Once I looked forward to his visits, but years later I dreaded them. My change of heart began after he was laid off from his janitorial position. He worked diligently, applying desperately for jobs, but the economy was slow, and no one was hiring. The stress of not being able to make ends meet was crushing. His blood pressure rose, and he grew angry and depressed.
An early morning Zoom class, “Dealing with the Inner Critic,” to return my brain to a poetic rather than medical mode. I have several projects simmering, some raw, others partly cooked, but none completely finished, ready for consumption.
Never Read Your AVN* Read More »
It was winter, and I’d been seeing Raymond in his home for occupational therapy for more than a month. The home health agency physician’s orders had been to evaluate and treat him for home safety, and I was working closely with the nurse and social worker from the same agency.
Unfortunately, the social worker and the nurse were at odds over the need for Raymond to move into a nursing home.
The facts were stacked against him.
The Battle of Britain Read More »
Front-page headlines can leave a queer physician feeling alone…
A Weird Fit for Medicine Read More »
Editor’s Note: This piece was awarded an honorable mention in the Pulse writing contest, “On Being Different.”
I was born with what was described as a “mild” case of achondroplasia, a genetic condition that affects bone growth and causes short stature.
The average height of an adult female with achondroplasia is 4 feet 1 inch; I am 4 feet 5 inches tall. I do not have some of the “characteristic” facial features such as a prominent forehead or flattened nasal bridge. The average person remains unaware of my condition until I stand up.
This condition does not run in my family.
I awoke from a deep sleep today—Sunday, June 16—with a sudden urge to call my dad, nearly 10,000 miles away in India, and wish him Happy Father’s Day. A second later, I remembered that he’d passed away almost 15 years ago.
Was he in a “better place,” as everyone assured me he was when he died at age 69 of metastatic prostate cancer? Could I call him there, as I’d done for years after I left India in my early 20s?
Happy Father’s Day! Read More »
the most terrible pain known to man,
trigeminal neuralgia
ricochets around my face, pulsing
electric-shocks. My doctor advises
cutting the nerve in my cheek, the only hope
of stopping the torture. He mentions
some patients consider
suicide. My husband has just revealed
Often Described As Read More »
After many tries at a fertility clinic, a physician and her husband decide to change course.
Editor’s Note: This piece was a finalist in the Pulse writing contest, “On Being Different.”
Visual imagination is like a superpower or a sixth sense: We take it for granted. On demand, we conjure up images of those we hold most dear: family, friends, our beloved pets. We envision people, places and things that we’d like to experience in the future. We revisit cherished memories simply by picturing them, essentially reliving them, all in our mind’s eye.
That is, unless you have aphantasia—like me.
I Can’t See Pictures in My Head Read More »
After fifteen years as a physical therapist in the long-term care industry, I’d vowed never again to get overly attached to a resident. Although I accepted my patients’ inevitable physical and cognitive declines, the deaths of those I had cherished took too much of an emotional toll: It felt like losing a grandparent, repeatedly.
Then William entered our facility.
The Dining-Room Caper Read More »
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