fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

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fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

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Colleen T. Fogarty

Election Day

Leave a Comment / Recovering /

The elderly farmer in faded overalls leaned on his cane as he struggled to enter the room. We ushered him to a nearby table, gave him his ballot and left him to complete it. Back at my voter greeting spot, I noticed him struggling with his glasses, peering closely at the form.

I had never worked the polls before. As an academic family physician, I had taken a six-month sabbatical in part to recover from the exhaustion of leading a department of family medicine during the COVID-19 pandemic. Getting outside my usual day-to-day experience was one way to recover. Serving as a poll worker and Spanish interpreter was a good way to get out into the community.

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IV Access

Leave a Comment / Birth /

During my second pregnancy, I was terrified I’d experience a postpartum hemorrhage, as with my firstborn, twenty-two months before. That bleeding was so serious the team had used every intervention short of a hysterectomy; they saved my life. As a family physician who attended births, my trauma from the hemorrhage interfered with my ability to attend births. I eventually gave up my maternity practice.

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Insomnia Coach

Leave a Comment / Getting Motivated /

My mother, in her seventies, was struggling with insomnia, due to a combination of stress and medical problems. As a physician daughter, I’ve avoided giving my family specific medical advice, especially unsolicited.

Yet I know cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is the most effective treatment for insomnia. Years ago, a conference speaker emphasized the primacy of CBT for sleep issues and recommended a free app developed by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

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I Just Wasn’t Comfortable

1 Comment / LGBTQ+ /

Laurie Donohue, MD, a longstanding colleague of mine, died October 24, 2024. We were a year apart in family medicine residency, both practicing at Brown Square Health Center, an FQHC (Federally Qualified Health Center) in Rochester, New York. We worked together for years, maintaining adjacent clinical practices. For several years we shared an office and often bounced clinical situations off each other, or shared challenges and support. Both of us had dedicated patient panels, and we seldom saw each other’s patients. I loved working with Laurie; her calm and steady presence balanced me in so many ways.

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Holy Water

2 Comments / Palliative and Hospice Care /

My father-in-law was dying. He’d had five years of remission from esophageal cancer, but the latest recurrence hadn’t responded to treatment. As he neared the end, he and his family decided to move him from the custom-built contemporary home he’d designed to a privately run hospice, just over a mile from his home.

I had taken some time away from work to support my husband, his father, and the family during those last days. My main jobs were to run support and errands as needed so the family could stay at his bedside.

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Joyce

Leave a Comment / The Waiting Room /
I head out of the emergency department of our local tertiary care hospital. The waiting room seems pitifully small, probably twenty chairs, with the security desk, check-in desk, triage station and the entrance doors in close proximity. There’s no space for pacing here, and sometimes not enough chairs.

I notice a familiar figure, dressed in bright red, who stands out from the others. With a start, I realize it’s Joyce, one of my heroes. Joyce is the nurse practice manager at our sister health center, and she’s transformed the place into one known for its engaged staff and team-based care. Her warmth and enthusiasm are contagious.

Normally, seeing Joyce fills me joy and anticipation of what great news or interesting question she has for me. But quickly my anticipation turns to dread. She shouldn’t be sitting here, not at 11 pm on a weeknight.

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The Hallway

Leave a Comment / Poems /

Colleen Fogarty

Sitting here, waiting to teach a medical student.

My eyes lock
onto the windowed display cabinet of anatomic pathology specimens.

Aging bottles of shriveled dun-colored parts, pale reminders of bodies once vital.

My thoughts drift
my rib pain, localized, continuous, nagging.
my breast cancer, localized, excised, treated…just over a year ago.

What pains my rib?

Mets?
Muscles?

These tumor specimens cut too close.

I got my daughter to kindergarten; what about sixth grade?

About the poet:

Colleen Fogarty, an associate professor in the University of Rochester Department of Family Medicine, has dabbled in poetry and prose most of her life. Medical school temporarily killed her creative muse. In the years since residency, she has published creative work in Health Affairs, The Journal of Family Practice, Family Medicine and Medical Humanities. She practices and teaches writing fifty-five-word stories with colleagues and residents and edits the “55-Word Stories” column for Families, Systems, and Health.

About the poem:

“This poem is about an experience during a teaching session that brought me,

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