fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

Gift Pulse
Energize
Subscribe
Facebook Instagram Linkedin Bluesky
Jerry Stockton

Untitled

Leave a Comment / visuals /

 

Jonathan Stockton

About the contributor: 

Jonathan is completing his MFA in photography at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. He photographs in areas where communities form around addiction and documents how these communities change over time. His thesis show will be on view May 11-23 at MassArt’s Bakalar Gallery in Boston, MA. His work can be found at jonathanstockton.net.

About the artwork:

“I met Jerry (not his real name) as he drank tall boys [24-ounce cans of beer] on a warm autumn day along the Connecticut River, just downstream from a spot where many addicts get high. Jerry reminded me that I had to be careful in ‘these parts,’ and that he would see that I made it back up the embankement safely. But he had to finish his beers first. The next time I saw him, he had been sober for nearly two months. He said that just before Christmas, the police had found him in » Continue Reading.

Untitled Read More »

How Will I Know You’re Not Dead?

11 Comments / Stories /

Raymond Abbott

I never thought it would go on for so long–seeing Donald Wyatt, I mean. I certainly didn’t plan it this way.

More than six years ago, I retired at age sixty-six from my social-work job at a mental-health agency. Donald had been my client there for about eight years.

As I was cleaning out my office, his mother called. She explained how Donald’s father had left when Donald was not much more than an infant, which had made him sensitive to abandonment, especially by male figures. Could I, she wondered, meet Donald once in awhile for coffee or lunch?

“Yes,” I said, “I can do that.”

How Will I Know You’re Not Dead? Read More »

Aperture

8 Comments / Poems /

Martin Kohn

(for Helen)

This openness into
This brightness onto
This bodied and
dis-embodied
sunken-eyed
knowing

This close
and blinking
moment
This shutter stop
goodbye

Your round soft
shoulder pillowed
beneath a feeble
hug
The Lord
“not quite ready”
to take you
even though you
and Trixie your cat
had walked the dark path
to him again

Aperture Read More »

banana peel blum

Banana Peel

Leave a Comment / visuals /

Alan Blum

About the artist: 

Alan Blum is a professor and Gerald Leon Wallace MD Endowed Chair in family medicine at the University of Alabama School of Medicine in Tuscaloosa. A self-taught artist, he has published three books of his sketches and stories of patients, and his artworks have appeared in more than a dozen medical journals and textbooks. He is a frequent guest speaker at medical schools in courses in the humanities.

About the artwork:

“Slip on a banana peelin’ —
They gave me these crutches.
Said I had to use ’em.
I don’t know why.
They’re dangerous things.”

Visuals editor:

Justin Sanders

Banana Peel Read More »

Surprise Ending

9 Comments / Stories /

Ellen Kolton

“He’s just expired,” said the nurse as I approached Ray’s room in the large inner-city hospital where I work as a patient advocate. “And his wife has just arrived. Why don’t you go in?”

I found Natalie bent over Ray’s body. His hollow cheek was drenched with her tears.

“I’m so sor–“

“I told him yesterday to talk to Jesus,” Natalie interrupted, speaking quickly. “I told him if the two of them decided it was time for him to go, then it was okay with me. I guess they had their talk,” she said, glancing at Ray as though expecting an answer.

Surprise Ending Read More »

My Father’s Girl

23 Comments / Stories /

I’m walking very slowly with my dad down the produce aisle at the local supermarket, past the colorful waxed apples, Mexican mangoes and Rainier cherries, and imagining my life’s blood trickling onto the floor from an invisible wound.

As I pass by the misting system spraying the bins of green, red, yellow and orange peppers, past the lady reaching for carrots, past the stock guy balancing the heirloom tomatoes into a precarious stack, I want to scream. The sense of loss is overpowering.

My Father’s Girl Read More »

Broken Promise Giftos

Broken Promise

Leave a Comment / visuals /

 

Jonathan Giftos

About the artist: 

“I work as a primary care doctor at a clinic in the South Bronx. I believe it is part of my job, as a doctor, to advocate for my patients’ health both inside the exam room and out on the streets. I have enjoyed taking photographs since I was a little kid. After a long hiatus, I reconnected with street photography in the fall of 2014 through the Bronx Documentary Center. I particularly enjoy using photography to highlight the strength and beauty of a borough more often known by outsiders for its poverty and struggles. And I continue to see photography as both a creative outlet and as a tool for social change. I have been collecting photos on a new website, jonathangiftos.com, where prints are available in exchange for a donation to the Bronx Documentary Center.”

About the artwork:

“This photo was taken while standing with South Bronx Unite in protest

Broken Promise Read More »

Chocolate Cake

20 Comments / Stories /

Sanyu Janardan

I was a first-year medical student, starting my first afternoon at an outpatient clinic as part of an introductory course in clinical medicine. My white coat was freshly washed; I had a rainbow of pens in one coat pocket, and my shiny name tag dangled from the other. I only hoped that I was as prepared as I looked.

I entered Mrs. Carr’s room. A fifty-five-year-old woman, she sat gingerly at the edge of her chair, looking ready to get up at any moment, as if the appointment were already over. She gave me a cursory glance, then went back to folding and refolding the bus-ticket stub in her hands.

I asked a well-rehearsed question: “What brings you to our clinic?”

“Chocolate cake,” she answered.

Chocolate Cake Read More »

© 2024 Pulse - Voices from the Heart of Medicine, Inc. All rights reserved.

Website Design & Development by New York Design Studio, LLC

Start typing and press enter to search

Scroll to Top

Subscribe to Pulse.

It's free.

Facebook Instagram Linkedin Bluesky