Monica Kidd

An unusual presentation of a swollen arm: a case report

IntroductionSubclavian vein thrombosis is a rare but potentially fatal condition that most often occurs iatrogenically or in the context of malignancy. Here we report the case of an active, healthy 32-year-old woman who presented with subtle findings of arm pain, paresthesias and skin changes of acute onset and was subsequently diagnosed with upper extremity deep vein thrombosis and subclavian stenosis, and was started on a course of oral antithrombotics.Case presentationA 32-year-old right-handed Caucasian woman presented to her family medicine clinic with left shoulder pain and numbness along her ipsilateral forearm and hand, as well as subtle swelling of the affected limb. Initially diagnosed with medial epicondylitis, she was later diagnosed with subclavian thrombosis caused by Paget–Schröetter syndrome.ConclusionPresentations such as these are often attributable to soft-tissue injuries that resolve with rest and sometimes physiotherapy. Subclavian thrombosis was a highly unexpected diagnosis in this case; however, family physicians must remain vigilant in considering rare causes of common clinical presentations which could cause patients significant morbidity if left undiagnosed.

Back to the Future in Alberta

When I was in training, I vowed that if I ever wrote a memoir — I won’t — it would be called Just a Family Doctor . As in the question everyone seemed to ask back then: “Are you going to be a specialist, or just a family doctor?” The year I started medical school, less than a quarter of

What happened to you

![Figure][1] There’s a bench near the train stop by my house where a man often sits. On days when he seems to be in a good mood, he uses a dinosaur hand puppet to say hello, and maybe ask for food or money. He’s thin and permanently sunburned, and the lines around his otherwise young-

Enjoy every sandwich

![Figure][1] Someone in my family was recently diagnosed with metastatic cancer. It all came as a surprise, as these things do. As I write this, our family is doing our best to figure out what it means and, as the only medical person in the family, I am trying to walk the delicate line

Grace in impossible places

![Figure][1] On a Tuesday not so long ago, I was driving to work and heard a piece of radio that made me park the car and continue to listen until I risked becoming unfashionably late for clinic. It was an interview on CBC’s The Current (Mar. 14, 2017) with a woman whose father was murdered

“I didn’t know I needed a poet”

![Figure][1] I recently said goodbye to a clinic I had been at for five years. It was an odd experience, because during my family medicine training in Newfoundland and Labrador I aspired to deliver babies of babies I’d delivered. (Though my mentor would have slapped my wrists just then,

The writer is in

Not too long ago I was in Ottawa doing some work for the Canada Council for the Arts. At the end of the meeting, the program director asked the three of us in attendance — writers all — what could be done to promote writing in Canada. We talked of the need for more money for manuscript editing,

Nuts, bolts and short-chain fatty acids

I recall precisely two lectures on nutrition in medical school. True, we heard physiology lectures on short-chain fatty acids, and our biochemistry professors encouraged us to remember the structures of the amino acids, but just how these things related to what a person should eat remained largely