Stories Archives - Page 37 of 58

A Routine Transgender Visit

Nat Fondell

“Hey, Rick. They warned you about me, I hope?”

My routine med-student opening line elicits a slight smile from my balding forty-two-year-old patient and the patient’s wife. As we shake hands, I continue the script.

“I’m Nat–the medical student. What brings you in today?”

“Well, I’d like to transfer my care to this clinic. We’ve brought my medical records.”

Together, they heave stacks of papers onto the desk. Rick’s hands slide back into the pockets of well-worn work jeans.

“Can you tell me a bit about yourself?” Classic open-ended question.

“Well, I’ve been seeing specialists for years about my headaches. That explains most of the paperwork. High blood pressure and high cholesterol. Plus my family has a bunch of cancers.”

“And what pronouns do you prefer?” Here’s where the script deviates from the medical-school boilerplate.

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A Day in the Life of a Psychiatrically Hospitalized Clinician (Part 2)

13 Comments / Stories / Liat Katz

Editor’s Note: This is the conclusion of Liat Katz’s remarkable story. Part 1 was published last week.

Lying here on this hard bed on the psych floor, staring at the white walls and ceiling, I think of my clients–and I don’t feel so alone. Their everyday experience is not so different from my short-lived experience here at the hospital. Often, they endure a whole day’s wait in the dirty Social Security and social-services offices, only to be treated patronizingly and have their needs go unmet.

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A Day in the Life of a Psychiatrically Hospitalized Clinician (Part 1)

29 Comments / Stories / Liat Katz

Editor’s Note: This week Pulse presents the first installment of Liat Katz’s brave and forthright story. The conclusion will appear next week.

I am a licensed clinical social worker. And, occasionally, a mental patient. Today, in this inpatient psychiatric unit, I am more a patient than a social worker.

It is Monday morning, and I am eating breakfast across from Owen, a muscular, flannel-clad, Paul Bunyan-looking patient. Little pieces of his scrambled eggs keep landing on his copper-colored beard. I sort of want to motion with my hand at where the eggs are on his face, but I’m too tired, and I don’t really care. About anything.

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Giving Blood–and Other Acts of Courage

6 Comments / Stories / Liz Witherell

Liz Witherell

I donated blood today. I’m one of those people who doesn’t shudder at the thought of needles piercing my skin, or get queasy as I watch the blood drain from my vein into the collection bag. It’s no big deal. I eat the cookies and drink the juice afterwards, and I kind of enjoy talking with the elderly volunteers.

I think I’m lucky. I know so many people who are sickened by the sight of blood, afraid of needles and terrified at the thought of pain.

Several years ago, a nurse-practitioner friend convinced me to volunteer a few hours a week at a free dental clinic. I took health histories and blood pressures. By the time people came to us, their teeth were generally beyond saving. Their mouths were infected, their gums were inflamed, and they often had other conditions, such as diabetes and heart disease. But still they’d put off coming to the clinic as long as possible, because they were afraid it would hurt.

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A Grandson’s Tale

12 Comments / Stories / Jonathan Gotfried

Jonathan Gotfried

From my wife’s grandparents’ Manhattan apartment, I could hear the noises of traffic and pedestrians in Central Park, seven floors below. The sounds made a refreshing change from the beeping monitors, overhead pages and ringing phones that are the usual backdrop to my work as a physician in a large Philadelphia medical center. Here the only background conversations I heard were those of loved ones in the kitchen, not those of patients’ family members, overheard through flimsy curtains ringing an adjacent bed.

The hospice nurse quietly moved about the apartment. My wife sat close by her grandfather, Werner (whom we called Saba, Hebrew for grandfather), speaking softly with him as he lay there in bed. Our two-year-old son sat nearby, dutifully flipping through a Dr. Seuss book, occasionally drawing my attention to a funny-looking fish or tree.

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You Have a Split Personality

6 Comments / Stories / Raymond Abbott

Raymond Abbott

I am a social worker working with severely mentally ill adults. One of my clients is Lawrence Walters, a small, thin man in his late fifties, very schizophrenic even while on medication. He talks about spirits holding him down, making him do things he doesn’t wish to do. He is impossible when off meds, tolerable when on, and difficult just about all the time. But at last I’ve got an edge on Lawrence–and it’s not because of any particular social-work skill.

Lawrence often asks me to take him places–usually shopping, but sometimes to medical appointments, such as an eye exam. (Lawrence is missing one eye, which some say he himself poked out when especially ill. I can’t confirm this story, however, and I’ve not asked him.)

