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Latest Voices
The Scream I Heard in the Silence
I was halfway through a busy day as an ER technician when the charge nurse told me to report to Trauma Bay X to help with CPR. I walked fast, knowing my initial view of the patient would be shielded by the overwhelming number of providers who appear during codes. I squeezed my petite body through the blockade of people only to arrive upon an unexpected sight. The patient was a healthy-looking woman under forty years old, a complete contrast to the patients I usually see in cardiac arrest.
The Call That Never Came
The first call came when Dad and I were browsing through Sam’s Club. The second interrupted our drive to admire the fall foliage. By the tenth call, I stopped counting.
The content of each conversation was always the same: “Your mother fell,” the aide from the memory-impaired unit of the nursing home would shout. “An ambulance is transporting her to the hospital. You need to come.” The consequences were also always the same. We found Ma sitting in a bed in the ER, nibbling on Jell-O and confusedly asking, “Where am I?”
The Triumph of Being Human
It was five years ago, but I remember it as if it were yesterday. The anesthesiologist who approached me looked very tired. He introduced himself and explained more or less what I could expect as I was getting ready to go into the operating room for spinal surgery. I was feeling calm, but was not exactly expecting what he said at the end of his talk.
Animal Farm
“A dog, a cat, and a pig walk in…” Sounds like the start of a joke, but it’s actually the tale of my surgical attachment to animals.
A teenager with leukemia. Grateful for a ground floor hospital room with large windows, my dog just a pane away. Nose to snout, hand to paw, inpatient, outpatient.
November More Voices: Emergencies
Dear Pulse readers,
One can’t listen to the news these days or think about the upcoming midterm elections without feeling that our nation is in a state of emergency–a civic emergency that we can all address by making sure to vote and by encouraging others to do the same.
When it comes to medical emergencies, I realized early on in my training that I was not one of those doctors who relished catastrophic situations.
Docere: To Teach
“Hey, Doc, still dying. What’s new with you?” That was what one of my long-time patients said in response to my canned greeting upon entering the exam room.
Yes, I knew he had cancer; I’m the one who first felt it in his breast. Yes, I had seen the pathology report and subsequent scans indicating metastasis. Yes, I was coming off a much-needed, too-short vacation—reminded in an instant of the brevity of life by this wonderful man.
Kindness in the OR
Slowly, though much faster than I had anticipated, I fell into the natural rhythm of my surgery rotation as a medical student. I saw the patients in preop, greeted nurses and scrub technicians, wrote my name on the whiteboard, and helped wheel patients into the OR prior to their surgery.
How I Came to Nazareth
I still have fond memories of my kindergarten teacher, Sister M. Elizabeth Kobierowski at Our Lady of Czestochowa School in South Brooklyn, New York. She was the first of many Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth I would come to know and love during my formative years in our predominantly Polish-American parish. That love would continue well into my teens, when I attended the Bishop McDonnell Memorial High School, also in Brooklyn.
Recovering From Brain Surgery
The surface of the square wooden table where I sit is sticky with spilled food and beverages. Post brain surgery, I’ve been lifting plastic forks and spoons and Styrofoam cups to my mouth with a somewhat disabled left hand that is overcoming what they call “meningioma neglect.”
