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

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

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Stories

Total Immersion

5 Comments / Stories /

Winter 1979

After my first ever transatlantic flight, my plane touches down at Kingston Airport, Jamaica. As we taxi towards the gate, I think back on the events leading up to this moment.

Earlier this year, I’d resolved to leave my native Scotland. Two years out of medical school, having done my internship and three stints as a locum in several specialties, I still had no idea for my future. I wrote to hospitals from Singapore to Mauritius to the island of St. Helena, asking about openings for a junior doctor. Medicine was my ticket into the world, to adventure, to finding my path in life.

“ACCEPTED FOR JOB STOP START IMMEDIATELY STOP,” said the telegram from the University of West Indies Hospital in Jamaica.

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The Nightstand

6 Comments / Stories /

Editor’s Note: This piece was a finalist in the Pulse writing contest, “On Being Different.”

Poverty has many ways of marking a child.

Growing up in the 1950s and early 1960s in a Southern cotton-mill town, I was the fourth of six children of a single mother who did the best that she could; but her job as a hemmer of washcloths in Plant #1 paid little, and six children had many necessities that shut the door on nonessentials.

Growing up in the textile town, I was reminded of my poverty by what I could not have.

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My Doctor Joe

8 Comments / Stories /

Winter 1961

I recall Dr. Ulrich making a house call that night to our residential shoebox on Longview Avenue in Akron, Ohio. My parents were renting the pint-size place. My mother loathed visiting cemeteries and talking about death, so I suspect she felt edgy living across the street from the roomy Sherbondy Hill Cemetery.

That freezing night in 1961, I lay in my parents’ bed, a big bed that swallowed up my little-boy body. I wanted to fall asleep, but I was too restless.

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A Duplexity of Maladies

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Editor’s Note: This piece was a finalist in the Pulse writing contest, “On Being Different.”

I have a body besieged by two chronic illnesses, namely multiple sclerosis (MS) and bipolar disorder. My health profile has been described as “abnormal,” but I’ve always resisted that term in favor of “atypical,” for my poor health renders me unusual but not inhuman.

Still, the truth is that I am essentially and profoundly sick. My imbalanced body frequently aches, hurts and falls, my labile mind races or crawls. While medications can ameliorate my symptoms, they cannot cure my illnesses.

My body betrayed me when I was on the cusp of adulthood.

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No One Left to Save

11 Comments / Stories /

“Do you want to call time of death?”

I stared up at my resident Hassan, shocked by his question. My stethoscope was still pressed to the elderly patient’s emaciated chest. Her agonal breaths, those last shallow breaths the body takes before death, had ceased. Only silence filled my ears.

Hassan smiled at me. I knew that he was offering this to me as a reward for all my hard work, but still, I was stunned.

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Chameleon

9 Comments / Stories /

Editor’s Note: This piece was awarded an honorable mention in the Pulse writing contest, “On Being Different.”

On my first day of kindergarten, in Little Rock, Arkansas, I discovered that I was different. All of my classmates had experienced their first day of school together in August, but I didn’t turn five until after Labor Day, so my first day of school, in September, came coupled with being the new girl in class.

Also, for the first time in my life, someone asked me a question that would follow me, in various forms, for the rest of my life:

“Are you Black or white?”

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The VIP

13 Comments / Stories /

It was late at night, and as the neurosurgery resident on call, I was alone in the hospital, wishing that I could lie down, or even just slow down, in the midst of a busy shift.

I sat for a moment, awaiting the inevitable next phone call or text. Predictably, my phone rang within minutes. It was the trauma-team resident.

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Don’t Ever Let Them Break You

21 Comments / Stories /

Editor’s Note: This piece was awarded an honorable mention in the Pulse writing contest, “On Being Different.”

I was a woman in medical school before there were more women students than men—back when women were expected to be more masculine than the men if they wanted to succeed as doctors, back when the idea that we could report our medical-school professors for sexual harassment was just a twinkle in the eye of someone braver and less conflict-avoidant than I was.

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Cherish the Gift

17 Comments / Stories /

It was a perfect autumn day in St. Petersburg, Florida. The year was 1999, but I still remember that day’s sparkly blue sky. I was driving down a busy street, peering at the signs to locate my destination. Finally I spotted the nursing home, a two-story concrete structure, grey and uninviting. I took a deep breath, parked and walked to the entrance.

Entering the small lobby, I was overwhelmed by the nauseating smell of stale urine. To reach the front desk, I had to weave through a jumble of wheelchairs, some holding slouched bodies, others supporting patients who called out and reached to touch me as I walked by.

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His Mother’s Son

15 Comments / Stories /

Editor’s Note: This piece was awarded an honorable mention in the Pulse writing contest, “On Being Different.”

On a crisp Saturday morning in October, I drove through the early morning fog to the salon for my regular hair-coloring appointment.

I looked forward to these appointments. The hour spent there was my “me” time, during which I enjoyed lighthearted conversations with my colorist, Tina, about movies or fashion while she did my hair. These chats, which took me to a different world—the world of normal people—were followed by a cup of rejuvenating herbal tea. After a hard week as an oncologist in a busy clinic, it was a welcome relief.

This time was different, however.

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Disposable

16 Comments / Stories /

As a third-year medical student, I was two weeks into my trauma-surgery rotation when my resident casually called me “disposable.” I wasn’t offended—in fact, the word perfectly described how I’d been feeling. I also understood that it was no reflection on my performance; rather, it was a commentary on medical students in general.

Surgery was the first rotation of my third year—and, now that the COVID pandemic was winding down, it was also my first in-person clinical rotation.

I’d never been on the floors of the hospital. I felt clueless, underprepared and incompetent.

Disposable Read More »

Scenes From an Emergency Room–October 7, 2023

10 Comments / Stories /

Editor’s Note: Today we carry a submission received from an Israeli child-and-adolescent psychiatrist who works at Soroka Medical Center, about twenty-five miles from the Gaza Strip. In this account (translated by colleague Jennie Goldstein), Hadar Sadeh describes her experiences dealing with victims of violent trauma on October 7. As events have unfolded, we at Pulse are acutely aware that many stories on both sides of this conflict need to be told.

Scenes From an Emergency Room–October 7, 2023 Read More »

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