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Lost in the Hospital

7 Comments / Stories / Christine Henneberg

It’s easy to get lost in the hospital. I’m only an intern, and already I know it like the hallways of my old high school, every doorway and doorknob. But overnight, as I float between the floors and the units, answering pages, I quickly lose track of where I am, what time it is, what day it is.

I am vaguely aware that I’m on the fifth floor, the top floor of the hospital, when the nurse approaches me.

“Doctor, the patient in Bed 32.”

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Ritual Healing

16 Comments / Stories / Joseph Fennelly

Joseph Fennelly

In recent years the medical profession has witnessed a surge in burnout and depression among physicians and other health professionals. Efforts have been made to address this–for example, by offering Schwartz Center Rounds, in which caregivers openly and honestly discuss the social and emotional issues they face. Health professionals can also reduce stress through counseling, meditation or massage, or through practical steps such as cutting back on their working hours.

In the most traumatic cases–those marked by the death of the patient–physicians have yet another powerful source of comfort and emotional support. This support, offered by the patient’s family, comes within a context that allows the caregiver to accept it without forfeiting professionalism.

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Ten-Minute Miracle

11 Comments / Stories / Melissa Zhu Murphy

Melissa Zhu Murphy

On Mother’s Day 2007, as I was finishing my freshman year at Vanderbilt University, I joined my parents for a warm, happy reunion in an Italian restaurant, celebrating both the day and the completion of my first year of premedical studies.

My father was blissfully breathing in the steam wafting up from his ravioli in lobster cream sauce as my mother prepared to dig into an enormous plate of basil penne pasta with spicy meatballs.

I took a bite of crusty Italian bread and lifted a forkful of manicotti to my mouth, getting ready to describe how hard I’d had to study for my biology and chemistry finals. Then I realized that something was wrong.

Very wrong.

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Going Solo

28 Comments / Stories / Amanda Anderson

Amanda Anderson

I softly scrub blood from the teeth of a man who died moments ago. From the chair where I sat quietly writing nursing notes while he quietly ended, my patient’s sallow skin and sunken cheeks looked so peaceful. But the weeks of stagnant residue on his teeth bothered me.

To brush the teeth of someone who was in the process of dying would have contradicted my orders to provide comfort care, and my own good sense. So I waited until he took his last breaths before I closed my computer screen and gathered my tools–washcloth, water, toothbrush.

I brush now, so briefly, for the pride of this man I didn’t know, and I brush for the family that I wish was here to care about him. He does have family–it is they who authorized removing his life support, in keeping with the wishes expressed in his living will. Their brief go-ahead over the phone satisfied their legal obligations, but their absence during his actual passing has left me feeling oddly confused.

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Night Call

10 Comments / Stories / Heidi Johnson-Wright

Heidi Johnson-Wright

When I was nine years old, I was diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disorder that triggers an inflammatory response of the joints, causing swelling, stiffness and severe pain. The disease sped through my body like wildfire.

By the time I was fifteen, my hip joints were utterly ruined. Just getting out of bed was a slow, carefully choreographed sequence of movements, with frequent pauses to allow the pain to subside. When I walked, my hips emitted sickening crunching sounds, bone grinding on bone.

I kept denying how bad my hips were, because I knew that the only solution was joint-replacement surgery. The thought of having my joints sawed through and torn away, and then having metal replacements hammered down into the bone shafts, petrified me. So did the prospect of a long, painful recuperation. But one day I tearfully confessed to my mother that I couldn’t take it anymore.

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Special Delivery

3 Comments / Stories / Deborah Pierce

Deborah Pierce

I first met Marie five years ago. A petite, soft-spoken woman in her thirties, she was the patient of one of the residents whom I supervise at our community hospital. Marie worked in housekeeping for a large corporation; she and her husband, a bus driver, had a six-year-old son. Now she was twenty-six weeks (six months) pregnant with their second child.

Marie’s blood pressure was markedly elevated (168/120), she had fairly high amounts of protein in her urine, and her baby measured small on the ultrasound. These pointed to severe preeclampsia–a serious complication that can quickly worsen, leading to kidney damage, seizures or even death for mother and child, and that can only be cured by delivering the baby.

The resident and I reached a swift, unanimous decision: Marie’s pregnancy was far too high-risk for our hospital. She needed to be transferred to the University Hospital across town–“the U,” as it’s known. And the baby would need to be delivered soon.

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