It took five months from the day I first posted at DrDeRienzo.com for the site to reach 1,000 views. Late last year, the site’s most popular post – Bartlet’s Lessons – reached 1,000 views on its own in less than 3 weeks. This month DrDeRienzo.com crossed the 10,000 view mark, and it seemed fitting to pause for a moment reflect back on the last two years and express my deep sense of gratitude.
I started writing here as a kind of personal outlet, a way to release years of pent-up literary energy and share my thoughts and stories with whomever would listen. Back in December 2016, I would never have believed 34 simple posts on healthcare, hope, and humanity would reach thousands of people across so much of the globe.
In 2018 alone, WordPress tells me that people (or at least IP addresses) in 43 countries visited the site, including Canada, Brazil, Poland, Ireland, Australia, Ghana, Fiji, Hong Kong, Turkey, and Iraq. That’s six of the world’s seven continents. I’m perhaps most proud of the two views I somehow got from Pakistan and the single view from Myanmar, both of which make Wikipedia’s list countries with “pervasive” or “substantial” internet censorship. Perhaps my stories about NICU babies and pound puppies represent a small contribution to the 21st century version of ping-pong diplomacy.
With all this in mind, as 2018 winds to a close I want to thank-you for visiting DrDeRienzo.com, engaging with the content, and engaging with my stories. With the promise of Tiny Medicine hitting the shelves in fall 2019, I am grateful for all of your support, feedback, and encouragement, and wish you a very Happy New Year!
Dr. Chris DeRienzo is a physician from Asheville, NC and author of the upcoming book Tiny Medicine – One Doctor’s Biggest Lessons from His Smallest Patients.
