Pamela Adelstein, Author at Pulse

Long Grief

Leave a Comment / COVID Redux / Pamela Adelstein

There used to be much to do. Reciting the Mourners’ Kaddish daily. Making phone calls, waiting on hold, filling out forms, managing the estate. Sorting and donating Dad’s personal goods. Answering panicked phone calls and texts from my mother. Explaining my status as a mourner—taking a year off from dancing at celebrations, declining blindingly joyous events that chafed against my mourning soul. Responding to friends checking in. Processing feelings. And marking all the “firsts”—first Thanksgiving, first Father’s Day, first birthday—without Dad.

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Is It Safe Here?

1 Comment / Traumatized / Pamela Adelstein

I have always been aware that I am Jewish. In the antisemitic neighborhood where I was raised, my unique religious identity was central to all interactions. I was perpetually othered. Supposedly I was smart because I was Jewish. My (ugly) appearance was Jewish. My (weird) last name was Jewish. I was different. Undesirable.

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Inner Duality

2 Comments / Tough Calls / Pamela Adelstein

If you have ever been in therapy, you likely discovered that while you share personal details about your life, the therapist reveals little information about theirs. From my understanding, when and what to disclose is part of a therapist’s training. In contrast, in medicine, relatively little about self-disclosure is taught. Instead, it is up to the individual to figure it out on their own.

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Skin Rash

4 Comments / Bedside Manner / Pamela Adelstein

Being a child of medical parents brings special challenges. For example, such children grow up with a unique idea of appropriate dinner conversation. When I exclaim, “Guess what I saw at work today!” my children interrupt to inquire if my story has blood or something “gross” in it. And they regularly yell, “HIPAA!”—a reference to the federal patient privacy regulations—even though I always deidentify patients.

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The Heat is On

Leave a Comment / Heat / Pamela Adelstein

During a busy clinic, my eighteen-year-old texted concerns of sudden torrential rains causing flash flooding in our yard, with potential basement flooding. Centuries ago, our backyard was swampland. Now it is developed land and a flood plain.

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Priorities

1 Comment / Pills / Pamela Adelstein

Two dreaded words for medical providers and patients: Prior Authorization (PA). For the fortunate few who have not needed to engage in this process, here’s a definition from the American Medical Association website: Prior authorization is a health plan cost-control process by which health care providers must obtain advance approval from a health plan before a specific service is delivered to the patient to qualify for payment coverage.

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Finding New Purpose

Leave a Comment / Alone / Pamela Adelstein

Having a purpose in life is as critical to one’s well-being as food and shelter. I’ve learned, over my 25 years of doctoring, that a sense of purpose both helps us develop our identity—our sense of self—and connects us to something greater than ourselves.

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Hard Questions

1 Comment / Coming Undone / Pamela Adelstein

My routine clinic day was interrupted by a startling message. During a moment of extreme stress, a long-term patient of mine left a threatening voicemail on my colleague’s phone. The target of her anger was me. It was difficult to discern her garbled speech in the recording of her screaming, but I heard loud and clear that she intended to find me at my clinic and physically hurt me – or worse.

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True Bravery

2 Comments / Unsung Heroes / Pamela Adelstein

Giving ninety days’ notice to leave a job as a family physician at a community health center provided ample opportunity for me to say goodbye to patients. I listened carefully at farewell visits. A Black patient minced no words as she proclaimed to me, a White woman, “I will tell you what I like most about you. You listen and you don’t act like you know more about my body just because you’re a doctor.” Her words made a profound impact on me.

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Balance in the In-Between

1 Comment / Finding Balance / Pamela Adelstein

The voice of a dear yoga teacher echoes in my head: “It is easy to maintain your balance in the pose. The hard part is to stay balanced when moving from one pose to another.” Real life often evidences itself on the yoga mat, and life transitions are not my favorite events. Thus, unsurprisingly, I frequently rushed the transitions between poses in yoga class. As my legs, torso, and arms whipped about, my teacher would call out my name to remind me to pay attention and find my balance in between poses.

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Section 12

Leave a Comment / Suicide / Pamela Adelstein

We medical providers care for countless patients who feel depressed. For those folks, sometimes life feels so difficult and terrible, that they have thoughts of wishing they didn’t exist, or that the world would be better if they didn’t exist. Sometimes these patients have a plan to end their lives. The more concrete the plan, the more we worry.

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Statute of Limitations?

Leave a Comment / Me, Too / Pamela Adelstein

What do you do when you hear about a sex assault that happened years ago, and you currently interact with the perpetrator in your daily life? What if that perpetrator is seemingly a nice person, and you are friends with his female partner and his family?

What if the perpetrator is a patient of yours, and you are also the primary care provider for his family?

What if the perpetrator is a coworker or a supervisor at your workplace, and you spend time together in meetings and engaged in work tasks?

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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

Pamela Adelstein

Long Grief

Is It Safe Here?

Inner Duality

Skin Rash

The Heat is On

Priorities

Finding New Purpose

Hard Questions

True Bravery

Balance in the In-Between

Section 12

Statute of Limitations?

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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

Pamela Adelstein

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