The toughest work emails always seem to come on days when I am post-call, feeling tired and pensive. This particular email came from Patient and Guest Relations at the urban hospital where I practice as a neonatologist.
“I received feedback from a patient who claims that she had a negative interaction with you…during her C-section surgery. She is requesting a visit from you….”
My heart sank.
How You Made Me Feel Read More »
Editor’s Note: This piece was a finalist in the Pulse writing contest, “On Being Different.”
Omar M. Young and Camille A. Clare are two Black academic OB/GYNs from different walks of life. Together, they offer their respective observations on what it means to be Black in medicine. “Through speaking from our lived experiences, we hope to help those who have historically been minoritized in medicine know that they are seen, that they are heard and that their experiences are valid.”
I survived — Omar M. Young
The sun was gloriously blinding, and the air as calm as could be on a warm June morning, more than a decade ago.
Surviving Blackness in Medicine Read More »
It has been years, decades really, since I have watched television. I have the box, watch movies, but haven’t had cable ever. My two children were in first and second grade when I divorced their dad, and the house we moved into had no reception.
“Oh, well,” I told them, “no TV.” They were too little to grumble, but years later my daughter thanked me, saying, “We did so many other things.”
Now I find myself newly single and in transition for the winter, living in a rented house with—you guessed it—a TV with a full complement of channels and full reception.
Donna dropped her blood-thinner tablets on the floor prior to surgery.
“It’s a sign I shouldn’t be taking them,” she said.
Now, sometime later, it makes me smile to think of it; she’s recovered well from the surgery and has resumed her medications. I’d told her to stop taking them just prior to the surgery—a complex hernia repair—and to resume them the day after, but she’s the type of person who does what she wants, what she thinks is best.
From One Little Lady to Another Read More »
Editor’s Note: This piece was a finalist in the Pulse writing contest, “On Being Different.”
Teary-eyed and a bit shaken, I hovered outside the room of our next patient, Ms. Robinson. She needed a lumbar puncture, and I was there as a medical student on rotation to observe the inpatient neurology team carry out the procedure.
Moments earlier, out here in the hallway, I’d sputtered through a case presentation to the open displeasure of my attending physician. I hadn’t been sure how my lifelong stammer would influence my experience on the wards; now I found out.
Overcoming a Stammer Read More »
Sunday, October 31, 2021. Micalyn’s eightieth birthday.
A week ago, I texted my friend Sandy:
I had a reasonable day, but I felt lonely.
It’s so damn frustrating to have lost my best friend, Micalyn. Whenever I think of something I will want to tell her the next time I see her, reality comes crashing down on me.
A Conversation With My Dead Wife Read More »
I had to drive across town for my appointments with the high-risk obstetrician. I had been referred to him by my normal-risk obstetrician due to my age (thirty-six the first time, and now again at thirty-nine) and my two previous miscarriages.
The waiting room was never crowded. It was dimly lit, with photographs of babies and children plastered across one wall.
Today, as at every visit, I studied the photos fiercely while waiting for my name to be called.
Elderly Multigravida Read More »
One evening, at the age of four, I ran frantically into my bedroom, tears burning in my eyes, and started overturning the furniture, peering under my bed and scrabbling through piles of clothes. I bounded back downstairs into the kitchen to check the chair I’d sat in for dinner. Over and over, I asked my four siblings and my parents:
“Have you seen my blankie?”
Finally, I retraced my steps to the piano bench. There sat my blankie, a soft, bright yellow mound. I let out a sigh of relief, safe at last, and headed off to bed.
Editor’s Note: This piece was awarded an honorable mention in the Pulse writing contest, “On Being Different.”
“Don’t leave menus in the apartments!” a voice called sternly as I stood by the elevators in the building where I live.
The speaker was a substitute doorman I’d never seen before. I was holding a plastic bag typically associated with Chinese takeout food, and I realized that he assumed I was there to deliver meals to weary or sedentary New Yorkers.
A variation of this scene took place another time with a different doorman.
Checking Our Assumptions Read More »
Growing up in Pakistan, I aspired to be a doctor. I was fascinated by movies and TV shows centered on the medical profession and the day-to-day work and lives of physicians. To me, they were superheroes, wearing white coats instead of capes.
A familiar figure in the panoply was the stereotypically brilliant and successful physician/surgeon. (Remember Dr. Melendez in The Good Doctor?) Insanely smart and talented, he was also hard-edged, competitive and almost robotic in his laser-sharp focus on reaching diagnoses and treating symptoms.
Observing similar traits among my mentors while in medical school and during my internship, I concluded that while perfect politeness is the norm, feeling or displaying emotion must be atypical.
“Doctor Sahib, Mamnoon!” Read More »
It’s a sunny day, and I’m slowly pacing along the memorial brick path that winds through an untended garden in a vacant healthcare complex.
Scanning the bricks, I stop in my tracks when I spot Mary’s name.
I’ve arrived here early to meet my friend, Tom, with whom I worked years ago when these grounds, in Hillsborough, NC, were home to a busy hospice inpatient facility. In its bereavement offices, counselors like us provided a space for those who were grieving to express their pain and begin to heal.
Ever since my primary-care pediatric group practice adopted electronic records, we’ve used them to give our patients pre-visit online questionnaires that screen for various things: tuberculosis, lead exposure, developmental issues, autism, drug and alcohol use, postpartum depression, food insecurity and so on.
I started off thinking that the questionnaires were intended to save precious visit time by asking patients about these subjects before the appointment. Then I realized that our practice bills the health-insurance companies for administering these questionnaires (and some pay quite well). More recently, I’ve realized that these surveys offered another benefit as well—perhaps the most valuable of all.
For my young patient Remi’s three-year checkup, his parents completed all the recommended pre-visit online screenings.
“Are You a Girl or a Boy?” Read More »
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