Sharing personal experiences of giving and receiving health care
Checking Our Assumptions
Editor’s Note: This piece was awarded an honorable mention in the Pulse writing contest, “On Being Different.”
“Don’t leave menus in the apartments!” a voice called sternly as I stood by the elevators in the building where I live.
The speaker was a substitute doorman I’d never seen before. I was holding a plastic bag typically associated with Chinese takeout food, and I realized that he assumed I was there to deliver meals to weary or sedentary New Yorkers.
A variation of this scene took place another time with a different doorman.
“Doctor Sahib, Mamnoon!”
Growing up in Pakistan, I aspired to be a doctor. I was fascinated by movies and TV shows centered on the medical profession and the day-to-day work and lives of physicians. To me, they were superheroes, wearing white coats instead of capes.
A familiar figure in the panoply was the stereotypically brilliant and successful physician/surgeon. (Remember Dr. Melendez in The Good Doctor?) Insanely smart and talented, he was also hard-edged, competitive and almost robotic in his laser-sharp focus on reaching diagnoses and treating symptoms.
Observing similar traits among my mentors while in medical school and during my internship, I concluded that while perfect politeness is the norm, feeling or displaying emotion must be atypical.
Stubborn Ghosts
It’s a sunny day, and I’m slowly pacing along the memorial brick path that winds through an untended garden in a vacant healthcare complex.
Scanning the bricks, I stop in my tracks when I spot Mary’s name.
I’ve arrived here early to meet my friend, Tom, with whom I worked years ago when these grounds, in Hillsborough, NC, were home to a busy hospice inpatient facility. In its bereavement offices, counselors like us provided a space for those who were grieving to express their pain and begin to heal.
More Voices
Every month readers tell their stories — in 40 to 400 words — on a different healthcare theme.
Getting Motivated
October 2024
Palliative and Hospice Care
September 2024
A Turn for the Better
August 2024
New Voices
Stories by those whose faces and perspectives are underrepresented in media and in the health professions.
Going It Alone
Editor’s Note: This piece was a finalist in the Pulse writing contest, “On Being Different.”
Loneliness can creep up on you like a phantom, slipping its cold hand into yours and offering companionship that is both depressing and alluring—particularly when, looking around, you see nobody else whose face mirrors your own.
It was my first day of residency at a top pediatric program in Boston—a predominantly white program catering to a predominantly white patient population in a predominantly white city.
Scanning the room, I realized that, for the next three years, I would be the only Black person among some thirty-five residents.
“Hey, Uce”
I’ll never forget my shadowing experience in the emergency department during my first year of medical school.
Scanning that morning’s list of patients, I saw a last name that made me do a double-take. A distinctly Samoan name: Mr. Fuaga.
My father’s side of the family came to the States from Samoa before I was born, and I grew up curious about Polynesian culture. My father always taught me to seek out fellow Pacific Islanders in whatever path I pursued, no matter how few of us there might be.
Kindness in the Face of Loss
Editor’s Note: This piece was awarded an honorable mention in the Pulse writing contest, “On Being Different.”
I’ve just received a call from a hospital: An urgent appointment at its fetal-medicine unit has been arranged for me for tomorrow.
I try to get all the critical information.
“Which hospital did you say?” I ask. The medical secretary repeats the name, sounding a little surprised. I haven’t heard of this hospital; but then, I haven’t really heard of any, except for our local one.
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Poems
Quilted
Vit
il
I go.
I loved quilts until I became one.
Neighbor
I first notice the fog, unexpected
on the inside of a windshield,
a question mark
along the run-on sentence of parked cars, and,
with a snap, you are there,
wrapped in a bag in the back
seat with parking patrol on the prowl,
but they’re not so keen, blindly
driving by in a kind ignorance,
and I don’t see you either,
only your warm breath
caught at the glass,
and all I have are commas,
Doctor Becomes Patient
The diagnosis is here
I knew it was coming
But did not think it would arrive this soon
“You’re very young to have it” the doctor said
My bones brittle, already
At age 50
I feel fragile
