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How You Made Me Feel
The toughest work emails always seem to come on days when I am post-call, feeling tired and pensive. This particular email came from Patient and Guest Relations at the urban hospital where I practice as a neonatologist.
“I received feedback from a patient who claims that she had a negative interaction with you…during her C-section surgery. She is requesting a visit from you….”
My heart sank.
Surviving Blackness in Medicine
Editor’s Note: This piece was a finalist in the Pulse writing contest, “On Being Different.”
Omar M. Young and Camille A. Clare are two Black academic OB/GYNs from different walks of life. Together, they offer their respective observations on what it means to be Black in medicine. “Through speaking from our lived experiences, we hope to help those who have historically been minoritized in medicine know that they are seen, that they are heard and that their experiences are valid.”
I survived — Omar M. Young
The sun was gloriously blinding, and the air as calm as could be on a warm June morning, more than a decade ago.
Thanksgiving 2023
It has been years, decades really, since I have watched television. I have the box, watch movies, but haven’t had cable ever. My two children were in first and second grade when I divorced their dad, and the house we moved into had no reception.
“Oh, well,” I told them, “no TV.” They were too little to grumble, but years later my daughter thanked me, saying, “We did so many other things.”
Now I find myself newly single and in transition for the winter, living in a rented house with—you guessed it—a TV with a full complement of channels and full reception.
From One Little Lady to Another
Donna dropped her blood-thinner tablets on the floor prior to surgery.
“It’s a sign I shouldn’t be taking them,” she said.
Now, sometime later, it makes me smile to think of it; she’s recovered well from the surgery and has resumed her medications. I’d told her to stop taking them just prior to the surgery—a complex hernia repair—and to resume them the day after, but she’s the type of person who does what she wants, what she thinks is best.
Overcoming a Stammer
Editor’s Note: This piece was a finalist in the Pulse writing contest, “On Being Different.”
Teary-eyed and a bit shaken, I hovered outside the room of our next patient, Ms. Robinson. She needed a lumbar puncture, and I was there as a medical student on rotation to observe the inpatient neurology team carry out the procedure.
Moments earlier, out here in the hallway, I’d sputtered through a case presentation to the open displeasure of my attending physician. I hadn’t been sure how my lifelong stammer would influence my experience on the wards; now I found out.
A Conversation With My Dead Wife
Sunday, October 31, 2021. Micalyn’s eightieth birthday.
A week ago, I texted my friend Sandy:
I had a reasonable day, but I felt lonely.
It’s so damn frustrating to have lost my best friend, Micalyn. Whenever I think of something I will want to tell her the next time I see her, reality comes crashing down on me.
Elderly Multigravida
I had to drive across town for my appointments with the high-risk obstetrician. I had been referred to him by my normal-risk obstetrician due to my age (thirty-six the first time, and now again at thirty-nine) and my two previous miscarriages.
The waiting room was never crowded. It was dimly lit, with photographs of babies and children plastered across one wall.
Today, as at every visit, I studied the photos fiercely while waiting for my name to be called.
My Blankie
One evening, at the age of four, I ran frantically into my bedroom, tears burning in my eyes, and started overturning the furniture, peering under my bed and scrabbling through piles of clothes. I bounded back downstairs into the kitchen to check the chair I’d sat in for dinner. Over and over, I asked my four siblings and my parents:
“Have you seen my blankie?”
Finally, I retraced my steps to the piano bench. There sat my blankie, a soft, bright yellow mound. I let out a sigh of relief, safe at last, and headed off to bed.
Checking Our Assumptions
Editor’s Note: This piece was awarded an honorable mention in the Pulse writing contest, “On Being Different.”
“Don’t leave menus in the apartments!” a voice called sternly as I stood by the elevators in the building where I live.
The speaker was a substitute doorman I’d never seen before. I was holding a plastic bag typically associated with Chinese takeout food, and I realized that he assumed I was there to deliver meals to weary or sedentary New Yorkers.
A variation of this scene took place another time with a different doorman.