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Hunting
Scott Newport ~
“Seriously?” began Amy’s text, which popped up on my iPhone one blustery November morning.
“How do you know?” she went on. “Why don’t I feel him with me?”
I had no idea how to answer.
Sick of Being Sick
Ryan Nesbit ~
From second through fifth grade, I mastered the art of being sick. I got out of school, soccer practice and piano lessons so that I could be the child I wanted to be–not sick, but loved, cared for.
Here was my recipe:
1. Wake up.
2. Feel anxious about the day to come (this was natural).
3. Let the anxiety morph into a sickly pallor.
A Survival Guide to Chemo and Radiation
Lynn Lazos ~
Chemotherapy and radiation are not pleasant experiences, but knowing how to handle them can make your life a whole lot easier.
I had my first mammogram at age thirty-five, and for the next thirty-five years I had mammograms regularly. On my way, I’d pass the entrance to the Thomas Johns Cancer Hospital, outside of Richmond, VA, never thinking that I’d one day cross that threshold myself.
Me Too
It’s late on a Friday afternoon in the outpatient clinic where I’m a third-year psychiatry resident. I’m wrapping up my appointment with Jane, a thirty-five-year-old woman with a mild intellectual disability who comes every month to refill her antidepressant prescription.
“Have you been watching the court case on TV?” she whispers.
I stop what I’m doing and look at her.
“The case with the judge and the doctor,” she says.
I sit back in my chair and give her my full attention.
“I’ve been reading about it,” I say. “Why do you ask?”
She looks down at her hands. “It’s just so hard to watch.”
On Being a Lady and a Doctor
Caitlin Bass ~
It’s 8:00 pm, and it’s hour fourteen in my twenty-eight-hour call shift at the large suburban hospital where I’m an intern.
You demand to speak with a doctor now, right now. You cannot wait. Your mother is sick, and you want to know exactly what is going on.
It doesn’t matter that we already spoke at length by phone earlier this afternoon. It doesn’t matter that it’s 8:00 pm. It doesn’t matter that I don’t have any updates to give you.
You’re here, and you want to speak with a doctor, your mother’s doctor, now, right now.
Luckily for you, that’s me.
Who Am I Now?
Jeremy Pivor ~
On my first day of medical school, my father, a dentist, told me he’d just been diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. Cancer had crept back into my life–except this time not into my body.
At age twelve, I was diagnosed with brain cancer. After an aggressive surgery, I was tumor-free for ten years. Then, at twenty-three, I received the news of an inoperable recurrence.
While going through radiation and chemotherapy, I struggled with how to move forward in the face of endless uncertainty–until I realized that, with or without cancer, everyone lives with uncertainty. Since I never knew what the next day would bring, I decided that the most important thing wasn’t where I wanted to be in
Wounded Healer
Jamie Sweigart ~
It was a sunny Sunday afternoon on my urban college campus. I’d been sitting on the grass outside a lecture hall where my premed classmates and I would study together on weekends. This particular weekend, I was alone. Campus was empty, except for a man with a backpack who occasionally passed by.
Finished with studying, I started walking down a deserted sidewalk back to my apartment, a few blocks away. On the way, I dialed my best friend from home, Laura, and we began chatting.
“Hang up the phone,” said a man’s voice behind me. I felt the cold blade of a knife against the side of my neck.
Right Coat Ceremony
Shadi Ahmadmehrabi ~
It was my first day of orientation at medical school. In a hallway stood a coat rack overflowing with white garments. I set down my accumulated papers, reached for a hanger and, for the first time ever, shrugged first one arm and then the other into a white coat.
It was too large, but I had no other options. The unisex coats ran from XXS to XXL, but the smallest had all been claimed.
As I clumsily buttoned my coat on the right (women’s coats button on the left), I couldn’t help seeing this as a physical reminder that, as my mentors had warned, medicine continues to be male-dominated, and that I’d need to pick my battles.