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Aftershocks
It’s Monday. I wake up at 7:15 am, go down to my apartment building’s lobby and meet with friends to work out before the rest of the day begins. We do arms, chest and back for an hour, then my friend PJ and I hit the steam room and head back to our apartments.
I call my mom for five minutes, then shower, dress and, before breakfast, knock out some flashcards on my laptop, like any self-respecting first-year medical student.
Today I’m spending a shift in the ER as part of my clinical-medicine class.
Saved
It was a spring afternoon in Kottayam, Kerala, India, and I was a seventeen-year-old student, doing my final two years of high school at a local college, as could be done in India. I was the student-body president, with just two months to go until graduation.
And in another five minutes, I was going to end my life.
The Man Who Holds Hearts
One spring day last year, I sat in the office of the man who was to be my husband’s heart surgeon, waiting to have one of the most important conversations of my life. My husband, Craig, sat next to me with his guide dog, Chase, at his feet.
The doctor—tall, dressed in surgical scrubs—came in, introduced himself and sat down. His eyes looked kind; his demeanor was serious.
My Alzheimer’s Story
My name is Lisa Burr. I am a family nurse practitioner, and have been for nearly three decades. I grew up in California, the “Sunshine State.”
In the 1960s, my dad, a military test pilot, was the first astronaut with NASA’s Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) program, which pioneered crewed space stations as reconnaissance satellites. My mother was a beautiful model.
The Birthday Party
Forty years ago, I experienced a miracle—the first of many in my nursing career. I was about six months into my first nursing job, in the neonatal ICU at Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago. It was there that I met baby Jonathon, and it was his mother who made me a true believer.
Jonathon had come to us with severe kidney disease. He looked sickly: His skin was very pale—translucent even. He acted like a healthy infant, though, and as he got older, he actually smiled at us. But despite the doctors’ best efforts, his kidneys were barely functioning.
Role Reversal
The year 2020 was a lot of things for a lot of people. Chaotic, exhausting, heartbreaking, hopeful. It was a year in which my immense privilege—as a healthy, educated white woman—protected me from much of the pain born by others.
And while it was many of those things (especially chaotic) for me, it was also the year I started medical school. The year I moved from LA to Austin, driving across California, Utah and Texas in the process. The year I read fifty-four fiction books to escape the monotony of lockdown.
And it was the year my dad died.
First Code Blue
When I started medical school, I kept hearing about “firsts.” The first time in the OR, the first delivery of a baby, the first death of a patient.
In a profession that is so intricately intertwined with the ultimate highs and lows of human life, there are a number of experiences that inevitably go on to leave permanent marks on the mind. I was always told that my first code blue would be one of these moments—and indeed, the night I first saw a code is one that will be forever engraved in my memory.
Due Date
It’s the bright orange color that catches my eye. Nestled in a box under my home office desk, alongside unused breast pads and pumping supplies left over from the birth of my first daughter.
My first, because there should have been a second. A girl.
What Remains From the Pediatric Ward
I wake up in a hospital isolation room, where everything smells weird. It’s 1967 in Galway City, Ireland, and I’m four years old.
The worst smell is the antiseptic—a word I don’t know yet. The second smell is the crayons and newssheet coloring books on the nightstand. Christmas is gone, so how can these be for me?
The family lore would say that I spent nearly seven weeks in that hospital. That’s forty-nine days or 1,176 hours’ worth of temperature checks, dosages, white-coated doctors.