David G. Thoele

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 a ventilator.

Lessons From My Teachers Read More »

Saying Goodbye through the Loving Hands of a Nurse

3 Comments / COVID-19 / David G. Thoele

Because of COVID-19, the rec center in Dad’s retirement community was closed. Determined to continue exercising, my vigorous 89-year-old father went for a walk. We don’t know what happened, but passers-by found him on the ground. Paramedics were called; flat-line ECG. He was resuscitated and placed on a ventilator. Unfortunately, his brain appeared damaged.

Despite the emerging pandemic, my sister and I traveled to Arizona. We sat by his side and held his hand.

Then, the rules changed: No visitors allowed.

Saying Goodbye through the Loving Hands of a Nurse Read More »

The Arm

7 Comments / Stories / David G. Thoele

David G. Thoele

I was on the cusp of my first year in medical school, and time was running out. Classes started in two weeks. I needed a place to live–ideally someplace cheap, not too far from school.

There was an opening at Phi Chi medical fraternity, a large brick house of faded elegance located less than a block from my classes at the University of Minnesota. At $75 a month for a tiny room in the co-ed fraternity, it fit my budget. When I learned about the “beer machine,” an old Coke machine that dispensed beer at 15 cents a bottle (a bargain in 1979), it felt like my kind of place. I signed the lease.

But throughout the entire discussion with my prospective frat brothers and sisters about the charms and quirks of Phi Chi, no one mentioned The Arm.

The Arm Read More »

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

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

David G. Thoele

Lessons From My Teachers

Saying Goodbye through the Loving Hands of a Nurse

The Arm

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

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

David G. Thoele

Lessons From My Teachers

Saying Goodbye through the Loving Hands of a Nurse

The Arm

Start typing and press enter to search