doctor stories

No One Ever Asked

Suzanne Minor July 3, 2020 9 Comments

Today I greet Mr. Williams verbally, which is very different for us; usually we say hello with a hug.

“Mr. Williams,” I say, “I’m not going to hug you today, with this pandemic.”

“I get that, Doc,” he answers, adjusting his mask; I can’t tell if he’s smiling or not.

Our visit moves forward easily; we’ve known each other for more than three years and see each other regularly for his care. As in the

Life With Father

Gregory Rutecki June 19, 2020 13 Comments

After forty-three years as a nephrologist-internist and teacher, I recently retired from medicine. This final stage of life is a time of reflection. Was I a good physician? On a more fundamental level, was I a good friend, husband and father?

Despite its many challenges, I have never regretted following my cherished vocation. There were far more rewards than regrets. By contrast, my record as a father feels a bit less exemplary.

During my first

Some of the Hardest Weeks

Oladimeji Oki June 10, 2020 3 Comments

Editor’s Note: Since the end of March, Pulse has been carrying special edition pieces on the impact of the COVID-19 virus on patients, families and healthcare workers. In response to recent events, we bring you this special edition on Racism, which is also the theme of this month’s More Voices. In weeks to come, we hope to continue addressing both Racism and COVID in our special-edition series.

Today’s piece is by Ladi

In the Biodome

Sandy Zaeh June 3, 2020 3 Comments

As a pulmonary and critical-care medicine fellow, I care for patients with a broad variety of respiratory ailments. But little did I know, as I examined my patient Mr. Smith in the outpatient pulmonary clinic this past winter, that I’d see him again only months later as my first patient with COVID-19.

Mr. Smith was tough as nails. A stoic retired steelworker and former smoker, he suffered from significant emphysema, but was inclined–by nature and

This Is Why

H. Lee Kagan May 29, 2020 3 Comments

February 2016
Tierra Nueva, Dominican Republic

I’m in the last of five days caring for patients at rural clinics in western DR, along the Haitian frontier.

Tierra Nueva, miles from anywhere, is a collection of clapboard shanties and shacks scattered along a dusty, unpaved road that dead-ends at the border. People survive here by coaxing vegetables out of the earth via scratch farming. The lucky ones have a goat and maybe some hens. The

Burned Out

David Janeway May 28, 2020 9 Comments

It’s been five months since I left my position as a psychiatrist and medical director, and like everyone, I’m wrestling with questions about how COVID-19 has changed our lives, maybe forever. As I read the news and hear from my former colleagues, who’ve had to quickly ramp up to deliver telepsychiatry, I feel a mixture of emotions: fear and concern for my former patients; guilt that I’ve left my colleagues behind to fight on without

Inside the Respiratory Tent

Joanne Wilkinson May 13, 2020 8 Comments

Joanne Wilkinson ~

Spring comes slowly to New England. When I leave the house in the mornings at the end of April, I pull my fleece jacket tighter around me on my way to the car. My preteen daughter’s dark eyes and solemn mouth watch from the second-floor window as I pull away.

In the “don and doff” station at the respiratory tent in the hospital parking lot, I put on a gown and

The Last Pandemic

Tony Dajer April 29, 2020 14 Comments

7:00 on a Sunday evening.

It is day 30+ of New York City’s COVID-19 pandemic. Fire trucks and flashing lights fill the street fronting the hospital emergency department where I’m a physician. The scene erupts into applause and sirens. We doctors, nurses, physician assistants, techs, housekeepers and clerks wave back and flash our individual cardboard letters spelling “Thank You!” It is so good to be outside and, for a few minutes, unafraid. Inside, our

Unmute

Amy Cowan April 15, 2020 10 Comments

His name announces itself as a banner across my ringing phone. We share the same last name.

I hit Mute, buying time while I do the math: Answer his call now and stave off three missed calls and two long-winded voicemails, with him clearing his throat in the background; or take the call, along with God knows what kinds of trauma he’ll inflict on me. I have avoided calling him lately. Subconsciously, I know this

A COVID State of Mind

Ibrahim Sablaban April 8, 2020 10 Comments

I’m a fourth-year psychiatry resident in the final months of training, and I have signed on to continue as an attending physician at my hospital.

In mid-March, my team was consulted on a patient in the ICU. She was one of the first identified COVID-19 cases in Michigan, and our hospital’s first such patient.

The patient was being treated with psychotropic medications, and one of them was decreasing the effectiveness of an antiviral

Love in the Time of COVID-19

Sarah Stumbar April 1, 2020 11 Comments

COVID-19 changes everything–even, or especially, love. It demands that we love differently, and in new ways. For me, this is what #loveinthetimeofcovid19 looks like.

My husband, Lunan, and I are both doctors. Lunan, a urologist, is completing his final year of training in New York City, and I am a family-physician educator at a medical school in Miami.

We are living separately this year–one of the many sacrifices we’ve made in pursuing our medical training

Put to the Test

Paul Gross March 24, 2020 18 Comments

I’m a primary-care doctor in Washington state. I was recently confronted with a ticklish and painful situation.

Here are the facts and the sequence of events:

On a recent Wednesday morning, I saw a forty-five-year-old woman in my office for an earache. She told me that a member of her church had been diagnosed with coronavirus, and that many schools in the area were being closed because of possible exposure. Later that day I started

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