Dear Doctors: I run a lot and developed a growth on the knuckle of my second toe. It's hard, with a sharp point in the middle, and it hurts. I thought it was a callus, but my running coach says it's a corn. I thought only older people got those. Will it go away on its own?
DEAR HARRIETTE: I haven't felt confident enough to post a picture of myself on social media in a very long time, but I recently got my makeup done professionally for the first time, and I just had to share the pictures. This might not seem like a big deal to most, but it was major for me. I got a lot of love from friends and followers, and I was thrilled about it.
Notice how you never hear anybody talk about “the information superhighway” anymore? The creation of the internet marked a big advance in human ingenuity, yes. As a lifelong reader who feels claustrophobic in libraries, it’s been an enormous boon to my existence. I spend hours online every day.
•Here are a few reasons from the animal kingdom to avoid setting off fireworks for special events. In addition to making companion animals like dogs anxious and causing panic attacks, they can affect other types of wildlife as well. Bees get disoriented by the loud noise of fireworks and can't make it back to their hives. This often causes them to die. And birds have panic attacks as well, which can cause extreme distress to the point of large clusters of death. Skip the fireworks and look for other ways to celebrate.
DEAR HARRIETTE: An industry colleague passed away about a year ago. I expressed my sorrow at the time, and that was that. Now, though, I am beginning to feel real sadness about this man's death. While we were not close, he had an impact on my life. Little things have been happening recently that have brought him to mind. I wonder if I didn't allow myself to truly think about this man at the time of his death. I think I treated it pretty lightly. Now I am sad, but nobody really wants to talk about him anymore because so much time has gone by. How can I deal with my grief ? It feels real.–Delayed Grief DEAR DELAYED GRIEF: Feelings of grief emerge in their own time.
Dear Doctors: I need it to be completely dark to sleep well. I've got blackout curtains, I use an analog clock and I even duct-taped the digital lights on the smoke alarm. I just read that light at night is bad for your health. Is that true? I want my husband to know I'm not overreacting about this.
DEAR HARRIETTE: For the past few years, I have hung out with a small group of people in our sleepy summer community. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the group was really small for health purposes.
DEAR HARRIETTE: I have been partying pretty hard since the pandemic started. That's a good two years, maybe a little more if I'm totally honest. Partying means drinking, smoking,hanging out. For the most part, it hasn't been such a big deal. Sometimes I have gotten a little sick to my stomach, but then I pull back.