2021 Archives

Translucent

Dina Paul March 30, 2026 2 Comments

For thirty years, I worked on other people’s crises: fighting at 3:00 a.m. for an inpatient bed, sitting with families as addiction took another son, pushing for emergency housing, walking into nursing homes rank with neglect. I lived in a visible world of action and consequence.

The end came in my home office. Even behind the flat safety of a screen, I could no longer hold the frame of a telehealth call. My body became a lead weight sinking into the chair, pulled down by a force I couldn’t name. The pain on my face was a map I could no longer fold away. I closed my laptop for the last time and moved to my bedroom.

A Calling Quietly Found

Favour Rubyson Kharnaior March 4, 2026 No Comments

In 2021, I began carrying what felt like a small but steady flame—a vision of public health that was more than a professional title. In the hills of Meghalaya, India, where beauty and burden exist side by side, I learned that my work was not only about data or reports. It was about healing that reaches beyond charts and protocols, into the fragile spaces where fear and denial quietly coexist.

Between hospital walls and distant villages, I encountered more than illness. I witnessed how tradition, financial hardship, and long journeys shaped decisions about care. I saw families sit with diagnoses that altered their future. Public health, I came to understand, is not only prevention strategies or surveillance systems. It is standing at the intersection of science and humanity—where research meets compassion.

Cancer Is Cruel

Ateh Zi December 12, 2025 No Comments

Cancer is cruel, truly the emperor of all maladies. I witnessed its devastation firsthand fifteen years ago, when I lost my father to glioblastoma just six months after his diagnosis.

Today, shadowing my mentor at the oncologic clinic, I was reminded of that pain. A 50-year-old patient with Stage 4 gastric cancer, baffled by his diagnosis, asked my mentor, his oncologist, what had caused his illness. The oncologist replied, “It’s complex and difficult to pinpoint. Your genetics, diet, smoking, alcohol use, and bacterial infections may have all played a role. So can your race. Being a Hispanic male increases your risk of gastric cancer.”

Fifty Years Later: A Revolution in Nursing

Cathy J. Peters September 20, 2025 1 Comment

I began my nursing career in 1975 at a hospital in New York City. I was a young woman from a small city in upstate New York, eager to grow professionally and also to broaden my worldview. Although I later relocated to advance my education, the experience of living and working in New York City changed my life in countless, positive ways. It was a great honor to volunteer after September 11th, as a way to give back to this wonderful city.

A Mile Marker in the Dark

Tina Harrach Denetclaw March 17, 2025 No Comments

The elderly doctor sitting in for my husband’s young radiation oncologist knew what we needed to hear: “Pancreatic cancer likes to come back early if it’s going to come back. The longer it’s gone, the less chance you’ll see it again. By two years, there is very little likelihood it will return.”

Suddenly, we had a signpost.

Adventures in Fun Dining

Nancy Scott February 14, 2025 No Comments

At the independent-living facility, we take pleasure in our meals. And, the ingenuity of those who prepare them!

At this morning’s breakfast, for example, it was yesterday’s ham chopped and hidden in buttered egg whites. Those of us who remembered the menu smiled and ate, pleased with Amanda’s maneuvering leftovers. But tonight, it’s watermelon strawberry soup, something we’ve never had before. Served cold in little bowls.

The Triumph of Being Human

Frances Smalkowski November 1, 2022 1 Comment

It was five years ago, but I remember it as if it were yesterday. The anesthesiologist who approached me looked very tired. He introduced himself and explained more or less what I could expect as I was getting ready to go into the operating room for spinal surgery. I was feeling calm, but was not exactly expecting what he said at the end of his talk.

The Pink Fabric Clown

Julie A. Dickson July 12, 2022 No Comments

I first saw the pink fabric clown from my perch on the windowsill of my hospital room, where I sat, against the wishes of the nurses and my mother, waving down two stories below to my father, brother, and grandmother.

My Story, Not Yours

Mary B. Wiecezak May 16, 2022 No Comments

I entered her room and introduced myself in the usual fashion. Jennie and Mike welcomed my visit. I explained that I wrote “patient stories” at the hospital and asked if they would enjoy telling me about themselves. They readily agreed.

Mike explained that Jennie’s vital organs were shutting down. Together they agreed to hospice care for her that morning.

Coffee, No Cigarettes

Julie A. Dickson May 10, 2022 No Comments

She smoked. There was always a pack of Lark cigarettes on the kitchen table next to a half-empty cup of lukewarm coffee. I couldn’t stand the smell of coffee for years because it was comingled in my nostrils with curling cigarette fumes. I had to beg her not to smoke in the car, where the combination of motion and tobacco smoke nauseated me until I had to yell to my father to stop the car, just in time to open the door and throw up on the side of the road.

Window of Lucidity

Julie A. Dickson April 18, 2022 No Comments

I sat by her bed for many consecutive days in the ICU, tubes running out from under stiff white sheets, making the trip to Boston after working all day. No hope was whispered around corners, from the quiet lips of nurses, and in a physician’s office the impossibility of a heart valve replacement was given to us.

Watermelon Pickles and Records for the Blind

Julie A. Dickson March 21, 2022 1 Comment

The ticking of a hand-wound clock and the voice of my father’s aunt were what I first noticed as I tried to sit quietly on a Victorian chair with curved wooden legs and a not-very-soft needlepointed seat. I wasn’t able to sit still for long. “Go into the kitchen and get a watermelon pickle,” my great-aunt said merrily. Legally blind due to glaucoma, she could see only shadows and silhouettes. I was an avid reader as a child, so blindness terrified me. Although she applied drops to her cloudy eyes, there were limited treatments and no cure in 1965.

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2021