“We got into a fight last night,” Maria said, more to herself than to me, her fingers tracing invisible patterns on her jeans.
“About what?” I asked.
“I told Louis, ‘God doesn’t exist—because if God did exist, why would this be happening to you?’ ” she answered.
She stood and started pacing the hospital room where her son, fifteen, had spent the past two weeks.
Choosing to Believe Read More »
Amanda was the first friend I made at Royal West Academy, in Montreal. When I walked into art class as a new tenth-grade student, I scanned the room in quiet panic, noticing how everyone was already grouped together. Then I locked eyes with Amanda—the only other Asian girl in a sea of white students. She flashed me a grin, and I immediately made my way toward her.
We quickly became close friends. Over the next two years, we sat together in every class, laughing often. We stayed up late for FaceTime study sessions that often veered off topic.
In my crowded triage room, I hear the emergency-room physician say, “Trauma blood, STAT!”
I have been rushed to the ER after throwing up liters of blood at home. I have GI bleeding.
I’m tipped back on the gurney, head lower than my limbs, with my mean arterial pressure in the low mid-60s. Paddles are ready; transfusion begins.
Two days later, I undergo an endoscopy. Is it ulcers? Something else?
Three Weeks in December Read More »
I am twenty-six years old, and in June 2023 I graduated from Al-Azhar University-Gaza (AUG) Faculty of Medicine, in Northern Gaza. Two months into my internship at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, the Gaza War started.
I was assigned to the emergency department for fifteen months, serving as a junior surgeon to treat patients injured by bombs—shrapnel wounds in the hips, back and head; crushed arms and legs; burns everywhere; difficulty breathing; internal bleeding.
I tried to block out the shouts, crying and moaning and focus on the task and the patient in front of me—while, in the background, bombs were exploding.
Report From Gaza: Seeing Patients Among the Bombs Read More »
It was the day after Christmas, during my third year in medical school. My mother and I sat in silence, the house still heavy with the remnants of holiday cheer. My two siblings had just left for their homes, five hours away, and she was visibly sad. Our family was scattered once more, each of us at different stages in our lives and careers.
Then the phone rang. My mother took the call right there in the room as the news played quietly on the television. I watched the TV screen, half-listening to her short, subdued answers. The call was so brief, and her responses so terse, that I couldn’t tell who had called, or why.
The Mirror of One’s Soul Read More »
Marcia doesn’t know how to ride her bike very steadily. She is afraid of swimming in the ocean and has been known to proudly announce that she’s “not a math person.” But rest assured, she has positive qualities as well.
Her friends describe her as one of the sweetest people they know, and she loves to cook. She’s not the world’s most amazing chef, true, but people coming into her kitchen while she cooks? No problem! She tells them how they can help, with not a hint of impatience. She also fancies herself quite intelligent; when she was growing up, her superior IQ was an item of family lore. (Her parents had it measured when she was five, after quizzing her with flashcards for six months.) The number vastly overstates her intelligence, but still, she’s not dumb.
Marcia exists solely in my head.
Robert holds back tears as we sit at the bedside of his wife, Shauna, who is dying of congestive heart failure. I’m a hospice social worker, and we’ve been talking about Robert’s fear of being left alone to raise their two young daughters.
“She’s the one who knows how to be a good parent,” he says. “I’ve always just followed her lead. I’ll be lost when she dies.”
I nod, acknowledging his pain and fear. “What would she say to you about that, Robert?”
“Thank you for these past couple of days.”
A simple sentence, yet one that forever changed my perspective on end-of-life care.
A faint beeping noise echoed in my room as my eyes slowly opened; it was 5:00 AM. I glanced out my window. The sun had yet to rise, but the darkness and silence were comforting in their own way. After breakfast, I got ready and headed out to the hospital where I was doing my residency training in family medicine.
The crisp morning air woke me up, and the drive to the hospital was no different from usual. Little did I know that the rest of the day would show me what it truly means to be a physician.
The nurse’s murmur was gentle: “Dr. Bui, Ms. Sanchez is still waiting for her Pap test.”
More than an hour earlier, I’d left Ms. Sanchez waiting in an exam room while I rushed to see the rest of the patients on my schedule. And then I’d forgotten about her.
I’d had the inevitable difficult moments in my early career as a family doctor, but this marked a new low.
Recovering From Moral Injury Read More »
I learned of Alex’s death from an attending physician in UCLA’s division of pediatric hematology-oncology, where I was a second-year resident. We were in the middle of rounds, and upon hearing the news, our team grew somber.
“Alex passed peacefully, surrounded by her family and friends,” the attending told us. “Her family wants to thank the medical team for their care and support.”
Alex had been transferred to our pediatric intensive-care unit (PICU) for acute respiratory failure; she needed sedation, a breathing tube and blood-pressure support.
She was only twenty years old, an undergraduate at an East Coast university.
A Final Concert in the PICU Read More »
Editor’s Note: May is National Nurses Month.
When is hope medicine?
In the middle of the night, a woman’s feet quietly whisked across the hospital floor to my bed.
I was seventeen, grieving the death of my mother by suicide, and the loss of our family unit. I was the oldest, doing my best to keep everything and everyone together. My stepfather was absent, spending most of his time drinking at Lex’s Lounge. My younger siblings alternated between staying at home or with our grandparents. By all accounts, it was a confusing chapter in our lives.
Medicine Without a Bottle Read More »
I sit on the cold chair, looking at the floor.
“Yes, I know I’m depressed,” I say, then pause.
“It’s just that my mum went missing seven years ago, and she was never found.”
Another pause, my words falling away, my eyes lowering.
“Since then, I’ve never been the same,” I say. “It’s hard; it still is.”
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