Occupational Empathy
A Beacon of Hope
During the fall semester of my sophomore year in college, I suffered the loss of my grandma to lung cancer. I became wracked with guilt, anxiety and depression following the death of this essential member of my
Hope Heals
During my
The Playground
However, underneath many of the t-shirts are chemotherapy ports and surgical scars, below the hats are bald heads and behind the smiles are fears, memories and young lives impacted by cancer. Yet walking through
Leaving a Little Sparkle Everywhere I Go
Seeing Patients for the First Time
Music Fills the Soul
Over the years I had come to dread this weekly chore and today, as always, it filled me with such sadness. Tuesdays, on my day off from work, I would drive to the nursing home to visit my mother. There were times when Mom would look at me with her crystal clear blue eyes and say, “Do you know when Beth is coming?” “I AM Beth,” I would exclaim, over and over again when
Monkey Magic
Shortly after I graduated from high school and a few days after I turned eighteen on August 8, 1965, I entered the hospital for surgery. A chronic pain on the left side of my abdomen had
When You Don’t Know What to Hope For
Optimism
“You will get better,” the physician told my brother. My brother was younger than I am now when he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. I don’t think even he believed the doctor, or he wouldn’t have asked me to take care of everything.
Giving Thanks
Victor Fornari
One autumn morning, a woman called the division of child and adolescent psychiatry at the Cohen Children’s Medical Center on Long Island, asking to speak with me.
In more than ten years as the department’s director, I’ve received countless phone calls, but this one instantly got my attention.
“She says that she was your patient in 1984,” said my assistant, Eileen. “Her name is Anne–“
“Jones,” I said
Never Say Die
Christine Todd
In November of my intern year, I had trouble finding the sun. It was dark when I woke up for work, and it was dark when work was done and I headed back home. I’d picked up the service on the cancer ward from an intern named Bob, and Bob had left me six handwritten pages on the subject of Jim Franklin.
And this was the deal: Jim Franklin, thirty-seven years