Sharing personal experiences of giving and receiving health care A premier narrative medicine and medical humanities resource
Sharing personal experiences of
giving and receiving health care A premier narrative medicine
& medical humanities resource
Medicine by the Books
Brrring!
The landline in my call room trills, jolting me awake. I have a consult. I’m a third-year medical student on my internal-medicine rotation. This is my second overnight call and second week of clerkship.
“Hi, Keith!” the caffeinated resident chirps. “I have a consult for you!”
The patient is Ms. Carrera: a young woman with a history of diabetes, renal disease and a recent heart attack. She’s here because her legs hurt. Cardiology and nephrology have no explanation, so they called internal medicine—and by extension, me. My shoulders slump.
Holding Out Hope
In my twelve years as an American family doctor working in low-resource countries in the Middle East, I’ve seen and treated countless patients with little to no hope for improvement in their physical and emotional problems. Seeing patients in these circumstances is emotionally exhausting, but the importance of my role in supporting these patients continues to draw me back in.
Reflecting on the challenges they face, I often think of one in particular: a baby named Hiba.
Hiba’s mother, Layla, had received very little prenatal care during her pregnancy, as is common among poor, rural patients in low-income countries. She’d suffered from several prenatal complications, and Hiba was born via an emergency cesarean section.
Hiba’s condition was precarious.
After the Fall: What Happened Next
I live in a small town on the River Tay in Eastern Ontario. One day, I was exercising at the gym with my husband, Yogi.
I’d just finished my first leg-machine exercise. As I reached for the grungy logbook, the floor suddenly reeled out from under me.
Am I fainting?
I lurched to sit down.
“It’s okay, I’m fine!” I assured those around me. But my sudden disorientation screamed that I was not.
More Voices
Every month readers tell their stories — in 40 to 400 words — on a different healthcare theme.
Chronic Pain
November 2025
Disability
October 2025
The Exam Room
September 2025
New Voices
Stories by those whose faces and perspectives are underrepresented in media and in the health professions.
The Distance Between
I was in secondary school in Nigeria when I first noticed the lesion on Uncle Eze’s lip. Like many men of his age in Lagos, he’d picked up smoking in the 1980s, when foreign cigarette companies flooded our markets with glossy advertisements and promises of sophistication. The habit stuck, even as the glamour faded. The streets of Lagos were dotted with tobacco vendors then, selling single sticks to businessmen who’d made cigarettes part of their daily routine.
“It’s nothing,” he said, when I pointed to the growing sore. In those days, seeing a dermatologist meant traveling to one of the few teaching hospitals in the country. Uncle Eze, my mother’s eldest brother and the owner of a thriving electronics shop, had his business to run, customers to meet. The lesion could wait.
“Teach to Fish for Tomorrow”
It’s a typical Friday night in New Orleans. The streets are brimming with people from all over the world looking for a night of fun in the Big Easy.
I check the time: 5:45 pm. It’s a little more than a mile from my apartment to Ozanam Inn, a shelter for the unhoused where I work as the coordinator for the student-run Tulane Tuberculosis Screening Clinic Program. My shift tonight runs from 6:00-8:00 pm.
A Different Kind of Different
Editor’s Note: This piece was a finalist in the Pulse writing contest, “On Being Different.”
Every parent likes to think their child is one in a million. What if you’re the parent of an individual who is more like one in 326 million?
Society in general has started to be more cognizant of disabilities—some disabilities more than others. For instance, Down syndrome awareness and acceptance has excelled in the past several years, and schools have made efforts to teach inclusion and acceptance of students with special needs.
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Poems
Time & Again
COVID wards 2020-2021
For the sake of the present / let’s just admit that thigh-deep mud & poison gas & running into machine gun fire / still belong to us all the glass-eyed / survivors who said sundown was almost worse than morning slaughters / night when stretcher-bearers could finally reach the duckboards / run toward the day’s groans caught / on barbed
Lessons From the Night Sky
It has recently come to your attention that asteroid 2022 AP7 is headed towards the earth. ◙ Despite your attempts at distraction, your mind repeatedly imagines the collision. ◙ Experts call 2022 AP7 a planet killer–then say not to worry as it could be many generations before this is a true concern.
Infinite Excuses
A long day makes me want to get home, and I’ll have
to explain, again, why I’m late to pick up the kids. The merge
onto the Expressway slows. At least the drivers stay patient,
taking turns. We keep stuttering forward until I see the cause
of our delay–two cars against the median, front and sides
crumpled metal. Next to them sits a white, windowless van.
