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David Steensma, MD
@DavidSteensma
Hematologist-oncologist. @AjaxThx CMO. Former Edward P. Evans Chair in MDS @DanaFarber, @HarvardMed & @MayoClinic faculty, @NovartisScience hematology head.
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Joined August 2014
Posts
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    Since the number of #HematologyTweetstory threads has grown (these are about the intersection of history, etymology, science and clinical practice), I made an index so readers can find ones they are interested in:
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    Had a paper published last week in a good journal - then got an email from editor of a higher IF journal saying it was a great paper, next time we should send stuff like that to them - I pointed out we had actually first submitted that paper to his journal & it was rejected 🙄
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    I once met the daughter of a famous cardiologist. I said: that must have been an interesting home to grow up in. She looked sad and said, “The main thing I remember about my childhood is that my Dad was never around.”
    This Reddit post hit me hard.
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    Did you ever wonder why our marrow is located inside of our *bones*, #MedTwitter? There’s no a priori anatomical reason it should be sited there. Blood cells could form in our spleens & livers, as they do during our fetal lives; or elsewhere, as in some animals. Let’s discuss! /1
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    Weirdest use of #EMR: I prescribed a dog for a patient with anxiety. (Patient lives in public housing, so needed prescription.) Dog was beloved & helped greatly. Sadly, dog died in a fire. Patient asked for new dog at next visit. Clicked refill button on "One Dog" prescription.
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    DOGE @elonmusk approach feels like a surgeon trying to remove a small tumor using a saw instead of a scalpel, without pre-op imaging or taking a patient history, and also removing organs that aren’t diseased but that they just don’t like. And with med students doing the procedure
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    This is how the door switches are labeled in our garage. My longsuffering wife puts up with a lot
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    A few years ago a mentally ill man threatened to kill me after his wife’s complex karyotype secondary AML relapsed post allogeneic transplant. The days until he was apprehended and admitted to an inpatient psychiatric institution were one of the scariest times of my life./1
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    Aspirin continues to be the most widely used anti-platelet agent, 125 years after its synthesis. But where did it come from - and why do we give it in such weird doses (e.g. 81, 162 & 325 mg) – at least in the United States? #HematologyTweetstory 35 will answer these questions./1
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    Yesterday 3 patients I had cared for over years died, on the same day; 1 in the ICU, 2 at home under hospice care. The youngest was in her 20s. I was almost numb with grief last night thinking about all the lost potential, the children left behind, their collective suffering./1💔
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    #HematologyTweetstory 10: how did the 5 major #nucleobases get their names? This is slightly tangential to hematology, admittedly, but is a cool story that I’ve been aching to tell since I went through an intense etymology phase many years ago (still have lots of dusty books)./1
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    Replying to @DavidSteensma
    I feel like I should save the editorial email exchange and include it as Supplementary Material in the next manuscript submitted to that journal - add it as Supplementary Table 9Facepalm or Supplementary Figure 6GoodGrief
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    I covered the pager of a young female colleague this weekend & it was... eye-opening. First, she gets a lot of pages, some about stuff I wouldn't be called with. Second, *everyone* - ER, Admitting, lab, nurses - paged with her first name. I get "Hey David" sometimes, not always.
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    Nerdy confession: to remember what locker I’ve used at the gym, I only put my bag in lockers w/ numbers corresponding to #myeloid CD markers - 13, 33, 34, 117, 123. (Today: CKIT.) In a pinch, I’ll use a monocytic locker like 68. Once even those were full; I had to go T cell! 😬