- Home
- /
- Stories
Stories
Pearls Before Swine
Kate Lewis
I’m a third-year medical student, and I’m starting the second day of my new rotation–a month that I’ll spend with a family physician, Dr. Bauer, in his small, efficient home-based office.
Yesterday, my first day, a young woman named Sara came in for “strep throat.” She had dark Latina eyes, broad cheekbones and a delicate tattoo of the Chinese character for “dream” on her left wrist. She was 17 and seeking out a primary-care doctor for the first time in her life; I applauded her for taking responsibility for her own health care. Her tonsils were big and purple, covered in pus, but the rapid strep test was negative. She also reported a vaginal discharge. Dr. Bauer wanted to do a pelvic exam
Adverse Effects
Kenny Lin
Flashback to summer of 2008. I’m looking forward to August 5–the day that I’ll no longer be a faceless bureaucrat. The day that the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) will issue its new recommendations on screening for prostate cancer–recommendations I’ve labored on as a federal employee for the past year and a half.
For much of 2007 I combed the medical literature for every study I could find on the benefits and harms of prostate cancer screening. In November of that year I presented my findings to the USPSTF, a widely respected, independent panel of primary care experts They discussed and debated what the evidence showed and then voted unanimously to draft new recommendations. I didn’t get to vote, but it has
Making Headlines
Reeta Mani
“Did he die of swine flu?” demanded a scrawny man wearing a blue shirt and green surgical mask. He was one of a throng of news reporters packing the lobby of a private hospital in the heart of Bangalore, my city.
It was early August 2009, and India had just recorded its first casualty from the novel H1N1 influenza virus. This latest variant of influenza–a chimera of swine, avian and human flu genes–was raising grave concerns among the medical community worldwide. To try to contain a pandemic, countries were ordering stockpiles of antiviral drugs and initiating vaccine production on a wartime footing.Â
In Bangalore, as elsewhere, you
The University Hospital of Somewhere Else
Paula Lyons
July 1. My first day as a family medicine intern, assigned to Labor and Delivery, and my first night on call, 6 pm sharp. Enviously, I watched the other interns smartly packing up to go home.
“See you in the morning–maybe!” they joked.
I glanced at the status board: eight patients in labor. And now I was “in charge,” at least in name, till 7 am report tomorrow.
Several chaotic hours later, I finished helping a Guatemalan mother of five to deliver her sixth son. My hands were trembling.
Toweling the plucky little newborn dry, I admitted the truth: Despite my University Hospital’s
Babel: The Voices of a Medical Trauma
Editor’s Note: This week, on the eve of Pulse‘s second anniversary, we offer a remarkable piece. It is the true story of a hospitalization as told from three points of view: first, the recollections of the patient (who happens to be a physician); second, events as recorded in the medical charts by doctors and nurses; and third, the version put forth by the hospital.
FRIDAY
Patient:
It is fall 2005, and I am nine months pregnant. A healthy 33-year-old pediatrician, I am a longtime patient of Doctor A and Doctor B, who delivered my two young children at this hospital. My husband and I are eagerly anticipating the birth of our third child.
One
Sweet Lies
Marilyn Hillman
I can sense the question before it comes.
“How are you doing?”Â
I want to answer, How do you think I’m doing, with my husband morphing into a ghost? I’m dying here. But thanks for asking.
Instead I clench my fists and deliver a cheerful response: “I’m good.” Which is, of course, a lie.
My husband is demented.
I cannot say these words out loud. Pushed to the wall, I’ll say that my husband has dementia, like it’s temporary–a virus curable by bed rest and chicken soup. Murray admits only to memory problems, while I split hairs over which verb I can stand to put next to his decline. We skitter around the truth like insects caught
Family Business
Joanne Wilkinson
My mother’s mother was more a force of nature than a person. Chablis in hand, stockings bagging a little over her solid, practical navy pumps, she delivered her opinions without the slightest sugar-coating. She used words like “simply” and “absolutely” a lot. “He is quite simply the worst mayor we’ve ever had.” “She had absolutely no business having four children.” My cousins and I all listened and quaked, hoping the wrath would not be turned on us. Even after my mother’s death, when you might imagine she would soften toward me a little, I still felt the need to stand up straighter whenever she looked at me. Behind her back, I called her “The Graminator.”
The Graminator had been retired for almost
The Case of the Screaming Man
Paula Lyons
As everyone knows, the human body has orifices. Occasionally, these become occluded, or occupied, by things that aren’t supposed to be there. Every doctor knows this, as does almost everyone else. Who hasn’t heard, as a child, the cautionary phrase “Don’t stick beans up your nose”?
Human nature being what it is, almost every clinician must deal with foreign objects–flora, fauna–that have been put into places where they don’t belong. Sometimes, though, “beans” can materialize without a patient’s permission.
Here is one such case–a personal favorite of mine–that I’ve mentally entitled “The Screaming Man.”
I was back in the furthermost part of the clinic, arguing with an insurance company representative about the need for a patient’s CT scan, when one
Keeping Secrets
Reeta Mani
Rohit walked into our HIV-testing center in South Mumbai one busy morning. I was struck by how stylish he looked in his jeans and casual linen shirt, very different than the usual patients who visit our sprawling public hospital campus. He paced back and forth in a corner, looking at his watch and whispering into a cell phone.
I guessed that he’d chosen this crowded setting because of the anonymity it afforded; here he stood little risk of running into an acquaintance who might start to wonder.
During Rohit’s pre-test counseling, he confided his fear of being HIV-positive. He told us about having unprotected sex with female commercial sex workers during overseas business trips–and about a routine insurance health checkup that