It Was Fun While It Lasted

Today is a sad day here at AskAnMD.

Doctor D was really excited about this new blog getting nominated for "Best Medical Weblog of 2009." Doctor D was doing his victory dance and playing "Eye of the Tiger" so loud the neighbors complained because he was totally gonna win that sucka.

Alas The Man over at Medgadget didn't think Doctor D's blog should be in the finals, thus all the AskAnMD fans that couldn't wait to vote it to victory were disenfranchised. Doctor D suspects The Man is dabbling in politics again since a lot of the finalist blogs in this category look like they were written by corporations or medical schools and are about as interesting as watching paint dry.

But never fear! The Man didn't totally succeed in exterminating personality in medblogging. Our dear friend Doctor Rob from Distractable Mind slipped into the finals!

So mosey on over there and vote for Dr. Rob early and often!

Is Doctor D encouraging you to vote more than once? Naw, you must have misunderstood that.

While you are over there be sure to support the beautiful work being done by WordDoc at Medical Moments in 55 Words for Best Literary Medical Weblog.

The real competition this year comes in Best Patient's Blog. Three of Doctor D's total favorites made the list: Queen of Optimism, ∞ itis, and RheumaBlog. Doctor D is so torn, because all those blogs are excellent! I might just have to vote for all of them.

Would Doctor D vote more than once? Of course not! You guys are totally misunderstanding me.

Have fun voting!

By the way, did you notice that Medgadged totally ignored medblogging nurses? WTF? Why is The Man always trying to hold the RNs down? Medical students too!

That's it! Doctor D has to set this right:

Tune in to this week's Friday Links to Vote for Doctor D's totally unofficial NurseBlog of the Year and MedStudentBlog of the Year awards!

Feel free to say sweet and comforting things in the comments to console Doctor D in his time of sorrow. Or you can just tell him to get over it and be a man, because its just some stupid contest and he isn't 8 years old!

The Year In Review (Friday Links)

Doctor D will take this first day of 2010 to reflect on this last year...

In May of 2009 a young physician decided to name his alter ego "Doctor D" and become a medblogger.

He hadn't even read medbloggers before, but he really wanted to frankly discuss health and medicine so he opened a blog and put up some random post asking people to send in questions to some anonymous MD who was willing to spill the beans.

Doctor D just ignored the blog for 3 months, expecting a readerless blog to magically generate interesting questions his email box.

In August Doctor D finally decided he really wanted to do this, so he started posting answers to random questions that popped into his head.

Thankfully, a blogger named Magda stumbled across Ask An MD and asked the first question: about finding a new doctor. D was so thrilled he answered it in a 4-part series.

Since then the questions have been rolling in!

Along the way Doctor D has met some really amazing people on the web. The first person to show D the medblogging ropes was WarmSocks. She blogs about her experience as a patient and she explained to Doctor D how to make a blog like this helpful to people navagating the healthcare system. Later D met other cool patient-bloggers like Neo-Conduit, Queen, Wren, Helen, who really are must-reads for medical folk who want to understand the suffering and strength of a lot of the patients we care for every day.

Doctor D also wants to thank the inspiring patients he has met over email. Many readers don't have blogs, but have shared their experiences with him. D wishes the whole world could hear your stories.

Nurse K was the first and still the awesomest medical-worker blogger to welcome Doctor D to the net! Even though her ER blog is now on hiatus K has always been D's webcrush and he still reads her twitter religiously. Ask An MD has also been visited by such great medical bloggers as Nurse Maha, Nurse Lee, Doctor Rob, Ell the med student, and the hilarious Dr. Grumpy.

So Doctor D has met some very cool people, answered a lot of questions, and had a lot of fun. Ask An MD is getting hundreds of visitors each day and it's really only a few months old. Keep those questions coming!

Thank you all for a great 2009!

So what do you think? What have you liked and disliked about the blog this year? What direction do you think Doctor D should take the blog in 2010? What sorts of questions do you think Doctor D should be selecting from the mail bag in 2010?

Blogging Fatigue (Friday Links)

Blogging can be an exhausting thing~ Doctor D is pretty familiar with exhaustion these days between doctoring, husbanding, fathering, and blogging.

Don't worry, this isn't one of those hiatus posts. AskAnMD is still going strong, but one of the web's favorite medbloggers Dr. Rob decided to throw in the towel this week. He was always an interesting read and will be much missed. Also D will now never be able to figure out that dudes odd obsession with lamas.

Blogs don't last forever, although there is always the hope Rob's blog will have a resurrection like Nurse K's and Ella the Med Student's have.

Fortunately amazing new bloggers are always appearing:

The new link this week is Medical Moments in 55 words! Word Doc is an internist who tells medical stories in short 55 word posts. The stories are both funny and poignant, and best of all they take less than a minute to read. So go check out Word Doc. Doctor D guarantees you won't be disappointed!

I'm really impressed with the brevity of Word Doc's posts. The shortness doesn't take any power at all from her stories. Should Doctor D try to answer your questions in 55 words for a while?

Should I Have My PSA Checked? (Friday Links)

Okay so no one sent in this question, but a lot of people have asked Doctor D over the years.

Doctor D is using this question to introduce a new feature of "Ask An MD" Friday Links! There are a lot of great medical blogs by patients, doctors, nurses, and med students , so each Friday Doctor D is going to share some interesting reading from the medical blogsphere with you. I'm still answering a couple reader questions each week so keep emailing them in.

Should I have my PSA checked?

Tricky question! Unfortunately the answer isn't as simple as "Yes" or "No" and there are a lot complicated issues in healthcare tied into the controversy surrounding this simple blood test.

Doctor D wouldn't be brave enough to tackle that question, but Doctor Rob (at Musings Of A Distractable Mind) wrote a fascinating piece on the business of prostate care. The debate in the comments is where it really gets interesting.

Read it Here: An Intuitive Reasoning For Rising Health Care Costs

On a side note: It is a sad day for the medical blogsphere. Nurse K has temporarily closed her blog. She says this is a temporary hiatus. Hopefully she will be back soon, but you can still get a taste of her thoughts on Twitter. Nurse K is the funniest, toughest, most wise-ass ER Nurse on the planet and her blog was always a joy to read. I'm sure the Happy Hospitalist will cry himself to sleep every night until Nurse K is back.

Did you read (or write) a great medical blogging this week? Post the links in the comments!