Stories Archives - Page 42 of 58

Getting a Grip

Raymond Abbott

“Ray, can you bring me some Poligrip?” says the message on my voice mail. “My teeth are falling out.”

I know Barbara means just her uppers, because she has no bottom teeth.

“I don’t get my check until Tuesday,” she adds. It’s now Friday afternoon.

I smile, thinking, Where does she think I might get Poligrip? Does she think I have a supply in my desk drawer?

The support staff, who have a lot of items, won’t have Poligrip. If I asked them for it, however, they too would smile.

Smile is the word you want to remember in this account, because Barbara makes me smile–and I especially value those who can do so these days.

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Bonding Time

28 Comments / Stories / Nelly Schottel

Nelly Schottel

As an intern in the neonatal intensive-care unit (NICU), I am one of several doctors who rarely see or touch the tiny patients we treat. We sit in a back room off a distant hallway, far removed from the babies, reviewing lab results and blood gases on the computer. Much of the time I feel like the Wizard of Oz, controlling a marvelous machine from behind a curtain.

The only uninterrupted time I have with my patients comes at 5:30 am, during pre-rounds, when I hurriedly examine my ten small, complex charges. This is the most rushed part of the day, but these are also the rare moments that I actually spend with a patient.

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(Not So) Golden Years

24 Comments / Stories / Madge Kaplan

Madge Kaplan

When I read news articles about caring for elderly parents at a distance, I sometimes shake my head. There’s a tendency to put the best spin on the experience: as long as you contact the right people, get the right information and treat the ups and downs as just part of life’s challenges, you’ll be fine. You can do this!

I find myself wondering when the author last talked to a caregiver at her wits’ end–emotions and finances drained, logistics spiraling out of control.

I was a long-distance caregiver for twelve years. I believe it’s best to resist a formulaic approach in favor of one informed by the details–and always, always, humbled by the truth.

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Dear Joseph

26 Comments / Stories / Michael Terry

Michael Terry

I stood right beside them as they slowly slid your head into a plastic bag, looped the coarse twine about your neck and tied it tightly. Like the amateurs they were, they double-knotted it to make sure nothing came loose or dripped out. Then they casually walked away, chatting about what would come next.

Within minutes the bag fogged up, and a clear red liquid pooled at the bottom.

That was just the beginning of the ritual.

I’m sure that under other circumstances you would have put up a fight, Joseph, but today you were no match for them. No matter that they were six slender twenty-somethings, and you at least six feet and 250 pounds; you were on their turf and utterly at their mercy.

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Secret Admirer

28 Comments / Stories / Kirsten Nace

Kristen Nace

You will never see my face or know my name. You probably won’t give much thought to what happens to your blood after your doctor says, “I think we need to run some tests,” and the phlebotomist draws it into the tubes with their colored tops. I know I never did, until I became a medical laboratory technologist.

Over the course of a normal day at the hospital lab, my coworkers and I process hundreds of patient specimens–everything from blood to bone, from sputum to spinal fluid. Twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year, the specimens come to us from the hospital’s ER and ICU, from doctor’s offices and nursing homes, from the inpatients on the floors above us and from outpatients who walk in through the hospital’s doors.

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The Couple Next Door

12 Comments / Stories / Kelly McCutcheon Adams

Kelly McCutcheon Adams

In 2005, my husband and I bought a small farmhouse in northern New England next door to Tom and Sally.

They were in their early seventies, married nearly fifty years, with a large family. Tom’s grandfather had built a farmhouse in 1900 on the family’s small pig farm. In the 1970s, Tom and Sally had parceled off the land and built a modern house for themselves, a stone’s throw from the old farmhouse that eventually became ours.

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All in a Night’s Work

5 Comments / Stories / Isaac Song

Isaac Song

I was a college freshman, just starting out as a rookie EMT with the local rescue squad. In the squad building, located near a strip mall in our suburban New Jersey town, my fellow volunteers and I joined the staff supervisors to spend days or nights on call.

On a rescue squad, I quickly learned, patience is key. If you visited the building, you’d see seasoned EMTs lounging around as if they had nothing better to do. They had developed a subdued alertness that let them relax while also being ready to leap into action. Unfortunately, I had yet to cultivate this quality; I sat in silence, jittering apprehensively.

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Solitary Confinement

14 Comments / Stories / Stewart Decker

Stewart Decker

I’ve made a huge mistake, I thought.

The fever had come back. The fever had come back, and I was stuck on a bus. The first of five buses, actually….

I am a fourth-year medical student at the University of Minnesota, but right now I’m a long way from home. I am spending a year in South America, studying international public-health issues by working in emergency rooms, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), social projects and surgical suites.

When this story began, I’d been living in a small, remote town called Central Yuu, in the Ecuadorian jungle, helping the villagers to build a potable-water spring-protection system. It was on a rainy day there that I collected a connect-the-dots pattern of insect bites on my ankles.

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Eleventh Hour

16 Comments / Stories / K.D. Hayes

K.D. Hayes

Uncle Walt died this morning. Finally.

I say “finally” because I believed this day would come four months ago, when he had emergency bypass surgery.

At the time, I didn’t believe Walt would live; he was an ailing, seventy-seven-year-old man with severe pulmonary disease. When his heart started to hurt one Friday, his doctors told him, “With bypass surgery, you might live. Without it, you’ll be dead before the weekend is over.”

Walt’s oldest daughter and my parents, who were with him, told me about the doctors’ recommendations.

As a retired paramedic, I’d seen this scenario before–often enough to have a strong opinion, and my own advance directives.

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Concierge Care

31 Comments / Stories / Deborah Pierce

Deborah Pierce

I am a family physician. Like most of my colleagues, though, I must sometimes step out of the comfort of my clinical role to take on the role of patient or family caregiver.

Generally, these trips to the other side of the exam table inspire a fair amount of anxiety.

During visits to the doctor, I find myself noticing many details and comparing the quality of care to that in my own practice. I worry about how the doctor will relate to me–will I be viewed as a knowledgeable colleague, or as someone who knows relatively little? Will my background be treated with respect? Will my needs as a patient or caregiver be acknowledged? The uncertainty eases only when the physician wins my trust by showing both competence and caring.

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Catching My Breath

7 Comments / Stories / Pam Kress-Dunn

Pam Kress-Dunn

When he was five, my son Daniel went through a rough patch with his asthma. Both he and his sister Allison had been diagnosed the year before, when we were living in Colorado. I never knew if it was the fault of the pollution that too often smeared our view of the mountains, or my then-husband’s two-pack-daily cigarette habit. Or was it the unspoken shriek of anxiety?

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