Page 176 – Pulse

Erasure

4 Comments / Poems / Thomas Nguyen

Thomas Nguyen ~

Consider what remains: chipped yellow
paint, roman candles, wilted gardenias,
so many photographs. Accept that

time makes things distant, that his
absence doesn’t bleed into your memories
as much as it used to. Try harder and

harder to remember the last time
you saw him, cords wrapped around
his legs like snakes, all white

and black, hidden underneath
neatly-pressed khakis. And my melanomas,
he once showed you, with a smile.

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A Painful Decision

Leave a Comment / Tough Choices / Ronna L. Edelstein

I thought it would be easier than it was, but it was one of the hardest decisions I ever had to make. Ma had been declining mentally and physically for the previous several years. This once-feisty woman–who’d been able to add up her grocery bill to the penny in her head and work seven days a week at a local children’s store while still maintaining an eat-off-the-floor home–had become a shadow of herself. Ma barely ate, rarely wore anything but an old white t-shirt and a pair of torn underwear, and sometimes at night wandered the halls of the apartment building where she and Dad lived.

Dad was worn out caring for Ma during the day and being on guard for her whereabouts and well-being at night. I, who lived two blocks away, was worn out by panicky phone calls from Dad that brought me to my parents’ home at all times of the day and night. It was obvious that Ma needed more care, that she required placement in a nursing facility. But making the decision to send her there was emotionally painful.

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cancer center sidewalk

Coming Up Short

5 Comments / Stories / Meghan G. Liroff

Meghan G. Liroff ~

“Why so short?” says the four-year-old girl who’s here with an upper-respiratory infection.

Standing safely between her dad’s knees, she wears a bright pink jumpsuit. Her cheeks are dimpled; her hair is piled in a frizzy bun. She looks me up and down, as if trying to make sense of me.

I can’t help laughing.

It’s true, I think. At five feet even, I’m not blessed with height–but I make up for it in chutzpah. I squat down to bring my eyes level with hers.

“I’m not laughing at you,” I reassure her. “I’m just laughing because you picked up on a major thread in my life.”

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Casa Juan Diego Portraits

Overcoming Fear

2 Comments / Afraid / Andrea Eisenberg

At age 90, in the middle of the night, my father took his last breath as my mother slept soundly by his side. For 63 years, every night, my mother and father lay side by side–she always very still, he always snoring. Throughout those years they were apart rarely, neither liking to sleep alone.

After waking to find him dead, she stayed by his side for hours. HIs cold, stiff body did not frighten her. Instead, she found comfort in stroking his ashen face, touching his lifeless hand. What frightened her was the thought of leaving him to others. What frightened her was his leaving her. She knew only a life where he took care of everything–the house, the finances, the plans for each day. Now, at age 87, her eyesight was nearly gone, her body crippled and mangled by arthritis, her mind forgetful. She believed she was truly dependent on him.

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Out of the Blue

8 Comments / Stories / Marianna Crane

Marianna Crane ~

As I sit in the exam room waiting for my first patient of the afternoon, the phone rings. It rings four more times before I realize that Amanda Ringwald, our eighty-year-old receptionist, hasn’t come back from taking a rare lunch break.

I pick up the phone and say, “VA Hospital. Marianna Crane.” Oops, I’m not back at the VA anymore. “Senior Clinic,” I quickly add.

“Hello, my friend.”

The familiar voice makes my throat tighten and my eyes water. How in God’s name did he track me down at work?

“Mr. Foley. How are you?”

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crow-picked garden

Mirror

Leave a Comment / Afraid / Karen Arscott

As I drove home after seeing my CT scan, I thought about how I could avoid telling anyone my diagnosis. It would be easy, I figured. I would wait until I had written confirmation of what I had seen. A few days passed, and I was able to maintain the deception–I loved acting, and this was an easy role for me, as protector of my family.

When the radiology report arrived, I felt like I was reading a report about one of my patients: “…suggestive of malignancy,” it said. I kept looking at the name and birthdate–yes, this was my report. Thus began my path down the rough road of lung cancer.

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Post-Op Poet

7 Comments / Poems / Judy Schaefer

Judy Schaefer ~

How can I write a poem, nurse, in this pelted room? Nurse? Nurse!
Memory loss, southern pine–nurse, this is not a poem-writing-room
The floors ooze resin at your footsteps
Spanish moss, from every wall
Spongy trod of medical students
Surgery went well, anesthesia lifted
Cologne of betadine, a boarish root for a vein
at the same time each morning. I welcome
the lady of the mop–tincture of mossy pine
back and forth, she says her prayers. She is my alarm clock.
I peek from crusty eyelids and dread the washcloth
Back and forth–path and path–room and nurse
How does one begin a poem? How to start?
Anesthesia has lifted long ago
I try to remember how I got here

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Bridge of Compassion

Leave a Comment / visuals / Deborah Kasman

Deborah Kasman

About the artist:

Deborah Kasman is a family physician and bioethicist who has straddled both careers. She has always loved the arts and was an active photographer until she started a family. As her children grew older, she decided to take up painting and learned a method called Intentional Creativity. This process and productivity has allow her a wonderful release and form of expression for her internal state.

About the artwork:

“As I entered bioethics full time, I was struggling to define my career and goals. During a five-month course of developing my story and ‘legend,’ I realized my role as bioethicist was to build bridges of compassion. I once had a deep spiritual experience in which I felt compassion, and in this painting I tried to convey what compassion feels like. My role is to create space for this compassion to occur between healthcare providers and their patients and families. The painting depicts a ribbon

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A Fine Man

2 Comments / Afraid / Darcy Lipsius

I’ve been afraid twice as a result of my multiple sclerosis. The first time, I was twenty. As I sat down on the edge of the bathtub one day, the backs of my legs felt oddly cold–even numb. I ran to the library and looked up MS, and my heart began to race. Yes, odd sensations of hot and cold were among MS’s symptoms. Suddenly, I could see my future life as my grandmother’s–as that of someone who sat in a chair all day, used a walker and watched TV, not as that of the geologist I was studying to be.

My actual diagnosis came twenty-two years later, after I’d had three children and was embarking on a second career. By the time I received the news, I’d experienced enough incidents like the bathtub moment that I expected it. I wasn’t afraid then.

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