2023 Archives

Of a Gun and a Cigarette

Tonya Saliba August 22, 2025 No Comments

Today, while sitting with my kids in a cafe at a busy intersection, I saw a man stick his arm out of a car window. I spotted a metallic glint in the afternoon sun. I couldn’t see his face due to the glare through the cafe window. But I could see him point his arm and hold it horizontally in my direction.

I flinched. I went into survival mode. I told my kids calmly but firmly to move their chairs away from the window immediately. When they asked why, as they noisily scraped their wooden chair legs against the polished linoleum, I lowered my voice and said, “There’s a man with a gun at the stop light. It’s pointed at the restaurant.”

Journal Entry 16-Jul-25

Astra Chang-Ramsden August 1, 2025 No Comments

Today a patient died. Very usual for me as a palliative care doctor. She was seventy years old and very sick for a while. This really shouldn’t have surprised anyone, but her family still wept. I was sitting inside the hospice when the funeral home came to get the body. Her relatives watched outside as they loaded her into the vehicle. Then I heard wailing, loud sobs going on outside: a public display of grief that I had not expected.

The Happiest Man I Ever Met

Chad Emerson Childers June 14, 2025 No Comments

A patient is being wheeled fast as hell down the hallway of our Level 1 trauma center. Blood is dripping off the steel frame of his cart. A collection of the older, goopier stuff rests in a pool under his left leg. I see an entry point near the middle of his tibia as he enters the shock room, a great crevasse. I do not see an exit.

A Rotten Apple

Matthew Ryan May 30, 2025 No Comments

I fell, and I didn’t think I’d be able to get back up.

I’m not even sure I wanted to. But I did. Bruised. Broken. Not done.

Outside, I was rough—scarred, dented, not the kind of thing anyone wanted to look at, much less carry home. I wasn’t shiny or firm. I wasn’t fresh. I was a rotten apple.

Perfume for No One

Youssef Eid May 19, 2025 1 Comment

When we moved to this house, the outdoor space excited us the most, and we were constantly there. It was a first for us, and a luxury where we live. The garden provided an escape that I never had before: the illusion of leaving something behind.

Like everything in life, the novelty of the garden wore off. The gardeners we hired often spent more time there than we did. Perpetually manicured, it remained beautiful, but undisturbed and underappreciated.

Personal Days

Karen E. Lasser July 2, 2024 No Comments

This week, our resident clinic was decimated. The interns were out on a “personal week”-the week between first and second year of residency. One of our senior residents was on maternity leave, and the three remaining residents were all taking a “personal day” here and there to a attend a funeral, visit a sick grandmother, etc. My co-preceptor, realizing we would not need two preceptors this week, had taken a few days of vacation. Which left me with two new interns, eager and enthusiastic to learn, and my senior resident on her last day of clinic.

Be Careful

Anna Kenney February 5, 2024 No Comments

Though I hadn’t been paged and had plenty to do as the hospital’s palliative care attending physician on a busy weekend, I felt drawn to Harold’s room. His daughter was outside, locked in a nurse’s embrace, barely able to speak through her tears; her father had just taken his last breath.

“Don’t go in there right now,” she said to me. “My mom needs to be alone with my dad.”

Telehealth from the Driveway

Pam Adelstein December 22, 2023 2 Comments

My computer chimed a familiar DING, and my patient’s face flashed up on the screen. They were seated in their car, parked in the driveway of their grandchildren’s home, before they went inside for a visit. My patient eagerly declared, “Today is the day!” A broad smile graced their face. “I’m ready,” they said.

Oh, Susanna

Nidhi Lal December 13, 2023 2 Comments

Susanna came into the U.S. fighting the mosquito-borne viral disease chikungunya. Her thin body, wracked with fever, shivered and fought off the infection; her family back in her home country called around for a PCP who would see her. They found me and scheduled an appointment. I knew the signs and symptoms of chikungunya, and I knew the hard mass I felt in her belly was something else.

She was diagnosed with cancer two days later and started chemotherapy as soon as she recovered from her infection.

The Scabs We Have

Julie Miley Schlegel December 13, 2023 2 Comments

In September, I was called back for dermatological surgery after a biopsy on my left calf revealed a severely dysplastic nevus—a result of the hours I spent tanning in the 1990s.

I canceled my morning clinic while I had the procedure. The surgeon took what she needed and stitched me up. The medical assistant put on a bandage and told me to keep the leg elevated for 12 hours.

Camp Fire Memories

Aldebra Schroll December 8, 2023 1 Comment

Five years have passed since the morning of November 8, 2018. As I headed out that day, an unusual cloud formation was developing in the eastern sky, over the foothills of the Sierra Nevada range. My colleagues and I would soon learn a wildfire had been sparked and was engulfing the neighboring communities of Concow and Paradise, California. It would become the state’s most destructive and deadly wildfire, killing eighty-five residents, many of whom died in their cars while attempting to flee.

Perception of Pain

Kaveri Patel December 8, 2023 7 Comments

It starts as a dull sensation just below my rib cage, as if someone is trying to blow up a balloon inside me. Despite the expanding discomfort, I try to focus on my breathing. Without the ability to fully exhale, it’s difficult to calm my nervous system and avoid the dark places my thoughts are taking me: It’s an abdominal aortic aneurysm, gallstone pancreatitis, a perforated ulcer!

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