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Hearing Impaired
“Pick up the phone, Mom,” I said, dashing into the kitchen after answering our landline in the living room.
“Who is it?” she asked.
“Dunno. I can’t understand what they’re saying,” I said.
When she picked up the receiver, the caller—her father—got right to the point: “She can’t hear.”
Many Shades of Different
Editor’s Note: This piece was a finalist in the Pulse writing contest, “On Being Different.”
Having stage IV cancer at twenty-one made me different from my peers.
I was already different: By the eighth grade, due to my mother’s quest for greener pastures, I’d attended twelve schools, many of them outside of the US. I was a Yankee when my family lived in Australia, but also when we lived in Florida. I was a gringa when we lived in Mexico, then in Peru. In places where English was spoken, I stood out because of my accent. In places where Spanish was spoken, although I became quite fluent, I was clearly a foreigner.
Lessons From My Teachers
In July 2003, a few days after I had started service as inpatient attending pediatric cardiologist at Lutheran General Children’s Hospital, the neonatologists, nurses and I met with Jenni and Tony to discuss their daughter Grace’s health status.
Grace, now two and a half weeks old, had seemed normal at birth. After a few hours, her skin color had turned blue: Her oxygen level was dangerously low. She’d been whisked off to the neonatal intensive-care unit (NICU), where tests showed that her heart function was poor due to high blood pressure in her lungs. Her heart and lungs began to fail, so we’d placed her on a heart-lung machine (ECMO) for sixteen days. Now taken off the machine, she was breathing with the help of
“How Long Have You Had These Symptoms, Doctor?”
“How long have you had these symptoms?”
Dr. Quantrell’s tone was kind and inquisitive, but with the CT scan on the computer between us displaying a two-centimeter kidney stone, I couldn’t help hearing: How long have you been ignoring this problem?
Much has been written about the experience of doctor as patient. Like many of my colleagues before me, I’d fallen into the trap of trying to diagnose myself before calling my family physician.
Nontraditional
Editor’s Note: This piece was awarded an honorable mention in the Pulse writing contest, “On Being Different.”
I have always been different. As a nurse I was a late bloomer, though I’d always felt passionately drawn to the profession.
I was born to nurse. This was evident even when I was a young child; I bathed my grandmother’s amputated leg while the other kids played in the yard. Although I had planned to go to nursing school after graduation, I took a seventeen-year detour and ultimately entered as a nontraditional student.
Don, 1979
It’s 3:00 am. Deep in the bowels of the hospital, bright fluorescent lights softly buzz overhead in the windowless snack bar, where a row of vending machines give off a low hum.
Don, my sixteen-year-old patient, and I sit huddled in orange plastic chairs at a tiny Formica table. He is ranting, and I am listening. Neither of us can sleep. Don is awake because he is mad at the world, and I’m awake because I’m the pediatric resident on call.
Scars
Editor’s Note: This piece was awarded an honorable mention in the Pulse writing contest, “On Being Different.”
In the summer between second and third grade, when I was eight, I first realized that it was safer for me to hide my surgical scars.
I had two huge scars starting at my hip joints and running halfway down my outer thighs. They were “Dr. Frankenstein” scars, with obvious cross-hatches that couldn’t be missed when I wore shorts or bathing suits.
That summer, my scars brought odd looks and comments from both children and adults.
Powerless
“I know it wasn’t really your fault, but I blame you on some level,” said my patient Aisha, sounding husky over the phone. “I’m working on forgiving you, but I’m not there yet.”
Tears sprang to my eyes, but I kept my voice steady as I replied, “I understand. I’m sorry about my role in what happened. Please let me know if you ever feel ready to come back to see me, but I can refer you to another doctor in the meantime.”
What had I done to deserve such harsh words? I hadn’t prevented her traumatic childbirth experience.
Our Shared Journey
Editor’s Note: This piece was awarded an honorable mention in the Pulse writing contest, “On Being Different.”
It took a terrifying and life-changing experience of being different for me to realize a fundamental truth: I’m the same as everyone else.
This truth has redefined my goals and reshaped the way I practice medicine.
At age twenty-nine, during my third and final year of internal-medicine residency, I received a diagnosis of a rare and malignant brain cancer called anaplastic astrocytoma. Quite suddenly, I was different.
