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Ruminations on a Ruined Face
Right now, it’s dark red. With fifteen days of radiation to go, it seems it will get a whole lot darker.
At least they warned me about the sunburn. They did not warn me about the swelling and the mouth sores. And the red crusted-shut eyes and floaters. “It’s different for everyone,” they say.
Journal Entry 16-Jul-25
Today a patient died. Very usual for me as a palliative care doctor. She was seventy years old and very sick for a while. This really shouldn’t have surprised anyone, but her family still wept. I was sitting inside the hospice when the funeral home came to get the body. Her relatives watched outside as they loaded her into the vehicle. Then I heard wailing, loud sobs going on outside: a public display of grief that I had not expected.
Conspiracy of Silence
When I was little, my mother would tell me that not everything I am thinking should be said. Years later, in November 2023, it became apparent to me that my father was dying, and I said so. I said it to everybody: my parents, my brothers, my extended family. I told them that David, my daddy, is dying. People watched me in shock. Nobody believed me.
The First Time I Ran Away
The day began like any other in my OB-GYN rotation. A few hours before rounds, I approached a patient who’d just returned from an emergency Cesarean section. I began asking routine questions, until my senior gently nudged me. “Be careful what you ask,” he whispered. “She doesn’t know her baby died in utero.”
Moving On
Denny was one year ahead of me in grad school and a close friend. We shared so many plans about our future! I knew he was gay, but his bisexual partner was the only other person in on that secret. This was the 1960s, and coming out wasn’t an option back then if you planned to be employed in certain professions.
Keeping Score
Has it all come down to this, after a lifetime of quantifying success against arbitrary goals? To achieve, whatever the cost? A competitor by nature, I prefer victory to failure.
Retired and sixty-six, I see my oncologist every month. Just when I’d hoped to be free of success by someone else’s calculation, I’m checking for lab results in my electronic medical record.
Yesterday, I learn that my numbers are climbing up.
La Dolce Vita
While I was living in Florence, Italy, this past year, I didn’t usually travel by foot or car. Instead, I drove an electric scooter. If you saw me on the scooter, you’d probably laugh—especially if you also observed two dumb American girls crash into each other in the middle of Piazza Della Libertà. Instead of making it home in one piece, I was laughed at by nonne, cani, and bambini.
Menopausal Moments
The personal question patients used to ask me was “Are you pregnant?” Recently, a patient inquired, after sharing that his wife had started menopausal hormonal therapy, “Do you also take this?”
I have indeed started what I call my Menopause Trifecta: an estrogen patch, a progesterone pill, and a testosterone gel. Estrogen made me miserable during puberty; helped me become a mother of two children; and drove cyclical cravings, cramps, and crying. But my ovaries no longer produce estrogen. My “childbearing potential” is gone. Unused menstrual supplies gather dust in a cabinet.
Sonder
The chart said that she came into the Emergency Department after an overdose. An older woman, disheveled, who had been found down on the ground. She had a history of schizophrenia and not taking her meds. The Emergency Department stabilized her and then admitted her to psychiatry. On paper, she was like so many other homeless patients: chronic psychosis and layers of trauma buried under ICD codes that adorned her chart.