As I examined the strength in my patient’s legs, I noticed some scar-like indentations on his right thigh. Pausing, I asked Rob how he’d gotten them. “I got shot,” he responded
I nodded calmly, while I summoned up Rob’s medical history. I recalled that he was on medications for PTSD. As my mind connected these dots, I asked, “What happened?”
As a teenager, I never thought much about accidents. Cuts and bruises are part of growing up in a small, midwestern town. However, when someone you love is in a serious accident, your world changes, and your mind becomes engulfed in anxiety.
One of my regular acupuncture patients, he arrives looking pale, not his usual cheery self. I try to make a joke, but he remains empty-faced. Something’s clearly wrong.
“Let’s sit down,” I say. “What happened?”
“My mom died,” he says. I feel my heart sink.
There was a time when I viewed abortion as permissible only in very specific situations. That was the view I held during my years of medical school.
Then came residency training. Our program had a clinic where we offered abortions. I was not mandated to perform the procedure, but I was expected to become competent in educating my patients, if needed, regarding abortions and provide them with resources for whatever their decision may be. I was not prepared for how conflicted I would feel about doing this.
Evolution of My Views on Abortion Read More »
I still remember the thrill when the Roe v. Wade decision was issued. In grad school, a friend had tried to abort with a coat hanger when her boyfriend dumped her and offered no support. I was always careful about contraception but knew a number of women who became pregnant even using it. I never expected to need an abortion but was grateful once I had that option.
One unusually wintery April morning, when I was fifteen, my maternal grandfather (“Nanabhai” to me) passed away.
The phone call came before my sister and I left for school. My father solemnly handed the phone to my mother, who’d been expecting the call, but not this soon. From my seat at the kitchen counter, I watched her expression morph from shock to disbelief to grief. Without hearing a word, I knew what had happened.
His steps are wobbly. Our children hold their father’s hands to steady him as they move through the sand toward the ocean. I remain far back on the shore, shading my eyes to make out the three of them as they stand in the shallow water.
I am thinking that he looks like a ten-year-old child from this distance. My sight turns blurry, a combination of sun, sand and sorrow.
My mother was a nurse anesthetist in the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s. She staffed the ORs of almost every hospital in Raleigh, North Carolina: public and private, Black and White, two psychiatric hospitals, even the ORs in the men’s and women’s prisons.
Years later, when people asked her about Roe v. Wade, she’d say the Supreme Court decision was a good one. If anyone challenged her or asked why she felt that way, she always offered the same response: “If you saw what I’ve seen, you’d be pro-choice, too.”
My Mother Broke the Law Read More »
I am sad because I never knew my father, my half sisters, or my half brothers. I never knew half my culture, language, or country. So people see only half of who I am.
And, honestly, I never knew my other half either, as my mom was mentally ill and couldn’t tell me who she was or what I came from on her side.
A Blessed Life but a Heavy Burden Read More »
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