The last two years of my father’s life were interesting. Our previous roles were reversed: Dad was now the child, and I the adult. I moved him to a new city and state, getting him close enough to keep an eye on him. He was already suffering from dementia, a realization I came to after he had forty thousand dollars stolen from him.
That’s right. Forty thousand dollars.
Contented, Though Demented Read More »
One winter morning in 2020, I was called to the reception desk to meet my patient Esther and her husband Hertzel. Some time earlier, I’d asked Esther–somewhat awkwardly–if she’d be willing to talk to me about her experience of being diagnosed with and treated for advanced breast cancer, and she’d willingly agreed. Today was the day.
Eighteen months earlier, Esther, in her sixties, had come to my hospital’s ER at her rabbi’s urging.
The Eye of the Beholder Read More »
My name is Ronna, and I have an eating disorder.
Saying the words is easier than treating the disease. Change has never come easily to me. While my disorder is rooted in my past, it has flourished in the years since COVID infected the world.
I am a seventy-year-old Jewish grandma and a retired women’s health nurse and educator. I’ve enjoyed many blessings.
And I had an abortion in 1974.
Three months ago, the constitutional right to abortion was reversed. Reflecting on that Supreme Court decision led me to share my own experience. I hope my story will help other women considering an abortion to know that they are not alone.
My Abortion Story Read More »
In our first week of neonatology, my third-year classmates Jay, Em and I donned PPE and filed like ducklings into an operating room on the birthing unit.
A young woman sat slouched on the operating table, her unbuttoned hospital gown revealing the S-curve in her spine. Her name, we learned, was Elise.
Beside her stood the anesthesiologist, Dr. Lane. He put a hand on her shoulder.
The Role of a Lifetime Read More »
When I was five years old, more than sixty years ago, I was playing on the top rung of a swimming-pool ladder near our home in what was then Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe). I lost my footing.
Being very thin, I slipped between the pool ladder and the wall and knocked my chin hard as I fell. Just as in the film Jaws, the blue water (acrid with pool chemicals) bloomed red.
His steps are wobbly. Our children hold their father’s hands to steady him as they move through the sand toward the ocean. I remain far back on the shore, shading my eyes to make out the three of them as they stand in the shallow water.
I am thinking that he looks like a ten-year-old child from this distance. My sight turns blurry, a combination of sun, sand and sorrow.
I was new.
Seventeen days earlier, a discerning pediatrician had recommended tests to untangle my five-year-old son’s cluster of puzzling symptoms—headache, vomiting and double vision. The alarmed face of the radiation technician in the booth during the CT scan was my introduction to a world where I didn’t know the rules, the language or what was expected of me.
Look Me in the Eye Read More »
In 2015, while walking with my wife, Jody, in our neighborhood, I suddenly found myself bent over and taking tiny, rapid, repetitive steps. I knew I was moving too fast, but could not stop myself. Jody thought I was kidding—until the moment I fell down on a neighbor’s lawn.
A passing driver slowed down to ask if I was okay. I was all right, but thought the experience odd.
I’d never heard the word “festination” (a walking gait characterized by involuntary acceleration) until I saw a neurologist friend a week later.
Love, Marriage and Parkinson’s Read More »
“I can’t do it—I’ll die!”
Veronica is in tears.
I’m a family physician, working in a pain-management clinic in the Bronx. As Veronica’s doctor, I’ve asked her to see me to discuss coming off her opioid medications. It’s part of a clinic-wide initiative to reassess using these medications long-term with patients who have chronic pain.
In the first months of medical school, we’re taught that patient autonomy should be one of a physician’s guiding tenets. The doctor provides diagnoses, prognoses and treatment plans, but ultimately it’s up to patients to make decisions about their own care.
As a family doctor, I often tell patients: “Only you can know what the right decision is for you. I’m here to provide information and recommendations and then to support your decision.”
But over the past year, as my father’s memory deteriorated and his life drew to a close, I learned about the ways in which our medical system limits patient autonomy.
During his last months, my father said repeatedly, “My brain is in chaos.”
What Do You Want Your Life to Look Like? Read More »
I’ll call him Rocky. In a drive-by incident, his father was killed, and Rocky, age one, was shot multiple times.
His initial resuscitation was heroic—he received medicines to support his blood pressure, underwent emergency surgeries and was still attached to machines to support his breathing—but by the time I met him, the drama of his shooting had receded: He and his medical team had settled into a stable routine.
Though I suspect that the team had expressed their grief earlier on, I found this sense of calm jarring and unnatural.
Caught in the Crossfire Read More »
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