Sarah Nitoslawski
T-cell lymphoma in the brain
MRI flooded with glaring, white-hot streaks
Devouring cerebellum and frontal lobe
A scrawled note in his chart:
“difficult and disinhibited
Neurology–please re-assess”
At the sight of our starched white coats
He reaches shakily for the
Alexandra Rosenberg
1. (PHQ-9: Screen for Depression)
“Depressed? Course I’m depressed.
My wife died ten years ago.
My son? Well…
He does the best he can for me.”
2. (DNR)
“What’s that you call it?
In-tube-ate?
No ma’am.
No way to
Anne Vinsel
Tears in the operating room are different from tears cried by civilians, by veals.
There are rules.
A single tear from one eye is unobjectionable.
Two tears, either one from each eye
or two from one eye
are permitted if they are unaccompanied
Blaise Allen
From this view of your ear
I see folds of fissures,
curves of shell washed
clean by briny tears. I see
Three delicate bones of
middle ear: malleus, incus
and stapes, the smallest
bones in the human body.
I
Francesca Decker
“You drew a perfect circle!” she exclaims.
I nod and smile as I explain,
“Yes, well, thank you…
And now this circle is a plate.
Half is vegetables.
A quarter is starch or sugar.
A quarter is protein–meat, dairy, eggs, or
Kendra Peterson
July first Fellow,
a pager blares announcing
my initiating consult, a 29-year-old
(just my age)
malignant melanoma
and a first-time seizure
while receiving an infusion
of experimental treatment.
When I arrive
she’s already gotten
two milligrams of
Martin Kohn
1.
No cold plums
just the leftover
chocolate ganache
that we left in the fridge
and which I falsely accused
you of eating
Forgive me
as I lick
the sweet plate clean
and look for a magnet
Carl V. Tyler
In my clinic and in the nursing home
Every week I see it
That depthless hollow look behind the eyes
But this time it was your eyes
Sitting across the table
At a TGI Friday’s outside of DC.
And that
Cortney Davis
Let me not be blinded by the glare of the spotlight
or distracted by the tangle of plastic tubes,
the stink of anesthesia waiting in its multi-chambered
monolith of sleep. Let me stand beside the patient
and look into his eyes. Let me
Christine Higgins
The doctor covers my mother’s hand
with his own hand. Her hand is
a speckled egg he is keeping warm.
The nursing assistant reaches out
to touch the yellow roses,
and murmurs, “Bonito.”
Several people come in and speak
cheerily
Roz Levine
We ran from an outbreak of polio
Abandoned the Bronx for a summer hideaway
In the shadow of the Catskill Mountains
Each day we traipsed craggy trails
Stooped low beneath clear skies
Plucked mounds of dark blues
From bushes bursting
Johanna Shapiro
If you’re lucky
the doctor enthused
these drops will save your sight
Still trying to get my mind around
this new fact
that I was going blind
I asked about side effects
Hardly worth mentioning,
he said
his
© 2024 Pulse - Voices from the Heart of Medicine, Inc. All rights reserved.
