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Latest Voices
Time to Step Aside
When I was straight out of residency training, my first practice was on a small island off the coast of New England. I embraced the challenge of providing the full range of services that I had learned as a family physician, but that definitely proved to be an uphill climb on a number of levels, both personal and professional.
Although I soon felt very connected with the islanders in general and my patients, my wife and I missed our families back in New York and the familiar offerings of a suburban community. So after three years, I decided to move
Turning Red to Green
I frequently let endings dominate my life. My leaving home for graduate school ended my secure life under the care of my parents. My marriage ended my existence as a single woman who charted her own course, while my divorce ended my status as a married woman. Retiring ended my decades as a middle school teacher. The death of my parents ended my identity as a child and gave me a new persona as a sixty-seven-year-old orphan.
I have tried to teach myself, especially during these pandemic days of isolation and introspection, that with each ending comes a beginning. Life
An Editor’s Invitation: Endings and Beginnings
Life Gives Us Choices (Sometimes)
I recently heard that a former coworker had passed away. The news took me by surprise, as I had not known that she was ill. I was told she had cancer and had made the choice to let it run its course without treatment. Earlier in my career, I probably would have questioned this decision. Why refuse treatment, when it’s available? Why not do everything possible to “beat” the cancer?
I do not know the details of her illness, or at what stage the cancer was diagnosed, but I realize that she made an informed choice and that it was
Floating
Although the hospital where I attended nursing school in the ’60s was large—about 500 beds—the hospital where I got my first job was twice its size. I was intimidated and knew only how to get from the front door to the nursery, where I worked, and from there to the cafeteria.
One evening in my first year there, the charge nurse said, “I got a call from the Staffing Office. They need you to work on Five Center tonight.”
“What’s Five Center?”
“Medical patients.”
“Oh, geez, I don’t know how to care for medical patients,” I responded.
Hope or Despair, That Is the Question
According to the Bible, Eve bequeathed us freedom of choice once she opted to eat the apple from the forbidden tree. The consequences of her act were severe—exile from the idyllic garden. Robert Frost, one of my favorite poets, reinforces this connection between choices and consequences in his poem “The Road Not Taken.”
Since self-isolating in mid-March, I have thought a great deal about Eve, Frost, and the idea of choosing. While COVID-19 has stripped me of my normal life—teaching, ushering, socializing—it has forced me to make choices about the “new normal” that defines me.
November More Voices: Choosing
Dear Pulse readers,
Our November More Voices theme is Choosing.
As I write this, two days before Election Day, our nation is about to do some choosing of its own. And like many choices we turn over in our minds, the final outcome will not be 100 percent on either side of the scale.
In health care, decisions need to be made all the time. As a physician, I choose whether or not to recommend a test or treatment. I choose which medication to propose to a patient.
Waiting for the Future to Arrive
After my husband rolled out of bed and onto the floor–a loud thunk at 3:00 a.m.–time moved quickly. Paramedics. Hospital. Unfolding diagnosis: Looks like a stroke. Definitely a stroke. Massive stroke. Decision: No dooming him to a future without movement or speech, without the ability to appreciate sci-fi and Mozart and spring.
Then the waiting began. His brain took its sweet time to ease into the complete and irreversible loss of function necessary for organ donation. In truth it was only days, but each one felt endless. I sat alone. I sat with family and friends. I walked the hospital hallways, trying
The Gift of Today
I’ve spent my whole life waiting. Waiting to join my sisters in boarding school. Then, once I was in boarding school, waiting for the Christmas and summer holidays when we could go home. And all through high school, waiting to go to university, which, in my opinion, would be much better.
When I got to university, I was in a six-year program, so graduation seemed very far off—so I studied and waited and studied and waited.
