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Solitary Confinement
Stewart Decker
 I’ve made a huge mistake, I thought.
The fever had come back. The fever had come back, and I was stuck on a bus. The first of five buses, actually….
I am a fourth-year medical student at the University of Minnesota, but right now I’m a long way from home. I am spending a year in South America, studying international public-health issues by working in emergency rooms, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), social projects and surgical suites.
When this story began, I’d been living in a small, remote town called Central Yuu, in the Ecuadorian jungle, helping the villagers to build a potable-water spring-protection system. It was on a rainy day there that I collected a connect-the-dots pattern of insect bites on my ankles.
Eleventh Hour
K.D. Hayes
Uncle Walt died this morning. Finally.
 I say “finally” because I believed this day would come four months ago, when he had emergency bypass surgery.
At the time, I didn’t believe Walt would live; he was an ailing, seventy-seven-year-old man with severe pulmonary disease. When his heart started to hurt one Friday, his doctors told him, “With bypass surgery, you might live. Without it, you’ll be dead before the weekend is over.”
Walt’s oldest daughter and my parents, who were with him, told me about the doctors’ recommendations.
As a retired paramedic, I’d seen this scenario before–often enough to have a strong opinion, and my own advance directives.
Concierge Care
Deborah Pierce
I am a family physician. Like most of my colleagues, though, I must sometimes step out of the comfort of my clinical role to take on the role of patient or family caregiver.
Generally, these trips to the other side of the exam table inspire a fair amount of anxiety.
During visits to the doctor, I find myself noticing many details and comparing the quality of care to that in my own practice. I worry about how the doctor will relate to me–will I be viewed as a knowledgeable colleague, or as someone who knows relatively little? Will my background be treated with respect? Will my needs as a patient or caregiver be acknowledged? The uncertainty eases only when the physician wins my
Catching My Breath
Pam Kress-Dunn
When he was five, my son Daniel went through a rough patch with his asthma. Both he and his sister Allison had been diagnosed the year before, when we were living in Colorado. I never knew if it was the fault of the pollution that too often smeared our view of the mountains, or my then-husband’s two-pack-daily cigarette habit. Or was it the unspoken shriek of anxiety?
Be Lucky
Kenneth Zeitler
In 1996, visiting a mall during an out-of-town trip, I suddenly felt dizzy while descending on the escalator. The sensation rapidly resolved, but to be on the safe side, I went to a local emergency room. My evaluation included a CT scan of my head; the results, I was told, were “normal.”
Shortly after returning home I received another call. The CT results were not normal, and I should see a neurologist to have an MRI scan.
I panicked, as anyone would, but I had more reason than most: I’m a medical oncologist. I knew the implications of this news, and they were mostly quite dire.
The MRI revealed a brain tumor, likely “low grade.” I found this a bit reassuring–but still, it
Supersize Me
Edward Thompson
Donald is large. Very large.
At more than 600 pounds, he is a mountain of flesh with a small opening at the top through which he speaks.
“My stomach hurts,” he says, his voice surprisingly high and childlike.
It is 10:00 pm in the emergency room, and I am already swamped with patients I’m trying to move through the ER before my shift is over.
Asked if he’s ever felt this kind of pain before, Donald says, “No, never. At least, not like this.”
Imagine
Linda KoebnerÂ
“Her vitals are fine,” the nurse told Besarta’s mother during a rare visit to the family’s basement apartment in the Bronx.
Besarta’s mind is also fine–sharp and clear. She asked me to use her real name in this story.
Her twenty-five-year-old face is beautiful and flawless, despite the howls of frustration, rage and pain she directs at her family, at fate and especially at Friedreich’s ataxia, the disease that controls her.
When I come for our weekly visit, Besarta’s blue-green eyes smile at me from where she sits in her wheelchair. Then her head suddenly wobbles sideways. Her face smashes against the chair’s headrest–first the right side, then the left.
After the Flood: Remembering Sandy
Lois Isaksen
Oct. 29, 2012
We’d just received word: within hours, Hurricane Sandy would hit New York City. As an emergency-medicine resident at NYU/Bellevue Hospital Center, I was working as fast as I could–examining patients, suturing wounds, setting bones, running families to the hospital pharmacy before it closed.
The lights flickered once, but I did not take it as the omen it was.
Checking Boxes
Regina Harrell
I am a primary-care doctor who makes house calls in and around Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Most of my visits are in neighborhoods, but today my rounds start at a house located down a dirt road a few miles outside of town.
Gingerly, I cross the front walk; Mrs. Edgars told me that she killed a rattlesnake in her flowerbed last year.
She is at the door, expecting my visit. Mr. Edgars sits on the couch, unable to recall that I am his doctor, or even that I am a doctor, but happy to see me nonetheless.