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Mrs. Finch and Ms. Virginia
Evan Heald
A Different View
Most days, Mrs. Finch’s perspective was outrageously optimistic and embarrassingly complimentary. Although she had the typical assortment of nonagenarian maladies, she would not let that define her; whenever she visited my office, it was hard to get to a chief complaint because of her relentless focus on how nicely the parking lot had been graveled, or “what a sweet, sweet nurse you have,” or my partner’s haircut or the “clever, clever little hooks” holding the geraniums at the entry.
Never mind the treasure trove of doubled superlatives she saved for me, her physician.
Dance in Three Movements
Anna Schmidt
Reprieve
Once the weeks of morning sickness subside, I feel as if I’ve grown wings.
Even with the fatigue, it’s as though someone has pressed a great “reset” button on years of inflammation. That elbow joint that hasn’t straightened fully for years suddenly rediscovers its full range of motion. My knees, too, become straighter and stronger than they’ve been in many years.
Even without the meds, ditched in honor of my growing baby’s health, it is my best and most dramatic remission since my teen years–the last time my hormones went to town.
One Last Gift
Edward Beal
During most of my career as a psychiatrist, I haven’t often dealt directly with death. For the past five years, though, I have had the privilege of spending two days a week treating service men and women returning from deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq. Listening to their stories and talking with them about their war experiences, I’ve spent much more time thinking about death and dying.
Despite this, I was shocked when my wife recently told me she was planning to donate her body to science–specifically, to the Georgetown University Medical Center’s anatomical donors program.
My first thought was that she obviously has never been a first-year medical student in a Gross Anatomy lab. My next impulse was to warn her
Busting Grandma Out
S.E. Street
I had been in London on business all of seven hours when my son, Tom, called me at two in the morning from our hometown, Sydney, Australia.Â
“Grandma’s had a fall. She’s been taken to the hospital, but she’s all right.”
My mother’s having a fall was nothing unusual; she had always been an unpredictable fainter. My husband and children and I called it her party trick, making light of it to soothe her embarrassment.Â
She had no recollection of these episodes; one minute she’d be seated at the table, and the next, she’d be lying on her back on the floor, her feet propped up on a chair, with the family smiling down at her as if she were Sleeping Beauty awakening
A Doctor’s Dilemma
Jessica Zitter
It was my first day at my new job, practicing a new specialty. Having spent fourteen years as an ICU physician–including a four-year pulmonary/critical-care fellowship in this very hospital–I had just completed a palliative-care fellowship. Now I was the hospital’s palliative-care consult attending.
When I set eyes on the patient in room 1407, my first thought was: THIS LADY NEEDS TO BE INTUBATED–STAT!
The only trouble was that my job was to ease this patient’s passing, not to prolong her life.
The team had told me that Mrs. Zelnick, an eighty-two-year-old widow, was dying from pneumonia and didn’t want to be put on life support.
Seeing the Light
Sarah Houssayni
Many healers, teachers and parents have them. Â
At one point, I did, too. I had delusions. I thought I was a hero, a rescuer clad in a shiny white coat and wielding the sword of clinical wisdom.Â
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I look back on those days with nostalgia and regret. I wish they’d lasted a little longer–my belief in my own medical grandeur and invincibility.Â
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My most memorable patient changed that for me.
I remember how her mother, Gigi, first brought Serenity to see me when she was a newborn. Gigi was fifteen; I was
Rewriting the Script
Adam B. Weiner
Useless….
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The word came unbidden into my head.Â
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Oh, no. Here I was, only a few questions into Mr. Marlow’s medical history, and the feeling had begun already.
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I’d often experienced this when I was a pre-med student, spending so much time on labs and textbooks instead of with patients. When I’d begun my first year as a medical student, I’d hoped to leave all that behind. Medical school felt energizing: I was ready to see real patients and start helping them!
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The Well-Fed Physician
Randy Rockney
When I was in medical residency, more than thirty years ago, I ran with a pack of fellow residents, all guys who were fit to varying degrees. Once, on an outing, we discussed the–hopefully–hypothetical question: “If the need arose, which one of us would we eat first?”
“Randy!” my friends gleefully concluded.
“His meat would be the most marbled,” one added.
Fateful Encounter
Amy Eileen Hiscock
I cannot take my eyes from his face.
It has been destroyed in the wreck, along with the rest of his body. His head is misshapen, bloodied. Someone has tried to staple together one of the larger lacerations–extending diagonally across his face and under his chin–but there was little point. They gave up partway through.
I have never seen a dead body. I am twenty-five and in the second of five terms of nursing school.Â