Here, in this place where time refracts and sleep/wake cycles are no match for fluorescent lights and incessant telemetry alarms, you exist in a liminal space.
You are neither here nor there, clinically tenuous at best. Your stick-and-poke smiley face tattoos — the first things I noticed when I admitted you not long ago – are a foil to the reality of your situation. Decompensated cirrhosis. Multi-pressor shock. No loved ones at bedside.
Editor’s Note: May is National Nurses Month.
When is hope medicine?
In the middle of the night, a woman’s feet quietly whisked across the hospital floor to my bed.
I was seventeen, grieving the death of my mother by suicide, and the loss of our family unit. I was the oldest, doing my best to keep everything and everyone together. My stepfather was absent, spending most of his time drinking at Lex’s Lounge. My younger siblings alternated between staying at home or with our grandparents. By all accounts, it was a confusing chapter in our lives.
Medicine Without a Bottle Read More »
Hearing her mother say that doctors “don’t care about people like us” motivated her to become a nurse…
Being Different: My Struggle and My Motivation Read More »
When we moved to this house, the outdoor space excited us the most, and we were constantly there. It was a first for us, and a luxury where we live. The garden provided an escape that I never had before: the illusion of leaving something behind.
Like everything in life, the novelty of the garden wore off. The gardeners we hired often spent more time there than we did. Perpetually manicured, it remained beautiful, but undisturbed and underappreciated.
Perfume for No One Read More »
My mother doesn’t think she’s dying,
but she’s in the ER for the third time
in less than three months while
I’m 2,500 miles away on an island
in the middle of the sea, my sister
sitting with our shrinking mother
As a family doc myself, I sought care with a family physician for my family and myself. We’d moved to a major metropolitan area, and I chose a family medicine group affiliated with a small hospital in the city, the same group and hospital who’d attended me for my first childbirth. The hospital’s historic mission was to care for poor patients, many of whom were recent immigrants.
In my new, more affluent urban neighborhood, I joined a support group of new mothers. We were all white and all but me were planning to give birth at “name brand” tertiary medical centers. But having done my residency in a community hospital, I felt comfortable getting my care at one and had every confidence in the staff; the truth was, they’d saved my life when my first son was born.
Patient Identification Read More »
I was 25 years old when I started my internship. My heart palpitated on my first day, as I made rounds on a long patient list. I was dressed in a long skirt and blouse under my white coat. My raven hair, brown eyes, and Indian accent made me stand out.
All my patients were cooperative and my day was going well—until I got to my last patient.
Mrs. S was a frail lady with tightly permed silver hair. Peeking out from under her covers, she took one look at me and asked in a Southern accent, “Who said you can enter?”
I sit on the cold chair, looking at the floor.
“Yes, I know I’m depressed,” I say, then pause.
“It’s just that my mum went missing seven years ago, and she was never found.”
Another pause, my words falling away, my eyes lowering.
“Since then, I’ve never been the same,” I say. “It’s hard; it still is.”
A medical student and then OB-GYN resident discovers what it’s like to be a woman in medicine.
Don’t Ever Let Them Break You Read More »
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