I Give
I give her my sympathy: my self-control and dignity as I listen to her story of how her ear has been hurting for one day and she just can’t take the pain anymore.
I give him my patience: my knowledge and my experience as I put together the puzzle of his complex, nine-month hospital admission in a fifteen-minute acute visit.
I give her my compassion: as I politely but firmly tell her that I am not willing to prescribe chronic opiates for her fibromyalgia and depression.
Requiem
I am fourteen. I am in a children’s hospital waiting room to see a plastic surgeon. I am here because of a surgical scar on my abdomen that has caused pain while doing sit-ups. This has not prevented my father and me from making a requisite number of jokes about the type of plastic surgery I am to receive.
Faulty
Cathie Desjardins ~
Rusted nearly through at the base
of their pale green throat,
the amaryllis buds are trying to bloom,
like a person with a tracheotomy
trying to say a poem.
I snip off the buds, leaking dark red
from their diseased wound, trimming
them to clean pale stubs to put in water.
Day to day, the largest furled bud
is loosening into white wrapped wings.
The other three buds are tinier versions
of each other like Russian nesting dolls.
They are plumping with white petals
veined green but their nubs
are softening in the water and I don’t know
if they can ripen without earth.
Lying next to you on a sleety day
I look over at them for a lesson
I might learn, wondering
if I should furl my body closed
Uncertainty
Richard Wu
About the artist:
Richard Wu is a Eugene McDermott Scholar majoring in biochemistry at the University of Texas at Dallas. In his spare time, he can be found drawing, writing and/or composing music. Richard’s work draws on inspiration from medically related experiences.
About the artwork:
“The practice and art of medicine can sometimes involve a great deal of uncertainty. While a clinician may hope for the best for a patient, it is not always possible for every patient to get better. This painting expresses that feeling of uncertainty–while the path behind the person is visible, the path ahead is not.”
Visuals editor:
Sara Kohrt
Letting Him Go
My mother held on to hope until my father took his last breath–hope that he’d overcome the debilitating effects of hemodialysis, the toll nine years of kidney failure had taken on his once-muscular frame; hope that he’d have more time with her, his two children, his six grandchildren.
Holding On for Dear Life
Dad came from a family of smokers consumed by emphysema, and now it was his turn. Barely out of my teens, even I understood there was no hope of improvement. Only death would bring relief from suffering.
Our family took turns keeping vigil at Dad’s hospital bedside, always in pairs for moral support. During each of my stays, I offered a silent prayer: Please don’t let me be here when it happens and, especially, don’t let me be alone. I was scared to death. Mostly, I was scared of death.
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Waiting for What’s Next
By the time the blood vessel burst in the back of my dad’s brain, my nine siblings and I had multiplied to a mob of in-laws and twenty-three grandkids. We clogged the waiting room as we paced, switching from seat to seat, talking to one another and making sure our mom was okay.
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The Patient I Didn’t Want
Krithika Kavanoor ~
When I first met Ms. Ruiz, I was barely three months into my first year as a family-medicine resident. I was working harder than I’d ever worked before, and continually facing new challenges. I knew that I was learning, and so I persevered, but opportunities for self-doubt were abundant.
Maybe that was why Ms. Ruiz made such a big impression on me.
A middle-aged woman with a small frame and short black hair, she’d been admitted to the hospital overnight for severe abdominal pain and jaundice. Resting quietly in her bed, she listened intently to my colleague’s presentation of her case, her sharp eyes fixed on his face. I too listened carefully, and gathered that she would be with us for some time for the CT scans, blood work and other tests needed to pinpoint the cause of her symptoms.
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Letting Go
Ma was a feisty woman who juggled many tasks and got everything done to perfection. She boasted that her kitchen and bathroom floors were “clean enough to eat off of” and that no one could make a brisket as tender as hers. In addition to cleaning, cooking and doing other household jobs, Ma worked full-time at a local children’s store. Nothing ever slowed her down.
Pre-Surgical
The old woman bends forward, rubbing life into her putrid socks to ease the black pain emanating from her gangrenous toes. All the while, she coughs, calling it “the other person inside of me.”
An Editor’s Invitation: Holding On
There are times in life when holding on is a real necessity. For instance, when winter arrives in the Midwest.
Or when your children reach the teenage years.
Or when the government shuts down, and you happen to be a federal employee.
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