April 2017

Learning the Meaning of Care

I was nervous. I had never been this close to someone who was about to die. I introduced myself, but the patient was non-responsive. I told her that I was going to sit with her and that I would stay for a few hours. As I sat down, I noticed her breathing–it was irregular, and each breath sounded like she was slowly and painfully drowning. Almost trying to distract myself from her breathing, I studied her face. The structure of her face–her jaw- and cheekbones–was well defined. My eyes wandered from her head to her shoulders and along her arms, and then I saw her hands.

Learning the Meaning of Care Read More »

Final Breaths

Leave a Comment / Crying / Anna Delamerced

I remember my first code.

I was a senior in college, shadowing in the ER on a cold, Sunday night. Decembers in Providence can be brutal.

It was 11:30 p.m., and a voice came on the PA, urgency in her voice: “Code Blue, Code Blue.” The physician asked me if I had ever seen one before, and when I shook my head, he directed me to Critical Care Room C.

Behind a glass wall, I stood in silence, waiting. All the nurses and interns seemed on edge, ready to spring into action. I breathed in and out, in and out.

Final Breaths Read More »

My First Code

1 Comment / Crying / Stephanie Benjamin

The radio call comes in: “thirty-something male, cardiac arrest, compressions in progress, five minutes out.”

My adrenaline starts pumping. This new patient will be my first time running a code. I can’t help but be excited.

I claim my place at the head of the bed and start setting up my airway equipment. My brain is methodically running through the ACLS algorithms I have memorized.

My First Code Read More »

Cry for a Stranger

1 Comment / Crying / Mary Grace Heyrosa

I cried for a stranger today.

Her sister sat expressionless next to her lifeless body, and when I walked into the room, she began crying.

My tears swell. I tell her how sorry I am, and how brave she was. She tells me that her sister died “so quickly and peacefully” and that “it was her time to go.” I am grateful she surrendered to the inevitable.

I leave to complete my documentation. Conflicted, I fight tears. I want to cry for her loss and for my loss. But, I am new here. I must make a good impression. What will they think of me? Unprofessional. Emotional. Unstable.

Cry for a Stranger Read More »

Crazy

19 Comments / Poems / Ginny Hoyle

Ginny Hoyle

I walked through my mother’s madness
in a coat of hungry colors.
Her eyes did not take me in. I was a child.
To win her, I hung by my knees from low branches

of the family tree, voicing nursery rhymes
from the hallowed text of her delusions.
And failed.

When they took her away,
I was older, careful. I hid my heart
behind a dozen jars of her best grape jelly
and drew ugly faces in my algebra notes.

When she came home,
I had no space to give her.
No, no, not in the kitchen;

my kitchen now.
Not in the blue chairs where she longed
at last to sit down, light up and chat.

Crazy Read More »

Braak Stage IV

1 Comment / visuals / Roberta Beary

Roberta Beary

About the artist:

Roberta Beary is the 2017 Roving Ambassador for the Haiku Foundation, and haibun editor for Modern Haiku. The author of two award-winning poetry collections, The Unworn Necklace and Deflection, she writes to connect with the disenfranchised, to let them know they are not alone. A photographer since her Polaroid Swinger days, she now uses her iPad to link her poems with images. More of her visual work can be viewed on Twitter @shortpoemz.

About the artwork:

“This is a photograph of my mother that I took a few months before her death in September 2013. She is with my dog Winnie. I was my mother’s caretaker for five years. She spent the last two years of her life in the memory-care wing of an assisted-living facility near my home. I would often visit her with

Braak Stage IV Read More »

MaMA

1 Comment / Crying / Sharon Dobie

Day Three: “Mama”– accent on the second syllable, “maMA” – how he opened all calls to me. They had put in the PICC line, a catheter in the arm used for long-term intravenous antibiotics, medications and blood draws. “I don’t know how much longer I can do this.”

MaMA Read More »

Who Will Hear a Stored Voice?

Trusting the Process

26 Comments / Crying / Gretchen Gundrum

As a rookie psychologist, I knew I had much to learn. Burdened with perfectionism, I had self-doubts about technique and process. I so wanted to do it right.

One day I was assigned a young client—a girl of no more than twelve, whose grandfather was anxious to have her seen by a therapist. His wife was dying, and the child’s mother had no interest in raising her. To complicate matters, the relationship with the grandmother was full of resentment on both sides. Not ideal in any way.

Trusting the Process Read More »

Kleenex

Our First Conversation

I Didn’t Know

Leave a Comment / Crying / Louis Verardo

In my second year of college as a premed, I signed up to be an emergency room volunteer at a municipal hospital located just off campus. It was 1969, and the neighborhood reflected the larger urban community, including both established residents and newly arrived immigrants.

I Didn’t Know Read More »

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

Learning the Meaning of Care

Final Breaths

My First Code

Cry for a Stranger

Crazy

Braak Stage IV

MaMA

Who Will Hear a Stored Voice?

Trusting the Process

Kleenex

Our First Conversation

I Didn’t Know

Subscribe to Pulse.

It's free.

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

April 2017

Start typing and press enter to search

Subscribe to Pulse.

It's free.