Page 209 – Pulse

Through Our Eyes #4 (Beauty)

Leave a Comment / visuals / Sarah Stumbar

submitted by Sarah Stumbar

About the series:

“From August through December 2013, as part of a social medicine project I met with a group of four teenage girls in the third-floor conference room of a Bronx family health center. Over healthy snacks we discussed topics relevant to growing up as a girl in this Bronx community: obesity, violence, exercise, access to green spaces, relationships, body image and sexuality–complex issues which gave them an opportunity to voice their dreams for themselves and their community. Each girl was given a disposable camera and asked to take photographs of her neighborhood. This photograph is one of these. The collective voice of these young women teaches us that, even in deserted streets and playgrounds, they are able to find beauty and hope. They remind us of the importance of giving all young people a voice as a way of fostering their growth and resiliency.”

About the artwork:

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Night Call

10 Comments / Stories / Heidi Johnson-Wright

Heidi Johnson-Wright

When I was nine years old, I was diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disorder that triggers an inflammatory response of the joints, causing swelling, stiffness and severe pain. The disease sped through my body like wildfire.

By the time I was fifteen, my hip joints were utterly ruined. Just getting out of bed was a slow, carefully choreographed sequence of movements, with frequent pauses to allow the pain to subside. When I walked, my hips emitted sickening crunching sounds, bone grinding on bone.

I kept denying how bad my hips were, because I knew that the only solution was joint-replacement surgery. The thought of having my joints sawed through and torn away, and then having metal replacements hammered down into the bone shafts, petrified me. So did the prospect of a long, painful recuperation. But one day I tearfully confessed to my mother that I couldn’t take it anymore.

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a handshake, a nod

1 Comment / Haiku / Trisha K. Paul

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Special Delivery

3 Comments / Stories / Deborah Pierce

Deborah Pierce

I first met Marie five years ago. A petite, soft-spoken woman in her thirties, she was the patient of one of the residents whom I supervise at our community hospital. Marie worked in housekeeping for a large corporation; she and her husband, a bus driver, had a six-year-old son. Now she was twenty-six weeks (six months) pregnant with their second child.

Marie’s blood pressure was markedly elevated (168/120), she had fairly high amounts of protein in her urine, and her baby measured small on the ultrasound. These pointed to severe preeclampsia–a serious complication that can quickly worsen, leading to kidney damage, seizures or even death for mother and child, and that can only be cured by delivering the baby.

The resident and I reached a swift, unanimous decision: Marie’s pregnancy was far too high-risk for our hospital. She needed to be transferred to the University Hospital across town–“the U,” as it’s known. And the baby would need to be delivered soon.

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Through Our Eyes #3 (clear and peaceful)

1 Comment / visuals / Sarah Stumbar

submitted by Sarah Stumbar

About the series:

About the artwork:

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First Language

5 Comments / Poems / Carl V. Tyler

Carl V. Tyler

In my clinic and in the nursing home
Every week I see it
That depthless hollow look behind the eyes
But this time it was your eyes
Sitting across the table
At a TGI Friday’s outside of DC.

And that all-too-familiar look to your face
Of knowing and not knowing
Of barely contained panic
Of quizzically furrowed brow
Of fear.

Lost was your rich and subtle language
The rapid-fire musical cadence
The effortless literary allusions
Of English teacher and poet.

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returning years later

Day of Reckoning

11 Comments / Stories / Suzanne Minor

Suzanne Minor

Yesterday my friend Sophie asked me to accompany her to a Miami hospital intensive-care unit to see her older brother, Guillermo. He’d been admitted the previous night with seizures and cardiac arrhythmia.

Joined by my husband, we made our way to the ICU. When she saw Guillermo lying immobile, swollen and unresponsive, with a breathing tube in his mouth and other tubes snaking into his chest from IV poles, Sophie broke down sobbing.

Seeing her reaction, I felt a little ashamed at my own calm, although I knew it was hard-earned. During my years as a family doctor working in Miami-Dade County’s community clinics, I’d witnessed countless scenes like this one. Where Sophie saw a beloved brother utterly vulnerable and present only physically, I saw a fluid-overloaded patient hooked up to a ventilator, with the appropriate drugs being administered and a dialysis machine cooling and filtering his blood to treat his seizures.

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Through Our Eyes #2 (Playground)

Leave a Comment / visuals / Sarah Stumbar

submitted by Sarah Stumbar

About the series:

About the artwork:

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House Beautiful

11 Comments / Stories / Liat Katz

Liat Katz

Virginia is sweet. And I don’t mean that in a patronizing, “Isn’t she cute and sweet in her neediness and cluelessness” kind of way. You can tell that she has always been a warm and inviting person, and that she likes people. And today, I need sweet.

As an Adult Protective Services (APS) social worker, I’ve had quite a week among the belligerent abusers, the angry hoarders and the adult children unwilling to help their aging parents who are living in squalor. So I am thrilled that my new client, Virginia, is sweet.

Virginia came in as a financial-exploitation case. Apparently some men had bilked her out of $25,000, promising that in exchange they would cut down some trees in her yard. When she told her church friends how thankful she was and showed them the empty yard, her friends called us, because no one remembered seeing any trees there in the first place.

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