Eye-Opener
2. History of postpartum psychosis
3. No custody of her children
4. In treatment for cocaine abuse
5. Regular smoker
Native Ways
Jan Jahner ~
They came up from the center of the earth, The People
where sky speaks to corn,
speaks to cottonwoods, to runoff in the wash.
Living beneath black-slashed canyon walls
home to sheep and weavers.
He is one of them, my patient
one of the ancients; leathery face carved and quiet
she is his daughter, fingers on the covers,
ready should he wake.
Learning Respect
David Edelbaum ~
When I finished my medical training, almost sixty years ago, I was like many new graduates: I thought I knew it all.
I opened a private office in Los Angeles and paid courtesy calls on the local physicians to let them know my qualifications and my availability for consultation, as both an internist and a nephrologist. (The treatment of kidney disease was then in its infancy, and I was the
Life or Death
It was election night. November 8, 2016. As a southern, affluent, white male from a conservative household I leveled with her: “This election isn’t life or death.”
Care in Airplane Mode
A Prescription for Change
After my second year as a premed student, I felt the need for something more hands-on than my studies. I longed for confirmation
Learning to Trust
The OR report said she’d received two units of blood and was still intubated. Given my forty years of ICU nursing, it sounded routine.
Comfort Amidst the Unfamiliar
I think of my abuela (my grandmother) and of my parents–immigrants to a foreign land. They left behind the familiar to come to America. Childhood memories swirl in my mind, of my brothers and me eating empanadas in the evening, of my mother speaking her native tongue. Whenever I crossed the threshold to my school, or back to my house,
Enriched and Humbled
Janitor-Doctor
An American Story
Sara H. Rahman
“Mr. Douglas?” I call out into the waiting room. A short, grey-haired man in his sixties staggers towards me, bracing his back with his hands. Despite his pain, he gives me a warm smile, which I return.
As I help him onto the exam-room table, he winces, squeezing my hand.
“I’m a medical student,” I begin. “If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to examine you before Dr. Smith sees
Curmudgeon
Lisa Walker
My brother-in-law, Ron, was a curmudgeon; grumpy, sullen, even downright mean at times.
By blood, he and my husband Bill were cousins. In the 1950s, when Bill was just a child, his mother died unexpectedly, and Ron’s mother took Bill in to live with her and her four children. They were an African-American family living in the midst of a middle-class, predominantly white Connecticut township. Their home, located on a wealthy