Sharing of giving and receiving health care
My Own Intervention
A few months ago my friend Phil gave me a newspaper clipping from the Sunday New York Times on body-focused repetitive behaviors, from nail-biting to hair-pulling to skin picking. I know he gave it to me because he wanted to help me with my own problem. He’s heard me express my frustration about it at the support group for faculty in our family-medicine residency.
Aftermath
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
It’s 8:00 pm.
I’m staring at the IV tubing. We forgot to stop the fluids.
I’m standing in the resuscitation room alongside the naked, broken body of a teenage male. Unable to break my gaze on that dripping IV line, thinking, We’re going to flood him.
Bedtime Ritual
I had planned to take care of my dad at the end of his life.
In 2009, Dad retired at seventy-five because of Parkinson’s disease. Over the next couple of years, he lived in his own home. My younger brother Mark, who lived nearby, faced the first difficult milestones brought on by Dad’s declining health. Mark was the one to tell Dad that he could no longer drive. And after Dad moved out, Mark took on the monumental project of cleaning a half-century of detritus from the house Dad left behind.
More Voices
Every month readers tell their stories — in 40 to 400 words — on a different healthcare theme.
October 2020
September 2020
August 2020
Poems
Walnut Shells and BRCA
If I was going to write a poem,
It would be–
It probably shouldn’t be–
About how much I hate the dog.
The way he licks his paws for hours
In the middle of the night
When the baby is no longer crying.
Things My Wife Left in the ICU
A pacemaker and defibrillator
Sheets pressed hard with suffering
Seven fingers and one arm, gangrenous dead
Unknown liters of blood
Failed kidneys
Decision
B546 wants to die
eight years after they saved her.
Cervical-cord injuries are cruel.
For Maria it was a gunshot,
but it could have been a car wreck, a fall,
or a drunken misstep off a roof.
The reasons seemed to matter; now they don’t.
Thirty-two, alone, paralyzed, on a vent,
she mouths “no” to the antibiotics, the heart meds.
“I want to die,” she shouts in a whisper.
Haiku
Visuals
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Encounters
Encounters: “I have been so blessed…”
I had my first baby when I was thirteen, and my mother died when I was thirteen. I’ve been through a lot in my life, but when my faith is not consistent, that’s when I start getting all those crazy thoughts, like “Oh, my life, my life…”
Felipe’s Story: “I’m going to the U.S. I’m going to see who detained the clouds and how they detained them.”
“There was a time [in Mexico] that it didn’t rain and there wasn’t a lot to eat in the country. There were no crops. People started to say that the Americans stopped the clouds so it wouldn’t rain, because they are very powerful. I said, I’m going to meet these Americans — I’m going to go to the U.S. I’m going to see who detained the clouds and how they detained them. I was about 15.”
“[Hubo] un tiempo que no llovía y no había mucho que comer en el campo. No hubo cosechas. Empezaron a contar los señores que los Americanos detuvieron las nubes para que no lloviera porque son muy poderosos. Dije, voy a conocer los Estados Unidos. Voy a ver quienes son los que detienen las nubes, como las detienen. Tenía como 15 años.”
Fatima’s Story: “I want them to be better than me. I’m here, stuck.”
“I tell [my children], you don’t have to do anything for me, just go to school and do what you have to do. On the weekend I take them to the mosque, because jeu can learn Arabic and all that. And I just want them to study. That’s all. That’s the main thing. If you want to be someone tomorrow, you have to work hard right now.
I want them to be better than me. I’m here, stuck. I cannot do the work that I want to do because I don’t have the degree for it,