Stories Archives - Page 24 of 56

Shock of Recognition

Lying in a hospital bed while awaiting heart surgery, I looked at my teen daughter and my parents, then smugly pointed out the irregular slashes on the cardiac monitor.

“See these?” I said. “They’re called PVCs. My doctor is going to fix them. Make them all go away.”

The asymmetrical rhythm, a frequent and annoying pattern of multiple skipped heartbeats, had plagued me for the last three years, despite my swearing off caffeine and alcohol and trying different cardiac and thyroid medicines under my doctor’s supervision.

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First Time, Last Time

8 Comments / Stories / Kristin Nguyen

“Deeper compressions! Deeper! Make sure you get that recoil!”

I push harder and lift off higher. I’m starting to sweat. My stethoscope is banging around my neck. I should have taken it off, I think. My hair is flying around my face. I should have tied it up. I’m on tiptoe; my legs are cramping. I should have stood on a step stool.

“All right, she’s getting tired. Next!”

Embarrassing…I only lasted through one round of compressions. Other people (taller, more muscular people) are lasting longer. I really need to lift weights. Doing chest compressions is much more physically demanding than I’d thought.

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Dear Nurse

6 Comments / Stories / Catherine Ring Saliba

I was an RN for more than forty years and am now retired. As a recent hospital patient, I documented my experiences. This resulted in a letter to nurses everywhere.

Dear Nurse,

Please be kind to me. I am frightened, alone and in pain. I am way out of my comfort zone and need every bit of encouragement you have to offer.

I arrived at the emergency room a short while ago, was transferred from the ambulance stretcher to a narrow bed and told that a doctor would see me soon. Curtains were pulled around my little cubicle–for privacy, I assume–but honestly, I do wish they had left a small gap to let me see people, activity, life!

I do have a call bell within reach, thank goodness. For that I’m grateful. I do not, however, have a friend or family member with me for moral support. I didn’t want to impose on anyone, but I’m beginning to understand why it’s recommended. Example: I could really use a tissue! It doesn’t seem important enough for the call bell, but a friend could dash out to get one immediately.

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Every Doctor’s Nightmare

10 Comments / Stories / Bobak Akhavan

Bobak Akhavan ~

I was an intern, doing a rotation in the coronary-care unit (CCU) of a large urban hospital. It was very challenging: The patients had complex medical issues, and my fellow residents and I were given lots of responsibility for their care. Still, I felt I was finally getting the hang of residency.

One of the first patients I saw was Mrs. Smith, a middle-aged woman who had come to the emergency room with chest pain. We admitted her to determine whether she was suffering from coronary-artery disease that might lead to a heart attack.

Mrs. Smith was a kind, soft-spoken woman. Her daughter, Crystal, in her twenties, had inherited her mother’s brown eyes and hair. She lived with her mother, was very involved in her care and made sure that we knew her full medical history.

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Unexpected

6 Comments / Stories / Christine Loftis

Christine Loftis ~

“You’re twenty-seven-and-a-half weeks pregnant.”

As I lay on the exam table, time froze.

How can this be? I wondered dazedly. I’m a second-year medical student. I’ve just completed a course in female reproduction and endocrinology. How could I have missed the signs?

I attribute my obliviousness to the surgery I’d gone through only months before: the removal of a twenty-seven-pound, mucus-filled ovarian cyst. My lack of menstrual periods was nothing new; they’d been irregular for years. My recent abdominal bloating must, I’d thought, be the cyst recurring. I hadn’t worried about it because, frankly, I’d always put my health and personal life second to my future career as a physician.

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Bare Bones

9 Comments / Stories / Julie Evans

Julie Evans ~

Clutching my duffel bag under my rain jacket, I dash from my truck toward a house that was built by Frankie, the man I’m here to give the last massage of his life.

I’ve been massaging people since I was five and have been a professional massage therapist for forty years. I don’t make house calls anymore, but it’s an honor to give a man the last massage of his life, so here I am. My parents were ill when I was a child—my mother was an alcoholic, my father had severe emphysema—and being raised around pain and sickness taught me that there’s always something I can do to make a person more comfortable.

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Elephants: Another Day with CFS

7 Comments / Stories / Linda Koebner

Linda Koebner ~

Two elephants won’t leave me alone.

