Stories Archives - Page 19 of 58

Another Kind of Healing

5 Comments / Stories / As told to Jordan Berka

Editor’s Note: In the midst of last summer’s COVID pandemic, medical student Jordan Berka interviewed patients at a Bronx family health center, collecting personal stories from its diverse community. Today’s issue of Pulse is the product of one such interview. Rev. Rocke’s words are her own, approved by her for publication.

My name is Reverend Hyacinth Rocke, and I reside in the Bronx. I was born in Barbados. My husband died a little while ago, and I also just lost my mom. I have three children, four grandsons and one great-grandson. I am an associate minister at Greater Centennial A.M.E. Zionist Church in Mt. Vernon, New York.

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COVID Angels

3 Comments / Stories / Melanie Di Stante

I work as a registered dietitian nutritionist in a nursing home located in a New York City suburb, not far from the community that was the epicenter of the COVID pandemic in 2020.

For the past two months, I’ve also been a member of the COVID Angels, a group of volunteers who help senior citizens in Westchester County make their vaccination appointments.

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Final Appeal

17 Comments / Stories / Lea Ratliff

“He basically killed me,” Sam said flatly, sitting my office. “I don’t want to talk to him.”

I nodded sadly with understanding as his on-demand oxygen hissed away each moment, like the ticking of a clock. Why would a patient want to speak to a doctor who’d missed his diagnosis? Why should he?

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Hard Traveling

11 Comments / Stories / Ted Epperly

I heard him coming before I saw him.

Kerflop…kerflop…kerflop….

The sound grew louder as a pale, gaunt man in a red Toyota pickup truck pulled into our clinic’s lot. He parked in front of the window where I was seated.

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Last Patient of the Day

9 Comments / Stories / Pamela Adelstein

Last patient of the day, and of the work week! I was finishing what felt like my Thursday Night Endurance Test, after which I could go home to my family, and eventually to bed.

As on so many Thursdays, I was running behind. My final appointment was with a new patient, Ann Miller. Before entering the exam room, I did some fact-finding.

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Coming Clean

16 Comments / Stories / Alisa Duran

The exam room bears an odor; it’s a musty sweetness, not unpleasant, but one that I know well–fetor hepaticus, a sign of severe liver disease.

My patient, Ms. Atkins, slouches on the exam table, brooding. She’s thirty-four years old, and an alcoholic. She is joined by her mother and her five-year-old daughter, Mari, who skips to my side, long braids bouncing off her shoulders.

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Preparing for Takeoff

8 Comments / Stories / Vidhya Prakash

“As I hang up my uniform, she will put hers on,” my uncle proudly told my aunt when I announced my plan to attend medical school under the auspices of the US Air Force Health Professions Scholarship Program.

Two of my uncles had illustrious Indian Army careers–one as a brigadier general and the other as a lieutenant colonel–but my own military potential was less obvious. I was a stereotypical “girly girl,” a flop in sports and the last one picked for any team in gym class. So when I told people I was joining the Air Force, the reactions were amusing.

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Going the Extra Mile

12 Comments / Stories / Zacheus W. Mbiri

August 2018
Western Kenya

One morning, in the women’s ward of a semirural hospital where I was working as a family-medicine resident, my team encountered a rarity: a disabled forty-year-old lady with crutches. Her case seemed to scream for attention, and I made my way to her bed.

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Easy Listening

4 Comments / Stories / Joan DelFattore

“I’m really sorry,” the audiologist said. From her expression, I could see that she meant it.

It was the winter of 2012, when Barack Obama and Mitt Romney were about to become their parties’ nominees for president, and the case that would legalize same-sex marriage was on its way to the Supreme Court.

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The Things We Carry

30 Comments / Stories / Danielle Snyderman

It has been said that we in health care carry a backpack of sorrows.

There is a sanctity to being on the inside, trusted to care for people in their weakest, darkest and most vulnerable moments. When it feels like control is gone, we steady our voices even when we too feel scared.

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Healing the Little Brain

10 Comments / Stories / Elizabeth Pimentel

I was twenty-eight when I first walked into Matthew’s room in the neurosurgery ward at the university medical center. A newly graduated physical therapist, I was working at my first job in the field. I was there to evaluate Matthew for physical therapy, and I had all the right gear–a white lab coat, running shoes, a stethoscope, a clipboard and a goniometer (an instrument that measures joint angles)–and an enthusiastic desire to help this young man function normally.

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Grieving in the Age of Zoom

9 Comments / Stories / Ethan Dmitrovsky

Oncologists like myself are no strangers to death. It is all too familiar. We give our patients the best that medicine has to offer; we cure them if we can. When our efforts fail, we relieve their pain and ease their suffering. And when they pass away, we grieve. With their friends, colleagues, family members, partners and spouses, we grieve.

Almost by definition, a time of mourning is a time of gathering. Both to grieve and to console, we must be present with one another. I try to be there for my patients and their families and to answer all of their questions with candor and concern.

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