It was also while he was a medical student at the Geisel School of Medicine that he was first diagnosed with testicular cancer (specifically, a highly curable stage 1a seminoma) at the age of 25. That's where he met his wife, Kristin, now 36 and the communications manager for the Belin-Blank Center for Gifted Education and Talent Development at the University of Iowa. It was a clarifying moment for Flanary as a creator, convincing him to ditch TikToks de rigueur music syncopation and embrace what he was good at: crafting characters and writing jokes. That continued into the internet era, initially with posts for GomerBlog and now on his strangely named social media channels. Dr. Glaucomfleckens success to date was unimaginable back in the spring of 2020. Flanary is hardly alone among doctors with TikTok accounts. My mom kicked me out of her 6th grade language arts class. Its my coping mechanism. In 2010, when he was 25 years old, Will was diagnosed with testicular cancer. A: Humor is how I process grief and tragedy in my life. Once a month, just check yourself.'. "There are a lot of weird words in ophthalmology," Flanary says of his decision to riff on a glaukomflecken for his internet persona. Her work has appeared in Vox, National Geographic, and The Atlantic. On the night of May 11, 2020, his heart went haywire. Learn More But she knew he needed more help than she could give. ". And theres this prevailing notion that doctors cant show who they really are. "What I post, what I say, what I advocate for, has a little more weight behind it." Monkeys Spinning Monkeys - Kevin MacLeod & Kevin The Monkey. Thankfully, his wife was able to perform CPR until the paramedics arrived and they were able to resuscitate him. Medical school can be brutal, and its making many of us suicidal. 'Life was just more complicated at that point.'. Not to be confused with, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, "The internet's funniest doctor is in on the joke", "Doctor who had testicular cancer twice in his 20s urges men to 'check yourself', "MD Class of 2022 Selects William Flanary, MD, (aka Dr. Glaucomflecken) as Its Commencement Speaker", "TikTok star Dr. Glaucomflecken uses humour as prescription in hard times", "How Dr Glaucomflecken Overcame Death to Get Internet Laughs", "How America Can Rebuild the Community Bonds It Needs to Face the Next Pandemic", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dr._Glaucomflecken&oldid=1141489996, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 25 February 2023, at 09:24. It wasnt until I was able to do a rotation in ophthalmology at the beginning of my fourth year that I made the decision, so I decided really late. Another video depicts a patient agreeing without hesitation to a full body CT scan, lumbar puncture, colonoscopy, brain biopsy, and an experimental surgery where we replace your spleen with a second liver.. Flanary declined to disclose his comedy income, but he gets ad revenue from YouTube, and hes recording three or four Cameo videos a night at $180 a pop. 1 credit a month to use on any title of your choiceyours to keep. She was alone, he said. How is that working out? He also skewers emergency medicine and surgeons, but says he is careful around practices that are more sensitive or do not get the respect they deserve, like primary care doctors and pediatrics. Get TikTok App . 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Nikita Okhade, Written by: I learned about the pandemic and how it's really impacted your profession, Dr. Glaucomflecken said. 2023 American College of Emergency Physicians. After surgery to remove the cancer, they were ready to move forward. To contain his mess, Kristin made him a Glauc-Tok Prop Box, where he keeps everything from costume elements to his children's discarded toys. The question is just how big his audience might be and whether what works online can translate to another medium. We have a real delight today. That's a golden rule in comedy that demands jokesters protect the vulnerable and lampoon the powerful. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it. Morning Forecast William E. Flanary is an American comedian and ophthalmologist who performs under the stage name Dr. Glaucomflecken. There was no medical explanation for the sudden cardiac arrest. In February alone, Dr Glaucomflecken released nine installments of his ongoing 60-second video series, in which a hapless medical student is thrown into the deep end by various specialists, from an elbow-patched psychiatrist to a mountain-biking emergency medicine doctor. (Heres his iconic take on the EM residency interview.) ', The comments below have not been moderated, By The account is named after glaukomflecken, a sign of acute angle-closure glaucoma. Cite this: How Dr Glaucomflecken Overcame Death to Get Internet Laughs-Medscape-Mar10,2021. From then on, he knew he wanted to be a doctor the first in his family. Napoleon Hill, Written by: A glaukomflecken is a change in the lens of the eye after an acute angle closure, whereas Dr Glaucomflecken is a social media sensation. In addition, you can get exclusive access to our member-only sales and deals. Daniel Kahneman. with the Glaucomfleckens. He started with stand-up in high school, making "teenage boy jokes" wherever he could find an open mic. It was a dark and empty chamber where no words were spoken or understood Those of us who have survived trauma need our healthcare providers to meet us in our Quiet Place. The audience was rapt as they listened to her 911 phone call. Flanary churns out original content every few days. After surviving testicular cancer twice, Will suffered a cardiac arrest out of the blue last year, and his wife, Kristin - whom he calls his 'superhero' - saved his life by performing CPR. Grant Cardone, Written by: Dr. Glaucomflecken will deliver the keynote address during EMS World Expo, Sept. 14-18, 2020. He was