Quilted
Vit
il
I go.
I loved quilts until I became one.
September 2024
My Vow
Medical school was, at times, traumatic for me. Although I now love practicing medicine, I am honestly not sure I could endure the training again. In fact, many of the lessons I learned in the process of becoming a physician were about what type of physician I did not want to be.
I still remember the moment—midway through my third-year clerkship, following a tumultuous internal medicine block—when I realized that palliative care was where I belonged. By carrying forward lessons learned from the imperfect practice of medicine, I have developed a set of values that now ground my current practice.
Brain Available
To my former neuro-oncologist (separated by insurance):
Greetings, again.
What you said when I first became your patient, about the consequences in adult survivors of childhood cancer with secondary tumors, was spot on, and I’m now in palliative care.
Aging in America
A dentist friend once mused that people should be born with a third set of teeth that would erupt late in life, since our permanent teeth evolved at a time when humans’ life expectancy was shorter and thus they wear in midlife. Imagine the Tooth Fairy visiting us in our sixties!
Since that conversation, I’ve pondered how long our bodies are meant to last. As a family physician, I wonder whether medical advances have set up some body parts to fail prematurely. I’m deeply saddened that societal structures have evolved minimally to keep pace with the way we now age.
A Warm Tub and Ice Cream
I cradle my ninety-nine-year-old mother’s head in one hand while I massage shampoo through her sparse hair. She floats in the water; her feet do not touch the end of the tub. Always a small woman, now she is barely there. I offer spoons of coffee ice cream. Of all the pleasures she still manages to eke out of her vastly diminished life, eating ice cream in a warm tub ranks high. Should one of the cats sit on the rim of the tub . . . . Well, that is perfection.
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Breathless
Editor’s Note: This piece was a finalist in the Pulse writing contest, “On Being Different.”
I was a disaster in fourth grade—too chubby for my Girl Scout uniform, which gapped where it should not have gapped. I dragged my right foot, so I wore orthopedic shoes. My horn-rimmed glasses made me look like a sixtysomething church lady. My jet-black hair with five cowlicks had been partially tamed with a beauty-shop permanent. I was the last chosen for red rover and other recess favorites.
Ten-year-olds know when they are different from their peers. I didn’t want to be different and felt self-conscious. Then came the coup de grâce.
Beyond the EMR
Squeak…Squeak…Squeak….
I stood against a wall in a narrow hallway to avoid blocking a meal cart passing through on its morning voyage. Inside this cart were a series of compartments, each containing a tray bearing a hospitalized patient’s breakfast. My attending physician stood beside me, inspecting a list of patients’ names as the cart rolled past.
Squeak…Squeak…Squeak….
“That’s a good case for a med student,” my attending declared, gesturing at a name on the paper. “Take this one.”
Going It Alone
Editor’s Note: This piece was a finalist in the Pulse writing contest, “On Being Different.”
Loneliness can creep up on you like a phantom, slipping its cold hand into yours and offering companionship that is both depressing and alluring—particularly when, looking around, you see nobody else whose face mirrors your own.
It was my first day of residency at a top pediatric program in Boston—a predominantly white program catering to a predominantly white patient population in a predominantly white city.
Scanning the room, I realized that, for the next three years, I would be the only Black person among some thirty-five residents.
Choices
Life is a series of choices—some important, some mundane. This is a story about a rather mundane choice of mine that was very important to someone else.
It was Friday. Because of the location of my visits that day as a hospice nurse, I’d had no opportunity to get lunch. Now, finally headed home, I decided to find a restaurant for dinner. I wanted a relatively quiet place so I finish writing my last few care plans and notes as I ate. I remembered Uncle Joe’s—a nice little Italian restaurant; even if it was full, it had no more than 12 tables. I hadn’t been there in a while but knew they had good iced tea, so I decided it would be just right.
September Third Year
Today a patient died. Jake was forty years old. When he came into the emergency room, Jake was dying of sepsis. I gave him some pain medication, and he just slipped away. I did try to save him. As his blood pressure dropped, I ran fluids and antibiotics. I put his head down to keep blood flowing to his brain. I ordered labs and an X-ray and an EKG.
I had taken care of Jake several times during his previous hospitalizations. He was sweet, but tired. He was blind from diabetes, and his irises were gray-white. I think he shut his eyes as he died, but I can’t quite remember.
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