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Surviving Takes All Kinds of Friends

C.S. Lewis once said that friendship “has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.” He was partially right. Friendship undoubtedly improves the quality of our our lives. Yet evidence suggests it also improves the quantity. One study on elderly Australians showed that having a larger network of …

Anchor your Taproot

taproot (noun) tap·​root | \ ˈtap-ˌrüt , -ˌru̇t \ (Merriam Webster) 1 : a primary root that grows vertically downward and gives off small lateral roots 2 : the central element or position in a line of growth or development I spent a long time in the final weeks of 2021 reflecting on why I …

Root to Rise

When my family lived in Asheville, we had a huge oak tree on the master bedroom side of our house. It’s limbs stretched 40 feet in the air, and branched so far that throughout the early fall we would go to sleep to the sound of acorns pounding the roof like hailstones. In a bumper …

Organic Roots ==> Authentic Fruits

Too often we let others pull us into becoming an inauthentic version of ourselves. We get pulled into conversations, relationships, assignments, and confrontations that have absolutely nothing to do with who we want to be and everything to do with someone else’s agenda. When we allow this to happen, we plant our roots in someone …

An Unspoken Eulogy

***My grandfather Harold DeRienzo, Sr. died this week at age 89.  He did not have COVID – he died peacefully in his sleep from what I believe to be aspiration pneumonia, his body thoroughly ravaged by hit after hit after hit of the terrible luck that strikes young and old alike.  He did not have …

Tiny Medicine

Don’t give up! I believe in you all. A person’s a person, no matter how small! – Horton, from Horton Hears a Who by Dr. Seuss ***2019 Update – Now an excerpt from Chapter 2 of the book Tiny Medicine, available for pre-order now at Amazon or your favorite online bookseller!*** When I tell people …

Thank You!

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 …

What Ironman Louisville Taught Me About Gratitude

This post has been a long time coming.  Back in 2003, I volunteered as a first year medical student at the Blue Devil Ironman.  As exhausted and elated triathletes crossed the finish line, I worked the medical tent and escorted those who were dehydrated, hyponatremic, or obviously suffering from altered mental status into the tent …

A Big Announcement…

About a year ago, I floated the idea of writing a book across my social media communities.  You responded in ways I could never have imagined, nearly universally encouraging me and spurring me on. There were of course also a handful of trolls.  Like this one: Ignoring the trolls and buoyed by your support, I …

Lessons

It’s hard to believe it’s been a year since our family’s longtime friend and canine companion Bartlet passed away. This is a post I wrote at drderienzo.com last year to celebrate his life and share the lessons we learned from a pound puppy with a white shock of fur, an inexplicable fear of water bowls, …

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