EKG
We’re together in the kitchen when you say
you talked to your new doctor,
the one who ordered up an EKG
because he said he’d heard a skip, a stutter.
January 2023
Vulnerable Healthcare Workers
It was the start of my third year of medical school. My first clinical rotation was on the inpatient psychiatry ward. I put on my white coat, filled my pockets with clinical guides, and donned my stethoscope. I recall feeling both excited and daunted.
At that time, it was the job of the student on the team to interview and examine new admissions before the resident and attending physician saw them. We students would then report our findings and write up a formal H&P, or history and physical exam.
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Such a Nice Man
He could have been named Mr Congeniality. He was warm and friendly to people around him, always ready to do a favor. I met him when he worked a summer where I was working. His masters degree wasn’t enough to get the jobs he wanted, so he decided to apply to PhD programs. He and I became friends over the summer, and I helped him with feedback about grad schools, housing, and so on. His wife and child had stayed that summer where she had a full-time job so she could continue working.
Gynecology
When I was twenty, I scheduled my first gynecological exam. I went to a doctor recommended by girlfriends. The appointment was late in the day – five p.m. Maybe this should have alarmed me, but I thought the doctor was busy and had a heart for patients.
The Right Call
How to thank the on-call physician? Not on MyChart. My brain previously so flustered I couldn’t put a name to the voice; only by checking “Medications,” where he’d written a thorough note, could I make the link, but impossible to message directly.
Victim
I woke up feeling groggy and disoriented. Staring at the ceiling, I did not recognize where I was, whose bed I was in. Looking down, I noticed that I was half-dressed and beside me was a man I knew of as the father of my daughter’s boyfriend.
Attention Must Be Paid
I learned in elementary school that there are four kinds of sentences: declarative, exclamatory, imperative, and interrogatory. A case could be made for assigning the phrase “Me, too” to several of these categories. It could be considered declarative—an assertion of solidarity. Or perhaps exclamatory—a cry for affirmation. Or imperative, for these two simple words carry with them the voice of a command, especially by women who have been sexually abused or harassed, to be heard and valued.
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January More Voices: Me, Too
Dear Pulse readers,
She came to me many months after the birth of a healthy child. I’d looked after her during the pregnancy, and her husband had accompanied her on many of those visits. He was a nice man–pleasant and attentive. I did my best to include him in our conversations about the pregnancy and upcoming birth.
Now she was pregnant again, and she’d come to see me alone. Her husband wanted her to continue the pregnancy, she said, but she wasn’t so sure.
January More Voices: Me, Too Read More »
