Gretchen Arnoczy MD

One thing I enjoy about ID consults is you can never predict what golden nugget of history you would get from asking a relatively benign question. Today's classic
Me: Tell me about your cats?
Patient: Well they are cute but they have all been having diarrhea for the past month
Me: Tell me more📝🤓

From Darkness to Opportunity: Reimagining the Future of Public Health Podcast Episode · Let's Talk ID · 11/22/2025 · 46m

Need some inspiration and commiseration? Check out the @idsainfo.bsky.social podcast with @matih-id.bsky.social and @drdemetre.bsky.social. Comforting to hear these heroes speak from the dark place, still looking up towards the light.

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/l...

Movie you’ve watched more than six times with a gif. Hard mode: no Star Wars, marvel, etc.

missouriindependent.com/2025/12/05/w...

I feel personally attacked 😆

Love this!! Great work!

"Go to an old cemetery. See all the baby graves from before the 1950s & 60s? After that, hardly any. That's when people started vaccinating their children. If you're unsure what to do to protect your kids, the answer is literally written in stone." — Michael Okuda

How quick we forget.

So it’s weird to see the state rejecting everything it ever taught me.9/9

You have to understand how odd it is. The things I learned while living in Florida propelled me into becoming a disease specialist. My formative years there taught me how important all this stuff is. 8/9

Florida is about to become a dangerous place for all those Make-A-Wish kids going to Disney World. 7/9

In the past month, my former home painted over a rainbow crosswalk under cover of darkness. Today the surgeon general of my childhood home declared that vaccine requirements for school were basically slavery. Abandoning all pretense and immunologic protection. Going full pro-disease.6/9

a man is kneeling on top of a large alligator in the grass . ALT: a man is kneeling on top of a large alligator in the grass .

The thing about Florida, is it’s always been weird. It’s a weird place to live. “Florida man” and all that. But we liked it. We were proud of it. The neon flamingos, the alligators in the swimming pools. Mickey Mouse and South Beach, Florida used to be the place for the weird. 5/9

I was in Florida in med school learning from some of the best minds at USF public health when I decided to venture out to try a new state. 4/9

I was 19 that summer I left Florida for a summer internship at the CDC. I was 20 when I started volunteering at the local Northeast Florida AIDS network - helping people living with HIV in Jacksonville in the late 90s. 3/9

I was living there the first time I watched the HBO movie, “And the Band Played On…” I was home sick from high school and became riveted by the depiction of these passionate disease fighters at the CDC.

a man is drinking a 7 eleven pepsi through a straw ALT: a man is drinking a 7 eleven pepsi through a straw

Once upon a time I grew up in Florida. I drank slurpees from 7-11 and burned my bare feet on hot asphalt. 1/9

Bad news for all the Make-A-Wish kids who go to Disney World in between chemo treatments. 😭

This 🧵 is long so please bear with me. It is compiles evidence in a historical timeline on how effective #COVIDVaccines are. When a pandemic ends we quickly and easily forget the tools that got us out of it. So here is my labour day gift to you prompted by this headline.

State Sanatorium (I-47) Opened in 1908. First state institution in North Carolina for treating tuberculosis. Sponsored by Dr. J. E. Brooks of Greensboro.

When I ask older patients if they’ve ever been exposed to TB, most say no. If I phrase it, “Have you ever known anyone who had TB?” they tell me stories of people they knew who went to McCain. www.dncr.nc.gov/blog/2024/01...

ID:
1. Antiretroviral management when the management is “just don’t stop their Biktarvy.”
2. Cavitary lung lesion when the patient is not on isolation and no sputums have been sent because they are “waiting on the Quantiferon Gold”.
3. “Extensive purulence encountered, no cultures sent.”

My daughter: here I have a doctor’s note.
Teacher: this says, “Sorry she’s late, the barista at Starbucks started crying so our drinks took forever.”
My daughter: …
Teacher: …
My daughter: she IS a doct-
Teacher: Go to class.

a woman wearing glasses and a black shirt is smiling in front of a telephone . Alt: a woman wearing glasses and a black shirt gives an awkward high five .

Is this a plug for #ThePitt ?

Thank you for telling the story! Pathology’s win for sure!

Trying not to let the Hospitalist on the phone hear me googling in the background…

A ridiculously decadent hot cocoa with toasted marshmallow fluff and graham cracker crumbs. Enjoyed in front of a fire when it’s 1 degree outside.

Is the best thing about the @wintercourseid.bsky.social week the amazing lectures? Getting to know ID colleagues better? Probably. But this Campfire Hot Cocoa during the break tastes a little like magic…

Infectious disease doctors watching them mess with public health and USAID

a young boy is sitting in a chair with his mouth open . Alt: Child at dinner table looking disgusted

When I find one of those, we usually have a blissful honeymoon period for about two months when everyone is happy at least one night a week. Then someone decides they’re sick of it.

Skepticism is good. Blindly ignoring decades of data? Not good.

THE CHOCOLATE CHIPS 💀
#IDsky

Two venipuncture (at least that’s the policy)