Dear Pulse readers,
I’m very disappointed.
I was scheduled to have a surgical procedure this past Tuesday. Knowing that October’s More Voices theme would be Surgery, I was planning, in this letter, to recount lurid details of the operation and of my postoperative pain or delirium, depending upon how many narcotic pills I was ingesting.
Alas, my procedure was postponed for a week.
October More Voices: Surgery Read More »
Dear Pulse readers,
“My only enemy is time,” Charlie Chaplin once said. He was probably referring to the aging process, but he might just as well have been talking about the medical visit.
For me, the hardest part of being a doctor is time.
September More Voices: Watching the Clock Read More »
Dear Pulse readers,
For years my family has attended religious services at a Unitarian Universalist congregation. In this congregation, our minister gets Sunday off every few weeks, and the service is led by a different group of congregants. Everyone gets to participate.
The themes of these congregant-led services often involve coping. They might be summed up as: “What keeps me going?”
August More Voices: Coping Read More »
Dear Pulse readers,
About a dozen years ago, a fourteen-year-old teenager presented to me with some vague symptoms. She was accompanied by her aunt.
The symptoms included abdominal discomfort. I asked to speak with her alone and asked if she’d ever had sexual relations. She looked puzzled, as if she didn’t quite know what that meant. “No,” she said. She seemed so young and lacking in life experience that I believed her.
July More Voice — Abortion: Then and Now Read More »
Dear Pulse readers,
A few years after my father passed away, my mother was visited at her New Jersey condominium by one of her favorite nephews, who drove down to visit from Canada.
Something happened–as I recall, it was a misunderstanding over a condominium parking space that my cousin was using. In trying to sort this out, the son of a friend of my mother’s became enraged and suddenly, without warning, punched my cousin in the face, knocking him down.
June More Voices: Gun Violence Read More »
Dear Pulse readers,
My wife and I have raised two daughters. When our girls were little, and I was casting about for stories and characters to inspire them, it struck me with visceral force how the vast majority of cartoon and fantasy characters were male–from Micky Mouse and Bugs Bunny to Kermit the Frog and Winnie the Pooh. From Donald Duck, Daffy Duck and Yogi Bear to Rocky and Bullwinkle. Bert and Ernie. Felix the Cat. Superman.
May More Voices: Sexism Read More »
Dear Pulse readers,
When I was a college sophomore, my mother called me in tears to tell me that one of my Canadian cousins had died in a car accident. A bright, vivacious university student, Orianne had been dozing in the back seat of a Volkswagen beetle driven by a friend, who’d apparently lost control of the car. It swerved off the road and rolled over, killing her.
No one else in the car was injured.
April More Voices: Accidents Read More »
March More Voices: Courage Read More »
February More Voices: Listening Read More »
Dear Pulse readers,
This New Year welcomes us with COVID’s latest incarnation, the Omicron variant. As Yogi Berra said, “It’s like déjà vu all over again.” Once again each of us must assess risk and make decisions about our daily lives based on data that is incomplete and sometimes alarming.
Here’s what my past ten days have been like:
January More Voices: Omicron Read More »
An Editor’s Invitation: Eating Read More »
Dear Pulse readers,
I have exciting news to share.
Events of the recent past have prompted national soul-searching about the impact of racism and other systemic and unconscious biases upon ourselves, our society and our global community. We at Pulse have always invited minority viewpoints, but we know that there’s more to be done–like making that invitation more clear and consistent, and making sure that our staff reflects our commitment to diversity and inclusion.
A New Pulse Feature: New Voices Read More »
© 2024 Pulse - Voices from the Heart of Medicine, Inc. All rights reserved.
