Page 164 – Pulse

Encounters: “You know…sometimes I don’t remember that I have it.”

Leave a Comment / Encounters / Sara Kohrt

Should I talk about the bad stories or the good stories?

Okay, the bad part is hearing that something’s wrong with you. That burns me.

I don’t want doctors bothering me–just leave me alone. I don’t know why I’m afraid of doctors. Sometimes I just don’t like to hear them talk. I just found myself going more to the doctor after I was diagnosed. Before, I didn’t have to go to the doctor. I was healthy.

Encounters: “You know…sometimes I don’t remember that I have it.” Read More »

Encounters: “I was waiting for the cure, but you know. Maybe one day.”

Leave a Comment / Encounters / Sara Kohrt

I contracted HIV in 1992. I got into an accident in Miami. My friend was driving: He didn’t see the stop sign, and there you go…I think that’s why I got the HIV. Then I moved back to New York. That was years ago. But I feel hopeful. HIV doesn’t bother me too much yet.

Encounters: “I was waiting for the cure, but you know. Maybe one day.” Read More »

Encounters: “…you have to start all over again in the American system.”

Leave a Comment / Encounters / Joanna Sharpless

I’m originally from Guyana. It’s a little country in South America, between Brazil and Venezuela. I’m from British Guyana, and we’re the only English-speaking country in that hemisphere. My whole family came from there together–my wife, my daughter and I. My daughter was around eight years old at the time. She loves it here now. She says she doesn’t want to go back. We came as legal residents, but now I’m a citizen.

Encounters: “…you have to start all over again in the American system.” Read More »

See What’s Left

1 Comment / Worry / Anonymous

The other day I asked my husband, “How many times a day do you worry about your body or your health?” His reply, “one or two,” shocked me. My answer: At least fifty.

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Pain: A Source of Worry

1 Comment / Worry / Ronna L. Edelstein

Ten years ago, I had my first jaw surgery; this past December I had my fifth. The latest surgery also came with radiation to–hopefully–prevent heterotopic bone from regrowing over the prosthetic device in my jaw and from causing me 24/7 pain. And worry.

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Cushioning the Fall

14 Comments / Stories / Meghan G. Liroff

Meghan G. Liroff ~

Angela Harris has been here in the hospital for six hours, awaiting the results of her CAT scan. I won’t take responsibility for all of that wait time: complicated CAT scans and labs do take a significant amount of time to perform. But she didn’t need to wait the last hour.

She was waiting on me–her emergency physician–because I needed to confirm her cancer diagnosis with radiology, arrange some oncology follow-up…and find the most appropriate phraseology for “You have stage IV cancer, but you don’t meet admission criteria.”

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after …

Destinies

1 Comment / Stress and Burnout / Gail Kubrin

I know how to care for my seriously mentally ill patients, while shielding myself from the pain of this work–how to let the ache go and not bring it home. But I’ve been away for a while, my guard has dropped, and there is no Star-Trek–like force field to keep my heart safe today.

My job as a psychiatrist in a large county jail provides some protections; cell doors and corrections officers guard my body. And unlike the young man I’m meeting with today, I started life in relative safety. I was not born with a congenital brain malformation giving me a speech impediment, an awkward gait, and a lowered IQ. I was not born with a predilection for schizophrenia, not adopted into a family overwhelmed by too many adoptees to be able to provide for a child with special needs.

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Serendipity

Leave a Comment / Reflections as Pulse Turns 10 / Marilyn Barton

Ten years–wow. Congratulations, Pulse. I wish that I’d discovered you sooner. It wasn’t until 2015, while I was taking an online writing course, that my instructor recommended I visit this “free online journal dedicated to health-care stories.” On first impression, Pulse looked like a mostly physician publication. Au contraire, I was very pleased to learn that you’re inclusive rather than exclusive–and, a rare find, interdisciplinary to the point of inviting patients to send in their stories.

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Titanic

5 Comments / Poems / Jeanne J. LeVasseur

Jeanne LeVasseur ~

Even now, some eat strawberries in the sunshine,
some pace the deck in a strong salt breeze,
while for others, the music is winding down.
Always unfair–a few of us in lifeboats,
some sinking in the icy water,
others on a slanting deck about to go under.

We make salami sandwiches on rye,
smoke a cigarette after passionate love,
and wave goodbye to the yellow school bus.
We never know when–
until the deck slants and the loud machinery
grinds still.

Lucky are those who glimpse the stars,
get a chance to be noble,
to love and forgive, as the fugitive melody swells.

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Alchemy

1 Comment / visuals / Kate Levenberg

Kate Levenberg

About the artist:

Kate Levenberg is a first-year medical student at Penn State. The majority of her artwork is mixed-media sculpture; however, she has recently become interested in 2-D acrylic portraiture.

About the artwork:

“It’s wild to imagine the complexities of the body described by the science of medicine. We have created a logic to measure, calculate and derive an understanding of the body’s processes, but the notion that these tiny reactions combine to somehow create humanity continues to strike me with awe. This print was created to explore this feeling and to envision the ‘magic’ lying within our physiologic structure.”

Visuals editor:

Sara Kohrt

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Thank You for Saving My Soul

Leave a Comment / Reflections as Pulse Turns 10 / Warren Holleman

Pulse, thank you for saving my soul.

I know that sounds a bit dramatic, but it’s true. So I hope you won’t mind–think it too “evangelical”– if I share my testimony…

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