Kevin Lease, MD

Plain-language help with hard medical decisions.

Starting a GLP-1. Getting through a colonoscopy prep. Living with a diagnosis you were given last week. Working out whether a parent can still live safely at home. I’m a practicing internal medicine physician, and I break these down the way I would for a patient in my own office: no jargon, no hype, no pretending it’s simple.

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What I cover

The moments, not the topics

Not health news, not symptom explainers. The handful of moments where a patient or a family has to decide something and the right answer isn’t written down anywhere.

Starting a new medication

The GLP-1 drugs are the current example. The real question is rarely whether the medication works. It is what the first three months actually feel like, what it costs once the coupon runs out, and what happens if you stop.

Getting ready for a procedure

Colonoscopy prep is the one nearly everyone dreads. Your own prep instructions are the authority and I won’t contradict them. What I can do is explain what each step is for and where people most often go wrong.

Living with a new diagnosis

The visit where you learn the name of the thing is usually the visit where you take in the least. This is the part that comes after: what it means day to day, which questions are worth bringing back, and what can wait.

Whether a parent is still safe at home

Families rarely get a clear signal on this one. What is worth watching for, what makes a home safer, and how families usually end up reaching the decision, without assuming the answer is a facility.

How I do it

What you can expect from me

Three things I try never to get wrong.

I’ll say when it’s a judgment call

A lot of health content sounds certain because certainty performs well. Some of these decisions are close, and reasonable doctors land in different places. When that’s the case, I’ll say so and show you what the disagreement is actually about.

Plain language, not simplified away

No jargon, and no pretending a complicated thing is simple either. If a decision has four moving parts, you get all four, explained the way I’d explain them to a patient sitting across from me.

Your own doctor knows your situation; I don’t

Everything here is educational. It is meant to help you walk into your next appointment knowing what to ask, not to replace the person who has your chart in front of them.

Who I am

Kevin Lease, MD

Kevin Lease, MD

I’m an internal medicine primary care physician in Columbia, Missouri. I finished a three-year internal medicine residency and I have been in practice for twelve years since.

Most of what I do all day is not diagnosing rare disease. It is sitting with someone while they decide something: whether to start the medication, whether to have the procedure, whether it is time to talk to their family about their mother. Those conversations are the best part of the job, and there is never enough time for them.

This is where I get to have them without the clock running.

Everything here is educational. It is not medical advice, it does not create a physician–patient relationship, and it is no substitute for talking with your own doctor about your own situation.

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One decision at a time, explained the way I would explain it in the room.

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