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Latest Voices
A Day in the Life of a Family Medicine Resident/Parent
5:30 am. Alarm goes off. Time to pump breast milk for my baby.
6:00 am. Husband feeds the baby, I wake up the three-year-old.
6:15 am. Feed the kids breakfast, pack lunches, get the kids in the minivan.
A Hard Lesson in Humility
The Child Who Was Never Conceived
Lost Memories
Throughout my pregnancy, I didn’t know if I was having a boy or a girl–I wanted to be surprised. When my baby was delivered, the doctor yelled, “It’s a girl!” A daughter–what I’d hoped for! Although I would have loved a son equally, in all honesty I’d hoped for a daughter. I thought long and hard about her name, wanting something significant, and chose Olivia, which means peace, and Rose, because I had a passion for roses. Olivia Rose.
What do I do with that name now?
Ruled by Angst
An Editor’s Invitation: Parenting
A Moment in Hospice
She is a collector: stamps, coins, wine glasses of various shades and shapes, Donald Duck memorabilia. These are her childhood treasures rediscovered from boxes in the attic. Her mother kept them all, not knowing they would serve a purpose someday. On the nightstand is a recent photograph of this radiant woman with chestnut curls.
The person before me now is an empty vessel and nothing more; her limbs limp, her breaths shallow, her eyes closed, her age: fifty-four. The dressings need to be changed around-the-clock to slow the march of decay. The wound tunnels deep, exposing her sacrum
Point of Departure
It sounded like a simple question. Do I still have cancer, or not?
The surgeon got clear margins, and cancer wasn’t in the lymph nodes. But my oncologists strongly recommended chemotherapy in case microscopic cancer cells remained, undetectable by any test.
