Her name was Sara. She wore an oversized blue jacket, black rain boots and a scarf over her head. With my bright blue Health Leads patient advocate polo shirt, I greeted Sara as she sat down in the chair next to me.
“I need some childcare vouchers. They’ve stopped giving me money and I can’t seem to make ends meet any more,” she told me quietly.
Evelyn Lai ~
Monday
I walk into your room in the pediatric intensive-care unit as two nurses are repositioning you. Your parents stand nearby–your dad in his frayed baseball cap and khaki cargo shorts; your mom, her baggy jeans wrinkled with the same worry as the lines near her eyes. Your little sister sits near the window with a blue hospital mask over her mouth, hugging her knees; Grandma sits snug beside her, back straight and hair done, expression cordial.
You are a fifteen-year-old boy with leukemia who came into our emergency department last week with fevers, but spiraled quickly into septic shock with multiorgan failure.
The rescue squad was heading, fast, for the hospital with a patient on board. Needing help, they picked me up at my office en route.
It was a pleasant, warming spring day in the North Country. There was still plenty of snow in the mountains, but hikers were up there already. Some, from what we called “the flatlands,” wore sneakers. She shouldn’t have. She slipped. She fell.
The phone call came just as Dad and I had finished lunch and were about to enjoy some window-shopping at the mall. It was the nursing home informing us that Ma had again fallen out of bed and was again being taken by ambulance to a nearby emergency room.
Daniel Becker ~
At work there are three kinds of drills: fire, earthquake, shooter.
During a fire drill the building empties into the parking lot
where crowds kill time and blame the fire marshal.
The smokers want to smoke but don’t.
A doctor talks to the 2:40 patient and tries to stay on schedule.
If communication is the heart of medicine,
diligence is its best habit. Then he looks for the 3:00 patient.
In a 5th floor office the photograph of a storm-tossed schooner
is 10 degrees off plumb because that wasn’t a drill.
This Is Not a Drill Read More »
But when you say it about a baby, a twin, it’s enough to silence any sympathizer.
Patricia Massel
About the artist:
Patricia Massel is a second-year medical student at the University of British Columbia in Canada. “I try to find time amid my studies to keep creating artwork.”
About the artwork:
“This piece was inspired by electron microscopy images of the cells within the kidney. The patterns of tiny marks in this linoleum-cut print portray a sophisticated and somewhat alien world within our own living bodies. I hope that by showing the amazing complexity of living beings, my work will provoke in viewers a sense of curiosity and wonder.”
Visuals editor:
Sara Kohrt
His Jet Black Hair Read More »
It is 1959; it’s my first night on duty as a medical resident at a VA hospital. I am called to the ER.
I enter the ER where the nurse, appearing frightened and perplexed, is talking on the phone. She places her tremulous hand over the receiver and says to me, “It’s a Korean war veteran. He thinks he’s in action and is speaking to his command installation and is screaming for more back-up, more shelling. We are trying to trace the call.”
She hands me the phone.
First Night on Duty as a Medical Resident Read More »
I Hate To Tell You This… Read More »
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