August 2024

I recently spent some time in the waiting room of a hospital, while my husband was having surgery. As I sat there, I was patting myself on the back for being organized for this little jaunt. I had remembered a wheeled suitcase in which to store hubby’s belongings while he was in the OR, I’d packed some nibbles for myself so I wouldn’t have to go down to the cafeteria if I didn’t want to, and I’d made sure I had my my phone with me.

Then I suddenly realized that what I hadn’t thought to bring was a phone charger, that my phone’s battery was low, and that the doctor was going to call me on it to tell me how the surgery went.

While I was driving to work on a sunny Friday morning many years ago, the opening music for the StoryCorps broadcast streamed from the radio. I raised the volume and listened. A daughter asked her father how he’d made it out of a psychiatric hospital where he received shock treatments. He had been committed for insanity at age 22. He replied simply that he watched television to see how “normal” people acted and mimicked what he saw. Eventually, the staff released him.

The interview ended. I lowered the volume on the radio and reflected on this man’s smarts and the deplorable state of inpatient mental health in the 1960s. And then I started bawling.

I was in the process of leaving my first practice after residency, after three years at a rural community health center in western New York.

Saying goodbye to patients is emotional and takes extra time. Most patients expressed gratitude. Some brought small tangible gifts.

It’s time for our last psychiatric patient of the day in rural Florida. It’s 4:00 p.m., and by now the cows have been fed and the crops have been harvested.

Suddenly, there was a heavy tapping at the door and a swift shuffling of feet. A loud voice erupted, “Doc, I gotta talk to you!”