’d stopped writing the blog is because we’re having technical issues here at NEJM Journal Watch. Our reader email notifications aren’t reliably going out when there’s a new post. For some of you, that’s the only way you know when there’s something written here.

For example, Susan. For all her brilliance regarding human emotions and motivational interviewing techniques, she would be the first to admit she’s technically challenged. She is as likely to subscribe to an RSS feed as she is to hack the operating system on someone’s Tesla. She might not even know that a Tesla has an operating system.

(“What’s a Tesla?”, asks Susan.)

I feel bad about this problem of ours, since those of you who signed up for the email notifications took the time to do so — I’m very grateful to you for that.

But rest assured our technical team at NEJM Journal Watch is working behind the scenes to try and fix this “bug” — which, though not literally infectious, is at least non-communicable.

So thanks for bearing with us while we try to figure out what’s going on.

In the meantime, here are few other ways to be notified of the new posts:

• Follow me on Twitter (@PaulSaxMD) You’ll get notification about all the posts that appear here, plus bonus information about ID, medicine in general, baseball, and dogs, among other critical topics. Making fun of #predatoryjournals is particularly fun on Twitter.
• Follow NEJM Journal Watch on Facebook
• Sign up for the Physicians First Watch daily newsletter — you should do that anyway, it’s great!

And here are two dogs who aren’t quite so sure about becoming vegetarians: