Historical Pallimed: January 2006

Now that Pallimed is embarking on the 5th calendar year of existence, we thought it would provide a good opportunity to look back at some of the older blog posts. This will be a monthly column and for the first month we will look at January of 2006. Back when it was at pallimed.blogspot.com. Back when the colors were blue and sea foam green. Back when Twitter did not exist (March 2006 for you trivia hounds). Back when the only people reading were Drew and me. Well to be honest I was doing most of the reading and Drew was doing most of the writing since he out-posted me 19 to 3.

So here are some highlights from Pallimed circa January 2006:

• The eternal question of the true understanding of a patient's wishes from the point of view of the surrogate was probably the best post of January 2006. Drew points out a few weaknesses but overall a good article for discussion among colleagues, and learners.
• Drew posted about diurnal variations in neuropathic pain which is more than just anecdote. So maybe there should be a reason to increase the nighttime dosing of pain meds?
• The annual BMJ 'humor' issue had a great study on coma prognosis in soap operas. Maybe one to stick to the ICU break room next time you are making rounds
• I come clean with my role in giving a pharma sponsored talk one time in Las Vegas. In fact it must have been weighing on my conscience since I posted on pharma influence twice in January 2006. So how much should pharma and drug reps incluence palliative care and hospice? Are we relatively insulated from it or should I enjoy my free steak dinner?
• Finding the simple way to an answer is great. Especially when the evidence supports the use. "Are you at peace?" Here is the proof.
• And my favorite title from January 2006 courtesy of Drew: "Breaking bad news; Multidisciplinary approach doesn't necessarily make cancer suck any less"
  

In addition to posting a few highlights from the month, I will be going back to add more labels/tags to each of the older posts so they will also show up in searches for any of our keywords here. You are welcome! And if you comment on any of those OLD OLD posts we still see the comments so they may be new to you so feel free to make your opinion heard.

And for those who would like to know what was going on in the rest of the world, Wikipedia oddly has an entry for January 2006.