I’m Still Here
Inez Martinez as told to Erin McCoy ~
Editor’s Note: Having just finished her first year of medical school, Erin McCoy became a summer intern for Pulse and embarked on a project to collect patient stories through interviews. One day, a family-medicine resident at a Bronx family health center told her about an interesting lady in Exam Room 8. “I go there,” Erin says, “introduce myself and explain my mission. She agrees to speak to me, on one condition.”
As long as you don’t ask me how many drinks I have in a month.
I promise her that I won’t, and press “record” on my iPhone.
I’m a survivor of 9/11. But I don’t want to talk about that.
Adieu
One week into a three week “staycation,” I enjoyed drinking coffee on the loveseat with my husband, holding his hand and pondering life. We sat in comfortable silence, but an inner turbulence unsettled me. He tapped his foot to some inaudible percussion.
“I’ve got two weeks of vacation left, and I already dread going back to work,” I blurted without thinking, without self-editing.
His foot stilled. “Then don’t,” he said.
40,674 Finger Pricks
Jennifer Caputo-Seidler
About the artist:
Jennifer Caputo-Seidler is a hospital physician at the University of South Florida. She is also a corgi mom, baker, bookworm and type I diabetes advocate. She can be reached on Twitter @jennifermcaputo.
About the artwork:
This photo depicts a moment in the life of an individual with type I diabetes. At the time, the subject had been living with diabetes for 6,779 days, which included 40,674 finger pricks and 47,453 insulin injections.
Visuals Editor:
Sara Kohrt
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Let Him Go? Hell, No!
Several decades ago, my elderly patient, Mr. Waverly, coded in the ICU. Dr. Schiller, myself, and three other nurses tried feverishly to resuscitate him. Unfortunately, without success.
Fond memories flashed by of the patient I nicknamed, “My easiest patient with the sickest heart.” He struggled with uncomfortable abnormal heart rhythms and fainting spells, yet he never complained. While he confided in me about his fear of dying, he also made me laugh with funny cow stories from his dairy farm.
Minutes ago, Mr. Waverly and I had been chatting about his newest grandchild. Now, he was gone, and I was holding his hand. Looking down at his lifeless body and feeling the coolness of his skin, I mentally let go of my favorite patient.
Choking back tears, Dr. Schiller pronounced the time of death. We bowed our heads around the bedside, observing a rare moment of silence in the ICU. The pungent odor of death filled the air as his sphincter relaxed. Clinical death.
Before I could turn off the monitor screens, another cardiologist, Dr. Revell, rushed in, “I just got the page, what’s going . . . ?
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The Hardest Decision
I prepared to let go and wished for more time. There was nothing left but to let my youngest son be at peace. Tomorrow we would unplug the machines.
His transplanted liver was failing, and he was too sick to get another. He coded three days earlier. Now, beneath the sedatives, paralytics and seizure medications, he was convulsing continuously.
There was no hope for meaningful recovery. As a physician, I knew it was the right choice. As a mother, I was heartbroken. How could I reconcile the rightness of the decision with something that felt so wrong?
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Single Steps
Sometimes, the answer is so small and simple it goes unnoticed at the time.
I had barely entered my twenties when my parents died, within two years of one another. Well-wishers inundated me with questions about whether I would keep the family homestead, continue my education or change jobs. Should I donate my parents’ clothing and furniture and start a new life in a smaller place? After all, the old status quo was gone, never to return.
Where She Will Be
Francie Camper ~
City snow blankets my little mother in her hospital
bed in her bedroom, no wonder she is confused,
pointing to things in the air, on the ceiling that only
she can see. She might be hailing a cab. She raises
her head to tell me, Four members of the Isenberg
family came to visit and one was Mima Ettel,
who is already buried in the plot and she doesn’t
seem to know this. A land of the living and a land
of the dead, why should she have to remember
the difference? We paid a thousand dollars to move
her grandfather’s monument to make room for her.
What If …
… You were thirty years old, and your mother was also my patient? What if she said you wouldn’t speak to her? What if she said you told her your grandfather sexually abused you? What if she said, “My father was a lot of things, but he was not a sexual predator”? What if she called you “a liar”? What if she didn’t believe you because your sister denied it happened to her? What if you knew that she knew? What if I couldn’t convince her to validate you? What if you cut off all family ties and turned to drugs? What if you killed yourself?
Surrender
The jolt of pain shot up my back. Oh shit! I immediately stopped rowing. But then I recommenced my “high intensity” work out, with some modifications, not saying a peep to the instructor. Within a day, I had searing pain down my right thigh, like someone was tearing apart my quad with hot tongs. Every time I tried to stand, I turned ashen white and collapsed down. Me, the marathon runner; me, the active ob/gyn; me, the one who doesn’t know how to say no. Me, brought to my knees by overwhelming pain.
Immediately, I’m texting my partner. Prescribe me some steroids please. I’m thinking it has to be a herniated disc. My daughter drives me to the pharmacy, and I can’t make the walk to the back of CVS. I stop part way then, when I’m close, collapse into a chair. My daughter looks scared. “Just ask them for my prescription,” I tell her, trying to sound calm. I don’t know how I’m going to get back to the car.
Death and Forgiveness
“We need to leave. Joan’s father just died.”
My husband, Richard, our newborn baby, Andy, and I were in Binghamton, New York, where Richard was interviewing for a postdoctoral fellowship.
I had been in our host’s guest room nursing Andy when someone called Richard to the phone. As I overheard Richard’s words, my consciousness split in half. One part registered the information with dismay. The other continued cooing to Andy, enchanted that he had just awarded me his first smile.
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