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Latest Voices
An Abyss of Not Knowing
She looked at me with desperation in her eyes. “I just don’t know,” she said.
“What’s wrong? What don’t you know?” I asked. With tears in her eyes and increased urgency in her voice, M insisted, “I just don’t know…I don’t know. I don’t know!” Hands turning white from gripping the armrests of her wheelchair, she slumped over, shut her eyes and shook her head in honest confusion and fear.
Caregiver Unaware
My Dad is eighty-nine years old and has a glioblastoma, the same as former Sen. John McCain. He’s doing well despite his condition, and my siblings and I are surrounding him with support. Someone lives with him full-time, and we have a weekly check-in meeting so we’re all apprised of his current condition and contributing to his health. Based in our home town, my brother and sister are his primary care team; I live two-and-a-half hours away.
In February I traveled there to work from his home for a week. First thing Monday, I took him to a progress appointment
The Waiting Game
An Editor’s Invitation: Not Knowing
Not knowing is an uncomfortable state for health professional and patient alike. And it’s striking how often, despite my profession’s reverence for knowledge and certainty, I’m unsure–or simply don’t have the answers.
Full Disclosure
After a long night, the frigid morning air slapped me awake as I walked out of the hospital from just attending a delivery. Once home, I decided I had enough energy to do a “high intensity” workout and signed myself up to go in an hour.
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Tell Me It’s Nothing to Worry About
Bill has always been one of my healthiest patients. In his mid-sixties, I see him for annual check-ups and for one minor complaint or another. He is proud of his healthy lifestyle and has an air of invicibility about him. He often rants about how people are lazy and bring illness on themselves.
I’ve grown accustomed to handing Bill far more reassurance than prescriptions. Until this week, that is, when he pointed to his mid-chest and began to tell me his story.
The Epithet
She appeared suddenly in the doorway and hissed, “You’re very rude!”
With her words echoing around the darkened room, the evening nurse stomped off the ward as I went back to assessing my patient.
It was 1966. As a third-year nursing student assigned to the night shift, I shared responsibility for a twenty-bed unit with a nurse’s aide. The evening nurse and I had just finished the two time-honored traditions that occurred with the change of shifts: patient report and counting narcotics.
Happy Birthday
“Yea, that was crazy –,” I caught myself and glanced nervously at the resident, hoping I hadn’t committed a classic medical student-gaffe.
He responded diplomatically, something about having made the right call for the situation.
We should have been in the OR hours earlier, at the first sign of fetal distress. Instead, she was left writhing in pain in the labor bed. I wet a cloth for her face and watched the fetal heart rate drop lower and lower. We helped her
Lost in the Office
I was always truthful with my patients, and I always assumed that they were, too, in return. One family gave me an early, shocking lesson about telling the truth.
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