Page 231 – Pulse

Five Years to a Cure

Leave a Comment / Stories / Ellen Diamond

Ellen Diamond

Recently, while reading a post in an online chat group for people with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), I spotted an intriguing comment. At an important conference, a world-renowned hematologist had referred to a “five-year timeline” for a cure.

This took me back fourteen years, to when I’d just been diagnosed with CLL. There was a Gilda’s Club near my workplace; I’d always passed it quickly on my way home. Now I found myself stepping through the doorway to hear a top specialist talk about my disease.

I recall his closing words: “Give me five years, and I’ll give you a cure.”

As desperately as I wanted to believe this pronouncement, I felt reluctant to pin my hopes on it. Fourteen years later, my skepticism remains.

I’ve heard many CLL experts make similar predictions, but despite great advances in research and treatment, no one with CLL has ever been cured. I’ve never doubted the doctors’ sincerity and good intent, but at times I’ve felt quite angry at their willingness to raise their audiences’ hopes in this way.

Given the facts, how can they

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Remembering John

Leave a Comment / Stories / Hilton Koppe

Hilton Koppe

I remember you the day we met. It was five years ago. I was terrified. You seemed relaxed and at peace. I’d been invited to join the Lennox Head Club, in the town where I live and work; this over-thirty-five match was the first game of soccer I’d played in twenty-five years. I was the oldest on the team. You were the youngest. For you it was just the start of another season, your loping, languid style belying your skill and your speed.

I remember you sitting next to me in my car on the long drive home from a game at Nimbin. You telling me about your long journey with Crohn’s disease, about the colectomy you’d had in your twenties and about your two broken bones last year. I couldn’t stop myself from being a doctor and suggesting that you get your bone density checked.ch

I remember you sitting in my consulting room. We had many years of shared conversations–me offering ideas, and you running your race in your own way, not always by the book, but always with great intelligence

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ADHD

Leave a Comment / Poems / Patricia Ljutic

Patricia Ljutic

A flywheel
launched from a brain
that cannot remember
three consecutive words–
two words, maybe:

“Stop kicking…”

The third word catapults with
the what and the where,
changing channels
with every new activity,
leaving my son aimless,
scattering stones,
snapping twigs,
belching at turned heads,
spinning.

“S-T-O-P!”

What does stop mean with his
thoughts ajar?
ADHD: attention
without a footpath,
a train without a brake.
Ignoring directions,
my son’s frontal lobe sputters
–winds and unwinds–
toggling like a switch
that switches…that switches…that switches,
careens him into space.

Spinning.

About the poet:

Patricia Ljutic, a registered nurse, is director of the Home Health and Hospice Quality program at Vallejo Kaiser Permanente Foundation Hospital, in California. Her poetry and essays have appeared in regional and national publications including Cup of Comfort and Chicken Soup for the Soul. She has won awards for her fiction and nonfiction from Writer’s Digest and Writer Advice.com, respectively. Patricia loves Italian country cooking, amber jewelry, writing, bugging her son to pick up his clothes and food containers, teaching him to live with ADHD and reminding

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House Call

Leave a Comment / Stories / Kendra Peterson

Kendra Peterson

I approached my father in the yard of his most recent home, a small, run-down duplex shack. His hair was whiter than I remembered, his old blue sweater shaggy. He was clipping the hedge in his careless but enthusiastic way; when finished, it wouldn’t look good, but it would look clipped.

One of his eyes was red and tearing up. A splinter had flown into it as he trimmed the boughs above his head. He hugged me nervously, and we went inside.

He pushed a stack of newspapers off the sofa, and we sat down and awkwardly tried to talk. The cramped living room was dirty, and dominated by boxes and piles of books.

“Just moving in,” he apologized. He rubbed his eye, and I told him not to.

My father was sixty-two years old. For much of his life, he’d been an accomplished university professor of American history, and a charming and eccentric character. But in the past few years, he’d taken many wrong turns: He’d increasingly used illicit drugs, including cocaine and methamphetamine, and had been arrested for drug possession.

