“There is a double in 3 and a triple in 4, and I think all five have COVID”. Translated from medical office lingo to English it means: there is a car with two sick kids waiting for me in parking spot number 3, and another with three siblings in parking spot number 4. And in 20 minutes we find out that they do indeed all have COVID.
Since the beginning of COVID era we see sick patients in the cars in the parking lot. The well visits are still seen inside, in our office on the second floor. This way we somewhat reduce the risk of spreading the virus from the sick to the well patients. To further reduce the [Continue reading…]
Former Providence Hospital Southfield breastfeeding clinic team (2017). Left to right: Jennifer Chivas RN, BSN, IBCLC; Anna Strumba MD, FAAP, IBCLC; LaFreda J. Jones CST, CLC; Holly Collins RN, LCCE, IBCLC. Both Providence Park Novi and Providence Southfield hospitals permanently closed their breastfeeding clinics in March 2018.
With a heavy heart I must announce that I can no longer provide lactation specialist consults to mothers whose babies are not WBP patients. As you might know, both Providence Park Novi hospital and Providence Southfield hospital permanently closed their breastfeeding clinics back in 2018. Since then, I moved my breastfeeding practice to WB Pediatrics in Novi; however, I can only serve WBP’s patients. I am very sorry, but the only way [Continue reading…]
Children can not be cared for as “small adults”. The best specialist to take care of your child’s sickness is a Pediatrician: a doctor who, upon completion of a Medical School, spent three more years at a rigorous Pediatric Residency training program, learning about caring for infants, children and adolescents. Unfortunately, very few urgent care clinics in our area have an American Board of Pediatrics-certified Pediatrician on staff. What can you do?
Have a plan. Research the local urgent care clinics well in advance and identify the one that you are comfortable with, the one that specializes in pediatric care and has certified Pediatricians on board. Before heading to an ER or urgent care, call your primary pediatrician to [Continue reading…]
Young parents brought their son to my clinic on Saturday. The boy’s test for influenza came out positive. How the dad reacts is priceless. [Continue reading…]
The patient was a seven-year-old boy, who came to see me with his mom. She said that he complained of sore throat two days prior and was “spitting up” the “phlegm”. She denied any fever, cough or vomiting up food. She was concerned that her son was not able to eat or drink anything for past two days. The boy was seen on the previous day by a different doctor who examined him and took a throat swab, which showed no strep. During our conversation the boy was sitting on the exam table with a paper cup constantly spitting his saliva in it. He was not coughing and did not appear to be in pain. It looked like he was not [Continue reading…]
A joke goes: “Mothers of teenagers know why some animals eat their young.” But all the jokes apart, raising a teenager can be a stressful and psychologically draining experience. I know it first hand. I am in no way an expert on this matter, just want to share some thoughts.
In some way having a child between the age of 12 and 16 is alike to having a newborn. They keep you up at night, you are worried for their well-being at every moment and you feel exhausted. The difference between taking care of a baby and raising a teen is that with newborns, though they are fragile creatures, a lot is in your power to [Continue reading…]
A 20 month old boy presented in my office with a chief complaint of refusing to fall asleep in his crib. The parents said that whenever they put him in his bed and try to leave the room, he starts screaming until he works himself up to the point of vomiting. They heard many different suggestions from family, friends and their former pediatrician on how to handle the situation, and tried them all: from taking their child out of the crib after every sound he made to not coming into his room and letting him cry. Neither approach worked. By the time they they came to my office, their son was spending every night in their bed and the parents [Continue reading…]
It’s the second year in a row that Anna Strumba MD, a West Bloomfield/ Novi pediatrician and lactation consultant, has been recognized as one of America’s Most Compassionate Doctors. The award is based on patients’ reviews. “While physicians generally receive positive feedback from their patients, only a select few receive praise about the compassion that accompanied their care… Of the nation’s 720,000 active physicians, less than 3% were accorded this honor by their patients in 2011,” Vitals.com, who tabulates this award, says.
We started displaying ads on this site. Running a website costs money, all coming from my family’s budget. I am not reimbursed for these expenses by my employer or anybody else. One way to offset the costs is to display paid ads on the site, so the ads are here to stay.
Hopefully, those ads promote legitimate, quality products of interest to you. The ads are “context sensitive” and should be generally relevant to the topics I cover in my posts (kids health, breastfeeding, parenting, family, etc.) and to the audience of this site (to you, new and [Continue reading…]
One may wonder, “why would a doctor want to become a lactation consultant?” In my work as a pediatrician I frequently have to take care of the babies that are breastfed. In fact, in most situations that means to take care of both: baby and mother. For the baby to be growing and thriving, the mother has to know how to latch and nurse in [Continue reading…]
