A Gift of Words
I used to tell myself that my work in health communications was about more than earning a paycheck or typing words on a page. Yes, I didn’t provide clinical care, but didn’t I make a small contribution, too?
What the Eye Cannot See
Now, whenever I trace my finger over my forehead scar, I time travel three thousand miles away—not to Dr. G’s small-town office or even to that dirt road where I split a part of my forehead open.
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What Remains From the Pediatric Ward
I wake up in a hospital isolation room, where everything smells weird. It’s 1967 in Galway City, Ireland, and I’m four years old.
The worst smell is the antiseptic—a word I don’t know yet. The second smell is the crayons and newssheet coloring books on the nightstand. Christmas is gone, so how can these be for me?
The family lore would say that I spent nearly seven weeks in that hospital. That’s forty-nine days or 1,176 hours’ worth of temperature checks, dosages, white-coated doctors.
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