Healthcare Blogger Code of Ethics

The next submission to the Healthcare Blogger Gallery is from the blog Suture for a Living.

Your Name
Ramona L Bates, MD

Name of Blog
Suture for a Living

Website
http://rlbatesmd.blogspot.com/

Description of Blog
A mixture surgery (medicine) and quilting (sewing) that I find interesting. Hopefully someone else will find something there.

Describe yourself
I am a plastic surgeon in Little Rock, AR. I may “suture for a living”, but I “live to sew”. When I can, I sew. These days most of my sewing is piecing quilts. I love the patterns and interplay of the fabric color. I would like to explore writing about medical/surgical topics as well as sewing/quilting topics. I will do my best to make sure both are represented accurately as I share with both colleagues and the general public.

Favorite Tags
Quilting, Surgery, Prevention

Why do you blog?
I am new to this (less than 3 months). Started as a way to explore and learn (computers, etc). I have found it to be a good review for me on many topics. I hope I have helped “clarify” or “inform” at least one person (other than myself). If not, I am enjoying “playing the part” of a writer.

Why should readers read your blog?
I’ve never been good at “selling myself”. I hope they will enjoy seeing the quilts I share with them. I hope that I can give them some information that will help them either stay healthy or work with their own doctor to get healthy.

Favorite Posts:

Bell’s Palsy

The picture to the right features the characteristic asymmetric smile of Bell’s Palsy caused by paralysis of one side of the face.

Five years ago I experience such a smile (and when really tired still do to a small extent). I woke up that Saturday morning and noticed that my tongue felt “thick” and my head ached, especially on the right side and mostly in my ear. Over the course of the day, I went on to loose the muscle function of my mouth on the right side, then the check, then the eyelid function, and last the forehead. I knew what it was. I had ruled out a stroke early on–no vision problems, no weakness in either arm or leg. The ascending facial paralysis cinched the diagnosis for me. Bell’s Palsy.

Read More

Blue Nude 1952

Let me share something lovely with you. Give you a break from the “not-so-pretty” skin changes. This is one of the first quilts I did for my office. It is a close “replica” of Henri Matisse’s Blue Nude 1952. My husband helped my “draft” the pattern. It is made of silk noire, appliqued, and then echo quilted by hand. I think that Mattisse would have made a wonderful quilt artist during his paper cutouts phase at the end of his life. Many of those remind me of quilts.

Henri-?mile-Beno?t Matisse was born on December 31, 1869, in Le Cateau-Cambr?sis, France. While recuperating from two major operations in 1941 and 1942, Matisse concentrated on a technique he had devised earlier: papiers d?coup?s (paper cutouts). Jazz, written and illustrated by Matisse, was published in 1947; the plates are stencil reproductions of paper cutouts. In 1948 he began the design for the decoration of Chapelle du Rosaire in Vence, which was completed and consecrated in 1951. In 1952 the Mus?e Matisse was inaugurated at the artist?s birthplace of Le Cateau?Cambr?sis. Matisse continued to make large paper cutouts, the last of which was a design for the rose window at Union Church of Pocantico Hills, New York. He died on November 3, 1954, in Nice.

(http://rlbatesmd.blogspot.com/2007/07/blue-nude-1952.html)

Reader Review:

I have been very glad to have Dr. Bates join the healthcare blogging community. She offers a very nice combination of medical and non-medical content. It is really fun for this non-quilting guy to see the amazing creativity some people can have with a needle. It only makes sense that a plastic surgeon (the most meticulous of surgeons) would be a quilter.

The medical blogging is excellent. She posts lots explanations of medical problems related to plastic surgery and does a very thorough job in doing so.

This too is a blog that I follow daily. Again, it is a blog that I Highly recommend.

Dr. Rob, Musings of a Distractible Mind.