My hopes of living a life without glasses or contact lenses were dashed last month.

It was fall of 2013 when Mike Schmidt noticed something strange on his hand. The Phillies legend only had a few hours in Florida before he had to catch a flight, but he decided to see if his dermatologist could see him on short notice.

Advanced practice providers – specifically nurse practitioners and physician assistants – have been part of the health care environment for the last 50 years, but it’s only been in the past 15 years or so that their presence – and numbers – have dramatically shifted.

Last May, Penn Medicine officially broke ground on its new, $1.5 billion hospital, known as the Pavilion. It is the largest capital building project in Penn’s history and Philadelphia’s most sophisticated and ambitious health care building.

While I was fortunate to grow up learning that the right foods and playing sports was important for living a long, healthy life, and I was surrounded by people with similar approaches to eating and exercising, these are lessons that may be hard to come by in the in the midst of socioeconomic difficulties or coping with other chronic illnesses.

When the Perelman School of Medicine celebrated its 250th birthday in 2015, we took the opportunity to take a look back at some of the major milestones and advancements in the practice of medicine, which has evolved alongside our nation itself.

Cancer, like so many other overwhelming or life-altering situations, can really stick with a person. For many, the end of treatment is met with a flood of emotions that can make it difficult to get back to normal life.

There is a shared background among every person who bears the letters “MD” after their name: They’ve gone through four years of medical school, learning similar basic sciences knowledge and clinical skills necessary to pursue medical licensing after they graduate.

From elite runners to weekend warriors, the Broad Street Run is Philadelphia’s most popular run and the biggest 10-miler in the country. But why is it so popular? To get to the heart of this question, one has to go beyond the basics of running 10 miles, and take a closer look at what makes this race the pride of Philadelphia.

Kristen is stuck on a roller coaster. It’s not a gentle, kid-friendly coaster, but a seemingly endless stretch of extreme hills and terrifying drops, with a safety harness that keeps threatening to snap off. Sometimes the car goes full Final Destination 3 and flies off the tracks altogether – but when she opens her eyes, she’s ascending that first hill again. And again. And again. It’s exhausting. At 22, Kristen was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.