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
The Quiet Work of Dying
The first thing I remember is the sound of oxygen at night.
It was my second week as a hospice nurse. I had just pulled up to a modest home on a cul-de-sac, the kind of place where wind chimes echo off empty sidewalks. Inside, a man in his seventies was dying of end-stage pulmonary fibrosis. He was surrounded by family, but it was that soft hiss—steady and rhythmic, like an artificial tide—that centered the room.
His breathing was labored, yet peaceful. His wife sat beside him, holding one hand.
Dr. Poetry
You may imagine that this story will be about how poetry heals. And poetry does heal, but this story is not about that. Rather, it is a story of healing made possible by the relationship between physician and patient—of the power of words and metaphor, of being with and feeling seen, and of the human potential for posttraumatic growth.
We met on the eighth floor of the university hospital, after I was admitted for neutropenic sepsis (a serious infection coupled with low white-blood-cell count and often linked to cancer treatments) and a pulmonary embolism.
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.
More Voices
Every month readers tell their stories — in 40 to 400 words — on a different healthcare theme.
House Calls and Home Care
December 2025
Chronic Pain
November 2025
Disability
October 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
Common Cause
Sitting before me
I measure his scars and record the beatings
He is broken
Not just his teeth and back, his will is shattered
I ask his plans should he be granted asylum
He has none
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.