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An Orphan’s Tale

Leave a Comment / Stories / Peter Ferrarone

Peter Ferrarone

At the outset, I confess that I have no experience in the medical field. I’m not a doctor or a nurse; I’m a recent college graduate, a writer and someone who’s interested in the world. And, all last summer, I was a volunteer in Uganda.

I’d met a Ugandan priest who was visiting the States on a lecture tour. He described his work overseeing an orphanage located in Western Uganda, a day’s bus ride from Rwanda and Kenya. When he invited me to go and help out there, I accepted.

Upon arriving, I discovered that the orphanage was a small, broken-down concrete house perched on a hill above a muddy soccer field. The building had four bedrooms and no running water. The yard featured a wandering mountain goat and a smelly outhouse with a faulty latch.

Fifteen orphans lived there–eight girls and seven boys, ages eight to twenty-one. In summer, when the schools let out, as many as ten more children came to stay.

Life at the orphanage ran along unusual lines: There were no adults on hand, so the oldest orphans

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Cadaver Happy Face

Leave a Comment / Stories / Rachel Willis

Rachel Willis

Sitting with my mother in a white-walled exam room, awaiting the surgeon’s arrival, I felt happy.

Earlier this spring, I’d landed hard on one leg during a volleyball game and collapsed, hearing my knee make a terrible cracking sound, like all ten knuckles firing off. When I resumed playing, after several weeks of rehab, it happened again.

Now we were awaiting the MRI results.

You’d think I’d be nervous. I was seventeen, college-bound on a full-ride volleyball scholarship. Would this injury jeopardize that? But I felt glad–and touched with a kind of glamour. During hundreds of boring or grueling practices, I’d longed to sprain an ankle or break a leg. Now I had an iron-clad excuse to duck the huge workout packet my college coach had sent.

My doctor bounded in. A tall African-American man in his fifties, with white hair and beard, he radiated energy.

I liked him–his energy, the contrast of his bright white hair and brilliant smile with his dark skin.

Swiftly, he pulled an MRI image from its envelope, clipped it to a board and pointed.

“That,” he

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July Intern–Taking Off My New White Coat

1 Comment / Stories / Heustein Sy

Heustein Sy

I became a doctor of internal medicine in my home country, the Philippines, in 2005. The following year, I immigrated to the United States. In order to practice medicine here, I must complete one more journey–a three-year medical residency in the U.S.

My first week at the hospital has been a hectic blur–one task right after another. I’ve been existing on minimal amounts of sleep, food and social contact and maximum amounts of coffee.

Inside my head, though, this week has also been all about me. How lucky I was to have been picked for this coveted residency in this highly regarded hospital! How can I regain my rusty diagnostic skills? How do I look in my new white lab coat?

Rushing here and there, checking on lab results, taking comprehensive histories from patients, doing my best not to miss a single differential in the most ordinary cases and trying to impress my seniors, I’ve felt a bit like Superman: I’m saving lives!

At times, I’ve slipped into a state of mind where every patient becomes just a room number and every diagnosis just a billing code with its corresponding treatment algorithms. When I’m in that zone, time passes quickly.

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Presentation

What About Bob?

Leave a Comment / Stories / Joseph Fennelly

Joseph Fennelly

The time: early one morning, thirty years ago.

The place: my local hospital.

At this point, I have been an internist for twenty years. I’ve just entered the cardiac care unit, where my patient Bob, a ninety-five-year-old man with advanced senility, has been brought because he’s having chest pain.

As I step through the door, Bob codes. The young residents and staff swing into action, rushing the crash cart over to his bed.

Quickly, I jump between them and Bob.

“Don’t resuscitate him!” I shout.

Looking stunned, they eye me as I stand there with folded arms, making myself into a human shield.

Bob lies motionless, not breathing, his monitor registering occasional spontaneous heartbeats.

Suddenly it hits me: I need to see the situation through these young residents’ eyes. After all, isn’t this a patient in the cardiac care unit? Aren’t his monitors signaling a heartbeat? And isn’t their duty to protect life?

To help them understand why I’ve staged this aggressive assault on their training in high-tech medicine, I must help them to understand Bob. They need to know this gentle,

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