Every morning, as I struggle into consciousness, my brain makes plans. I will get up out of bed, go pee, find my way to the kitchen, put water on to boil, fit the paper into the coffee filter, grind beans, slow-pour over the grinds….

In my mind’s eye, I visualize that the coffee is hot, that the news I read is upsetting and that, caffeinated and dressed, I am up and into my day. My thoughts take me out the front door for a long walk with my dogs, and then to work.

The reality is that I haven’t moved a muscle.

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Exit Interview

5 Comments / Stories / Tamra Travers

Tamra Travers ~

“I’m graduating and leaving our clinic in June.”

Over and over again, in the months leading up to this transition, I break this news to my primary-care patients. I have developed many meaningful relationships with patients over my past three years of training as a family-medicine resident in a large, urban health center in Manhattan. But now it is time to leave and move on.

The fluorescent lights in an overly air-conditioned white clinic room illuminate face after face, all with the same look, staring back at me. Her face drops. His shoulders brace. His eyes shift. Her chronic low back pain tightens its grip. Her once improving mood slips back down. The eight-month-old bouncing and smiling on my lap quickly lunges back to Mom. She senses that her mother is hurting.

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Penal Code

6 Comments / Stories / Lisa S. Gussak

When I see Rosa’s name on my patient list, I smile. I have known her nearly eight years. Under my care, she’s given birth to her last two children, and although she takes the kids to a pediatrician rather than me, we have an uncanny habit of bumping into each other outside the office. I’ve seen her and the kids in the market, at a park and in the hospital lobby, and I have been invited to, but could not attend, a family birthday party.

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Beginner’s Mind

7 Comments / Stories / Jessica C. Stuart

Jessica Stuart ~

I paced in the hallway outside of the patient’s room, going over my mental checklist of items to do during the history and physical examination. Bringing in a paper list was discouraged; we were meant to “flow” through the exam “naturally.”

I stuffed my hands into the pockets of the white coat I’d received three weeks earlier, during the White Coat Ceremony for first-year medical students. Feeling around the deep pockets to make sure that I had everything I needed, I felt my left hand graze a cold metal reflex hammer with a sharp tip, used to test for nerve damage in the feet of diabetic patients. (Alternatively, it could be used as “a medieval torture device,” my mother had said the previous weekend, as I’d practiced my exam on her.) In my right pocket, I felt my tuning fork, blood-pressure cuff and ophthalmoscope.

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Mad Man

4 Comments / Stories / Zach Reichert

Zach Reichert ~

In my third year of medical school, I started a rotation at the nearby VA hospital. Walking toward the polished glass doors that morning, I saw my reflection–clean white coat, assured expression to cover up how lost I felt. It was my second clinical rotation ever, and my first time at the VA.

I found my team and soon met a patient I’d be seeing for the next month. His name was Jim. He’d already been hospitalized for a week–and he wasn’t leaving any time soon.

At seventy, Jim had no muscle or fat on his body. His gray skin hung like a sheet over the ridges of his skeleton, and his bony arms were covered with tiny puncture holes from years of injectable drugs.

Despite Jim’s weakness, he clearly didn’t want to be hospitalized. Each morning, he’d frown at me through bloodshot eyes and snarl, “When the hell are you gonna let me leave?”

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Fan Favorite

3 Comments / Stories / Phillip H.

Phillip H. ~

I was a third-year medical student, doing my internal-medicine rotation in a large regional teaching hospital.

“We have a new admit that I want you to pick up,” my team’s senior resident told me on my third day. “Mr. Ngo is a seventy-one-year-old man with congestive heart failure. He came into the ER with worsening shortness of breath and edema.”

I read Mr. Ngo’s chart and went to his hospital room. He sat on the edge of his bed, his labored breathing obvious even from the doorway.

“Hello, Mr. Ngo, my name is Phillip,” I said. “I’m a medical student, and I’ll be assisting in your care.”

Fan Favorite Read More »

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

Stories

Shock of Recognition

First Time, Last Time

Dear Nurse

Every Doctor’s Nightmare

Unexpected

Bare Bones

Elephants: Another Day with CFS

Exit Interview

Penal Code

Beginner’s Mind

Mad Man

Fan Favorite

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fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

Stories

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