I meet Paul on a 28-hour ICU shift. He displays his dimpled smile like a badge of honor even though his curly hair sticking to his forehead, his darker-than-usual hospital gown, and his sunken brown eyes tell me that his struggle with complications of esophageal cancer have been vast. Something about Paul’s spirit rewinds the clock.
It didn’t happen all at once, as I thought it would. But it did happen when they said it would. One afternoon, a few days before my second chemotherapy infusion, I noticed some loose hairs on my computer desk. In the shower that evening, I spotted a bird nest-like cluster on the drain.
I have been a primary care doctor for twenty-eight years. In the past week, two patients have questioned my medical judgement and threatened me. I have feared going to the parking garage alone after clinic and have worried that I will be sued. Why, after all these years of a peaceful practice, Â have I experienced hate from my patients?
I have generally thrived in school settings, first as a student and then as an educator. However, an experience in seventh grade—junior high—left me so traumatized that I feared I would never again feel comfortable going to school.
Dear Pulse readers,
This month’s More Voices theme is Traumatized. Today, as I write this, entire populations in Israel and Gaza are experiencing trauma. And friends and relatives of Palestinians and Jews in other parts of the globe are being traumatized from afar, as they hear heartbreaking news of injury and death.
Even those without personal connections to Israel or Gaza may be triggered by stories of families being ravaged by bullets and bombs.
As I thought about writing an introduction to this month’s theme, I couldn’t help but reflect that I’ve led a sheltered life.
One winter night, when I was a child, I kept asking for TUMS and spiked a fever. Intense pain shot through my body. My stomach felt hard as a rock. Our family physician rushed from his house nearby to check on me. Using a few tools from his medical bag, Dr. Hart performed an assessment.
My patient complains of chest pain a few days ago while mowing the lawn. He has no chest pain today, but his story is so good I decide to order an EKG, bloodwork, and some other tests. I start running the differential diagnosis algorithm in my mind; sometimes, a patient history is all I need to make a diagnosis.
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.
I turned back to look at him only once, that insane parody of Jesus on the rood, his face turned away in death, arms stretched wide, a small white towel draped over his manhood. I stood there in the E.R. covered in the blood he’d spray-painted me with as he lay dying from a gunshot wound to the chest. Blood spray in my hair, my eyelashes, on my lips and in my mouth. My new white shoes with the stylish aerating holes, also bore the shocking red of a life too soon ended.
Earlier this year, my beloved family practice doctor retired. Over many years, I had had ample opportunity to appreciate his diagnostic skill, his professionalism and his kindness. Moreover, I felt I could always trust that he would respect my wishes. I had a real partner in my health care.
Ma lived a blessed life: more than six decades of marriage, two professionally successful children (a physician and a teacher), and three wonderful grandchildren. Yet, these gifts mattered less to her than her forty years working in a baby/children’s store. When health issues forced her to retire at age eighty-two, she lost her heart and her spirit. Ma spent the days in her old recliner, wearing only a tattered white T-shirt and equally torn white underwear. She only got up to use the bathroom and wander the halls of her apartment building at night.
Dear Pulse readers:
When I was about twenty years old and living in New York, I wandered into a men’s clothing store on Canal Street. There, an army jacket caught my eye. I liked it right away. It was stylish–in a counterculture-rebel sort of way–and I decided to try it on.
It fit perfectly.
The only problem was, it cost more than I wanted to spend.
© 2024 Pulse - Voices from the Heart of Medicine, Inc. All rights reserved.
