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Cross-Examination

Leave a Comment / Stories / Paul Rousseau

Paul Rousseau

“I want everything done. Please, Dr. Rousseau, do everything. We have two children–they can’t be without their father. Do you understand? Do what it takes to keep him alive!”

Angie, a petite woman with long blonde hair, fixes me with piercing blue eyes. Her husband, Joe, fifty-two, has scleroderma, an autoimmune disease. In its most devastating form, it hardens the skin and destroys the kidneys, heart and lungs.

Joe is dying of sepsis and multi-organ failure in my hospital’s intensive-care unit.

“Please, do whatever it takes to keep him alive,” Angie pleads.

Suddenly, I am thrust into the depths of grief. Not hers, mine. It happens just like that–no warning, no nothing, just a painful inner quivering and the trickle of tears.

“I want everything done,” Angie repeats. Then she stops and stares at me. Her eyes look down at the table, then up at me again.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

“Yes, I’m fine.”

“I didn’t mean to make you cry,” she says softly.

“You didn’t. It’s okay. But let’s talk about your husband.”

“What’s the matter?” she asks.

Suddenly it’s I » Continue Reading.

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Desperately Seeking Herb Weinman

1 Comment / Stories / Steven Lewis

Steven Lewis

Minor chest pains that woke me early one morning–and which did not go away three, four, five, six hours later–landed me flat on my back at a local emergency room, a perversely comforting beep beep beep issuing from the monitor hanging precariously over my head.

Frankly, I didn’t really think that I was having a heart attack–as a former EMT, a devoted watcher of medical television, and a cultural cousin of Woody Allen, I’m ridiculously well versed in the symptoms of a myocardial infarction. However, after I’d endured a morning of chest pains at an age where all warranties have lapsed, it was prudent to go to the hospital. And since my wife was out of town–and my grown kids off with their kids–I drove myself over to the ER.

Once the wraparound curtain was pulled to protect my flimsy privacy and the EKG was recording electrical impulses in my thumping heart, I already felt a little better. And yet I had never felt more alone in my life. So alone that every time a nurse or med-tech appeared I tried squeezing megabytes of information into those swishing curtains of opportunity. I let each of them

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Stardust

Leave a Comment / Stories / Audrey Cortez

Audrey Cortez

Years ago I worked as a registered nurse in a busy surgical pre-admission clinic, preparing patients who’d been scheduled for surgery for the upcoming operation and hospital experience.

My workdays were packed with back-to-back, hour-long appointments. Whatever surgery the patient was facing–oral, orthopedic or anything else–every interview followed the same format. I would greet the patient, who’d often bring along a family member, and quickly escort them both into my small office, seating them in the stiff, outdated plastic chairs facing my desk. On the way, trying to save time, I would explain that as part of the pre-admission process I’d need to do a health interview and a physical assessment, get an accurate list of the patient’s medications, labs, X-rays, EKG results, etc., and also tell the patient various details related to the pending surgery and hospital stay. In that same hour, I also had to chart all that I’d done and make a chart for the day of surgery.

I tried hard to keep the interviews running on time while also keeping the atmosphere warm and friendly. Overall, I felt successful at striking this balance, except when I encountered my biggest challenge:

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A Reason to Stay

Leave a Comment / Stories / Ashish Massey

Ashish Massey

“Aren’t those decorations looking nice?” asks a soft voice beside me.

Startled, I turn to find a young woman wearing a red-and-white sari. Her head and face are swathed in the folds of the sari, leaving only the large red bindi on her forehead clearly visible.

We’re sitting on a grassy tuft amid a large campus green. All about us stand buildings with signs in both Hindi and English. Atop the central building waves an Indian flag, around which workers are hanging colorful garlands, tassels and lights.

“It looks very nice. What is it for?” I reply in Hindi, feeling that my accent must betray my American upbringing.

I am a fourth-year medical student. Two days ago I arrived here in New Delhi, after a sixteen-hour flight from New York City. Today I will begin a six-month fellowship working in pediatric oncology centers. It’s a chance to gain clinical experience working in places where resources are scarce–and it’s also a way to learn more about my ancestry and, in the process, about myself. My parents emigrated from India thirty-seven years ago, and my last visit was at age eight, nearly twenty-five years

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The First Cut

Leave a Comment / Stories / Ralph B. Freidin

Ralph B. Freidin

“Just cut through,” said Dr. Trotter, my anatomy professor.

I had read the instructions in her 1947 dissecting manual. My copy, purchased used, was preserved by stale formaldehyde and smudged with the tissues of past cadavers who’d guided earlier first-year medical students from anatomical landmark to anatomical landmark within the human body.

The time: forty-six years ago. The day: my first day of medical school.

The dissecting room was on the second floor of a building that had been new in 1927. The windows, opened to capacity, vainly invited in any breeze from the still St. Louis fall afternoon. The cinnamon aroma of dry sycamore leaves floated from the sidewalk to the windowsill before being repelled by the pungent embalming chemicals permeating the room.

Amid the sycamores’ sweetness and the acrid formaldehyde, eighty-eight medical students stood beside forty-four black slate dissecting blocks on which lay black rubber body bags, suffused with formaldehyde. They held the preserved cadavers–our Charons, preparing to guide us on our three-month journey across and through the landmarks of the body, from the land of the living to the land of the dead. From there, each of us would be on our own to

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Florence

Lost and Found

Note to My Patient

Leave a Comment / Stories / Sarah Stumbar

You might be surprised to know that I’m lying here in bed still thinking of you two weeks after you’ve died.

During the month that I watched you die, I often wondered what it felt like to be you, with your deep, husky voice, rounded belly and stubborn anger. You’d once owned your own mechanic shop; now you were sitting here in a hospital bed, staring up at the medical team as we whirled in and out of your room. Staring up at me as I drew blood from your central line each morning.

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Nineteen Steps

Leave a Comment / Stories / Priscilla Mainardi

Tuesday morning, eight o’clock, and I have seven things to do. Check vitals, change a dressing, get a patient out of bed, send another to the operating room. Review lab results, give medications, start a blood transfusion.

I have six patients, and they have an average of five morning medications each. I make three trips to the med room for supplies, two trips to the pantry for fresh water.

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Missing Piece

Code Blue

3 Comments / Stories / Stephen W. Leslie

Stephen W. Leslie

I was startled awake at 3:40 am by a loudspeaker blaring “Code Blue…Code Blue.”

As the hospital’s newly hired chaplain intern, I’d been sleeping in the overnight room. Stumbling out of bed and groggily changing out of my pajamas, I made sure to put on my hospital badge.

I made my way to the hospital’s “Z” building, where the ICU was located, and took the elevator to the fourth floor. The elevator opened onto a row of doorways, each decorated with a red warning sign: “Stop! Do Not Enter. Authorized Staff Only.”

I picked one and went through.

I’d guessed right: At the far end of a hallway, a group of gowned nurses swarmed around a woman lying in a hospital bed, her hospital robe trailing off to one side as they worked on her.

I approached the group, feeling a bit intimidated and uncertain of my role.

“Sixteen minutes ago, her heart stopped,” someone told me. Moving closer to the patient, I saw that she was a short, slightly plump woman about sixty-five years old. With a shock of disbelief, I realized that she was one of the patients I’d talked to earlier that evening. I

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