educated at Texas Tech University,[3] where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude with a bachelor's degree in cell and molecular biology. His Dr. Glaucomflecken alter ego has been a balm, not only for his colleagues, patients, and a pandemic-weary public, but also for himself. Q: Why do you think its become such a hit, particularly for people outside the medical world? Brianna Wiest, Written by: William E. Flanary is an American comedian and ophthalmologist who performs under the stage name Dr. Glaucomflecken. "We did, like, eight cases in a day. A: Thats a good example of one that surprised me. His pandemic content on vaccinations have garnered the most negative response but he tries not to pay too much attention to the angry comments and messages, he says. Q: A lot of the doctors you portray have very specific personality traits. After he recovered again, their family was dealt another blow when Kristin awoke in the middle of the night to find her husband unresponsive, breathing irregularly and making strange noises. It sometimes allows the environment that we work in to be a little bit more humane I think that patients sometimes enjoy the humor and it makes us a little bit more relatable.. I can be pretty specific with different areas of medicine and create this world of, honestly, pretty dysfunctional people. Q: What is the most important thing you learned from this event that youd like to pass on to others? " For the record, it was Will's work ethic that won her over, she says. Now, he is telling his story so that other men know what to look for and can catch the disease early on. To hear more, attend ReSS 2020: Survivorship at 9 a.m. Saturday. The criticism that rankles Flanary most is that his humor is "unprofessional." Written by: In the pre-op room before his second surgery, Kristin began looking for support groups for her husband. For example, neurologists may have a slight rage stroke hearing someone described as having an altered mental status, which they describe as garbage terminology because it could mean anything from slightly confused to comatose. 'The second time was much harder,' he admitted. "Your humor has helped me cope with a very grim time," wrote another fan. Being funny was always meant to be a hobby rather than a vocation, but the surging popularity of Dr. Glaucomflecken has turned into a business in its own right. Robert Greene, How to Talk to Anybody, Anytime, Anywhere, Written by: His sense of humor was just a bonus. What is an ophthalmologists personality? His early work was squarely in the lingua franca of the platform: short, comedic videos synced to popular songs. Neelesh Misra, Written by: They think that by portraying the character that way, Im dissuading people from entering that field, which I dont buy for a second. By You know, youre just going to spiral and its gonna affect your real life outside of the internet, he said. Things would gradually get a little more pointed, with jokes at the expense of disinterested emergency medicine doctors, overeager medical students, and, in a running theme, well-paid and under-worked ophthalmologists. Reporting from the frontiers of health and medicine, You've been selected! Dr. Glaucomflecken had the audience laughing as soon as he took the stage, resplendent in his TikTok-famous emergency physician costume. Q: How did this whole social media gig get started? A: I was pretty confused when I woke up, and it took me a few days to process what happened. Dr. Joseph Murphy, Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Collection. We still dont know the cause. Don't have time to read this post? But five years later, in 2015, he discovered a lump on his other testicle. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform. Today, we're going to be doing a reaction video to Dr. Glaucomflecken's "Introducing the OB/GYN." Hi, I'm Doctor Rich, and my passion is to create silly videos you can watch and laugh. But Flanary had no illusions that the world wanted to hear self-serious rants from a private-practice physician in the Pacific Northwest, so he made his points the best way he knew how: making up characters and writing jokes at their expense. "It gave me that relief and just a sense of joy that I hadn't had in a while," he says. My Dr. I may be retired. Get TikTok App . The humour not only allows him to connect with his audience, but it can also help patients and doctors, says Dr. Dolores McKeen, the president of the Canadian Anesthesiologists Society. Since 2016 he has become well known for making and uploading medical satire skits on Twitter, TikTok and YouTube.[2]. I draw a lot on my experience from med school, and even though Im 10 years removed from med school, things dont really change theres always going to be the dynamic between surgery and anesthesia. His gasp for breath woke up his wife, who performed CPR for 10 minutes until paramedics arrived and resuscitated him, according to an interview with Today. "I remember being very tired and telling her, I'm so tired. A: Were kind of boring. "Nobody really likes a nag," Kristin says. An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that neurologist Anna Nordvig was among those who had reacted to Will Flanary's videos. By that time, he turned from blue and purple to gray. Theres no benefit to it. They don't care.". "Psychiatrist here," one woman tweeted in reply to the light roasting. Diagnosis Compression gonioscopy is key to properly diagnosing an acute angle closure. Welcome to r/OccupationalTherapy!This is an automatic comment on every post. Thankfully, Dr Glaucomflecken has a prescription for that. I had an excellent medical team, and my family also played a big part in my recovery. It was the juxtaposition between my previous rotation, which was vascular surgery, where youre standing for like six-hour cases, holding the retractor and you have really sick patients. Its my coping mechanism