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He Ain’t Heavy

9 Comments / Stories /

Edward Beal

In my decades as a psychiatrist, I’ve seen many different kinds of patients; only in the past five years, though, have I worked with soldiers.

I see them through TeleHealth, an organization that offers patients long-distance care via a sophisticated form of Skyping.

I originally took this job for financial reasons (during the economic downturn of 2008), but I quickly discovered its unique rewards.

Early on, for instance, as I stood waiting for an elevator, a quadriplegic soldier maneuvered his electric wheelchair alongside me.

When the doors opened, he looked up and said, “After you, sir.” That’s not a memory that fades.

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A Vitruvian Man

4 Comments / Poems /

Tabor Flickinger

He marked a copy of da Vinci’s sketch
To map his ailments: drew an arrow from
The eye to cataracts, the feet nerve pain.

The groin said hernia, the navel at
The center of it all colostomy.
He offers up this artifact to his

New doctor: fills the outline with a tale
Of his true flesh unique in variance
From all ideal cosmographies of man.

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My little ray of hope Jaffery

A Little Ray of Hope

2 Comments / visuals /

Tara Jaffery

About the artist: 

Tara Jaffery is an internist working in Shifa International Hospital in Islamabad, Pakistan. She was a FAIMER (Foundation for Advancement of International Medical Education and Research) fellow at the time she took this photograph in late 2005, when northern Pakistan experienced the worst earthquake in its history. She sends this photograph “for the people of Nepal…a little ray of hope.”

About the artwork:

“When Nepal suffered its first catastrophic earthquake a few weeks ago, I remembered, in a flashback, horrific scenes of the October 2005 earthquake in northern Pakistan, which left 100,000 dead, countless injured and millions homeless. We received many of the most seriously injured people in our tertiary-care hospital in Islamabad. The complicated crush injuries and the sense of despair were beyond description. Villages were gone, cities reduced to rubble. Every victim had a heart-wrenching story of loss and tragedy.

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Finding a Bed in Bedlam

4 Comments / Stories /

Jo Marie Reilly

There’s a full moon tonight.

“That’s when crazy things happen,” my superstitious mom always says.

I’m a family physician doing weekend call at my urban community hospital. My pager rings incessantly. As I answer yet another call from the emergency room downstairs, I think, Maybe Mom has a point.

“Got a suicidal patient with nowhere to go,” the ER physician yells into the phone, against the background commotion. “This guy John has been here for three days. He’s casted on both feet and can’t walk. The insurance company’s authorization nurse says she can’t admit him because it’s not medically indicated–but if a doctor gives her an indication, she’ll authorize it. Can you do it?”

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Wednesday’s Child

19 Comments / Stories /

Cortney Davis

It was a Wednesday in late spring, 1972. I was a nursing student in my final months of training, eagerly awaiting graduation.

When I arrived on the maternity ward that morning, my nursing instructor told me that I’d be caring for a baby, only hours old, with special needs.

I thought she’d send me to the neonatal ICU. Instead, to my surprise, she motioned toward the linen closet, its doors closed tight.

“The baby was born without a complete brain,” she said. “A condition called anencephaly. He can’t see or hear. And,” she added, “they don’t expect he’ll live out the day. So try not to get attached.”

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Soft

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Livy Low

About the artist: 

Olivia (Livy) Low is a first-year medical student at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, New York. She is originally from Oakland, California. Ever since her father gave his old Nikon to her, she has been unable to stop taking photographs. For her, photography is an act of love. Her work can be seen at livylow.wordpress.com.

About the artwork:

“I’ve been thinking about what it means to become, to grow and to thrive despite the constant vulnerability that comes from being not only a medical student but also a young person creating space in the world. The inherent fragility of certain elements of nature–such as the soft petals of a flower–reminds me that when we fully inhabit that vulnerability, that capacity to become wounded or broken, we often find beauty and grace.”

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Soft Low

Soft

Leave a Comment / visuals /

Livy Low

About the artist: 

Olivia (Livy) Low is a first-year medical student at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, New York. She is originally from Oakland, California. Ever since her father gave his old Nikon to her, she has been unable to stop taking photographs. For her, photography is an act of love. Her work can be seen at livylow.wordpress.com.

About the artwork:

“I’ve been thinking about what it means to become, to grow and to thrive despite the constant vulnerability that comes from being not only a medical student but also a young person creating space in the world. The inherent fragility of certain elements of nature–such as the soft petals of a flower–reminds me that when we fully inhabit that vulnerability, that capacity to become wounded or broken, we often find beauty and grace.”

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Birth

1 Comment / Poems /

Albert Howard Carter III

(for NCC and RAC)

My wife lies in the little room,
tight as a drum, and even more convex.
She breathes hard as the contractions come.
The doctor, some 20 feet away,
shares his lunch with me,
the husband and coach;
My wife, lunchless today,
hears this act of betrayal
and resents (I learn later)
that we are eating cake:
she’s clearly in “transition,”
when even the nicest women
can become cranky.

Groans and wails fill the hall;
The place sounds like a zoo.

Birth Read More »

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