Shannon Dowler

2 months ago | healio.com | Shannon Dowler |Mindy Valcarcel

Wally Poodle wasn’t really a poodle. He was a scrappy $5 dog I bought with Christmas money in 1976. One day, Wally Poodle and I were roller skating down the middle of a road on a blistering hot summer afternoon, the asphalt seemingly indenting with my metal skate wheels, when Wally flopped to the ground and started shaking all over. I was 10 years old at the time and didn’t know much, but I recognized a seizure for what it was.

Oct 17, 2024 | aafp.org | Shannon Dowler

Oct. 17, 2024By Shannon Dowler, M.D., C.P.E., FAAFPAAFP Board MemberWhen I saw that my flights home from the Congress of Delegates meeting in Arizona were canceled late last month, it was with the anxious knowledge that my octogenarian mom and my niece, a college sophomore, were managing my house, chickens, goats, cats and dogs roughly 1,900 miles away in North Carolina.