Sometimes thats all you can do, right? As most of the humor on Fun Friday, this is funny and also heartbreaking. We dont like to work for long periods of time. I like knowing theres an end to my day when you get to go home. These are things medical students have experienced, that residents have experienced its all relatable.. There is literally no downside. He grew up in Houston, the son of a teacher and an engineer. Life in one of the world's most isolated communities: Indigenous Canadian woman reveals it takes two days to get groceries from nearest town 338 miles away, there's only five hours of daylight in winter and no one has an address because it's so small, Student, 18, reveals she 'could have died' from toxic shock syndrome caused by falling asleep with a tampon in after hospital doctors dismissed her symptoms as 'Freshers Flu', Children's campaign group slams 'despicable' UK secondary school over letter telling parents that pupils who arrive without a mask will have to buy one or face being hauled out of lessons - branding it 'child abuse'. I feel like I can just try these things and see where it takes me.. What humor does is it allows you to take that thing and you just break it apart. Dr. Glaucomflecken hasn't responded to me and probably won't. Go ahead and share this so he gets the message. Left untreated, it is a minutes-long prelude to death. Q&A with William A. Flanary, MD, aka Dr. Glaucomflecken, provides a glimpse into his experience surviving cardiac arrest. Glaucomflecken, a term for a sign of glaucoma. Related videos. Since then, it has evolved to incorporate satire of the US healthcare system, academic publishing, and the interpersonal conflicts that are pervasive in the medical system. "I wasn't really looking for a boyfriend or anything at the time," Kristin recalls. Glaucomflecken alter ego began as a creative outlet to tell painfully specific ophthalmology jokes and to cope with my own health challenges. Flanary grew up in Houston, Texas. "[7] He has received many speaking opportunities since revealing himself as the creator of Dr. Glaucomflecken, including as the commencement speaker for the graduating class of Yale School of Medicine and University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in May 2022. Anand Neelakantan, Little Things: Jab Dhruv Met Kavya, Season 1, Written by: Written by: I hope to change how healthcare workers see their patients and their families. He sipped from his diet coke while showing off his skin-tight, belly-baring cycling jersey with matching bike helmet and sunglasses. Cancel anytime. "That's all we have.". Since then, it has evolved to incorporate satire of the US healthcare system, academic publishing, and the interpersonal conflicts that are pervasive in the medical system. That has gotten a lot better, but it took a few weeks to get there. This website also contains material copyrighted by 3rd parties. There is a lot of evidence that shows humour can be protective of burnout, says McKeen. More recently, Flanary joined TikTok, which has allowed him to showcase some of the skills he honed over years of live performance. [7], Since 2017, Flanary has raised money for the non-profit organization First Descents, which provides outdoor experiences to young adults who have been diagnosed with cancer. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Kristin says. In February alone, Dr Glaucomflecken released nine installments of his ongoing 60-second video series, in which a hapless medical student is thrown into the deep end by various specialists, from an elbow-patched psychiatrist to a mountain-biking emergency medicine doctor. As an Audible member, your subscription includes: Amazon Prime members can take a free 30-day trial and receive 2 credits that can be used on any 2 titles from of their choice. While attending Texas Tech, he met his wife, Kristin. Then all of a sudden, it just comes crashing down on you.'. Turns out, I was having agonal breaths, which are a sign of cardiac arrest. After all, you got an ophthalmologist to come in on a Saturday!, I've learned a lot about emergency medicine and the role you play in your communities, really acting as a safety net for society. You can review our Community Guidelines by clicking here. At this point, I feel back to normal. Daily Briefing Area of Expertise: Cataracts Eye Exams Locations: Oregon City: (503) 656-4221 Wilsonville: (503) 582-0000 Board Certified, American Board of Ophthalmology Then he found TikTok. It was comedy that helped me through a diagnosis of cancer during med schooland again during residency. After the trial period, membership is 199/month for 1 credit per month. "You had to be efficient, you had to have good jokes, and it was somewhat of an unforgiving audience, and you had to work at it. For Flanary, comedy comes naturally. Q&A with William A. Flanary, MD, aka Dr. Glaucomflecken, provides a glimpse into his experience surviving cardiac arrest. How Dr Glaucomflecken Overcame Death to Get Internet Laughs, ED Doc Fired for COVID Tweets Talks to Biden, Returns to Job, Med Student's Cardiac Crisis a COVID-Era Medical Mystery, 'You Are the Heroes,' Comedians Tell Clinicians. Today, we're going to do something a little different we're going to do a reaction video to one of the most popular TikTok/YouTube videos on social media: Dr. Glaucomflecken. Damian Garde covers biotech, is a co-writer of The Readout newsletter, and a co-host of "The Readout LOUD" podcast. Read our privacy policy for more info. But I still know what comedy is. This version has been corrected. Will Flanary, aka Dr. Glaucomflecken, at home in Portland, Ore. Aye Grsz for STAT Reprints W ill Flanary's days are spent conducting eye exams and cataract surgeries at a private practice. And what Ive learned is that that is not the case at all. Q: I watched some reaction videos from doctors. 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