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My Friend, My Patient
Andrea Eisenberg ~
Seeing patients in my ob/gyn office this morning, I try to stave off the mild nervousness rumbling inside of me. My good friend Monica is having a C-section this afternoon, and I’m performing it.
We met ten years ago, when I walked my three-year-old daughter into Monica’s preschool classroom for the first time. Monica sat on the floor, a child in her lap and others playing around her. Like them, I felt drawn by her calm, soothing manner and infectious laugh.
Over time, our friendship grew: At school or social gatherings, we always ended up giggling together. We took family trips together, trained together for marathons and supported each other through heartaches–my divorce, the closing of her childcare business–and
Depressed
Ronna Edelstein ~
Announce to friends that you have cancer, and they will probably react with sympathy and compassion. Tell them that you’ve broken your leg, and they’ll offer to get your groceries and drive you to medical appointments.
Share that you suffer from depression–and the sound of silence will fill your head.
Depression has been my companion for as long as I can remember. My maternal grandmother, who immigrated to this country from Romania, spent her days struggling to raise four children in a land whose customs and language she never learned. Her husband, my grandfather, rarely stayed home; when not traveling to eke out a living as a peddler, he would socialize with his cronies at a park or synagogue.
Cushioning the Fall
Meghan G. Liroff ~
Angela Harris has been here in the hospital for six hours, awaiting the results of her CAT scan. I won’t take responsibility for all of that wait time: complicated CAT scans and labs do take a significant amount of time to perform. But she didn’t need to wait the last hour.
She was waiting on me–her emergency physician–because I needed to confirm her cancer diagnosis with radiology, arrange some oncology follow-up…and find the most appropriate phraseology for “You have stage IV cancer, but you don’t meet admission criteria.”
Scarred
Joe Burns ~
“Did you have heart surgery?”
The shy seventeen-year-old girl’s question caught me completely off guard.
Her name was Sarah. Everything about her seemed perfectly organized–her long black braid falling ruler-straight between her shoulders, her folder with all of its documents sorted by date, her matching shoes and shirt, her entire wardrobe without a single wrinkle.
Her health was a bit less perfect. She’d been born with an atrial septal defect (ASD)–a hole in the wall separating the heart’s right and left chambers. Tomorrow she was to have an operation to repair the hole, so she’d come in today, accompanied by her parents and brother, to sign the presurgical consent forms.
The Magic Touch
Betsy Willis ~
Many months have passed since the spring day when I was hit with the news from my yearly mammogram, but those typewritten words are forever etched in my memory: “The density appears greater in left breast.”
My doctor comforted me with statistics showing that mammograms aren’t 100 percent accurate–but she also lost no time in sending me to a surgeon, Dr. Prewitt. Upon meeting him, I immediately felt sure that I would be in good hands. He explained the procedure he’d use and answered my questions with clarity and a very welcome gentleness.
He too expressed doubt about the diagnosis, but said, “I’ll schedule you for a parking-lot appointment with the traveling MRI-guided breast-biopsy machine.” (I pictured a brain
A Tingling Sensation
Mitch Kaminski ~
It had been a hectic day in the urgent-care clinic of my large family practice, and I was starting to worry about the time: My last two patients had put me thirty minutes behind.
I felt relieved when I saw the note for the next patient: “Seventy-four-year-old female with UTI.”
A urinary-tract infection! This should be quick and uncomplicated….
I walked into the room to find a well-dressed older woman seated on the exam table. I had just enough time to wonder fleetingly, Why do some patients decide to wait on the exam table while others stay seated in the chair nearby? Then I turned my full attention to the woman before me.
Compassion: A Two-Way Street?
Carey Candrian ~
I am an assistant professor of health communication. Since 2008, as a volunteer, educator and researcher, I have been active in hospice care. As many people know, hospice teams (nurses, social workers, doctors, chaplains, volunteers) help dying patients and their families live as fully as possible during their remaining days together.
In November 2016, right before the presidential election, I started a project aimed at identifying the best practices in communicating about hospice to prospective hospice patients. The intent was to help them make an informed choice about whether or not to enroll.
For six months, I observed hospice nurses, patients and caregivers during prehospice consultations, and interviewed most of them.
You Never Know Who’s Listening
David Edelbaum ~
I always warn my medical students to be careful what they say in front of patients, or patients’ families or friends. “You never know who’s listening!” I add. They may think that I’m exaggerating–but I have my reasons.
Early in my career as an internist/nephrologist, if I had a free moment I’d head for the emergency room. I might get a referral, and the coffee and conversation were usually entertaining.
As I chatted with the ER doctor one morning, a cardiac-arrest victim came in, and the doctor and staff began administering CPR. In the midst of this, another cardiac-arrest patient arrived. The doctor asked me to evaluate this man and, if necessary, to direct his CPR.
A Series of Unfortunate Events
Holland M. Kaplan ~
I’m sitting in the ICU team room, staring at the computer, trying to look like I’m writing a note. But my head is pounding.
As an internal-medicine resident doing my first month of residency, I’ve found the ICU of the bustling county hospital a jarring place to start my training. Although I’d anticipated the clinical challenge of caring for very ill ICU patients, I was unprepared for the emotional burden of having to deliver devastating, life-altering news to them and to their family members.
Faint yells emerge from Room 7. They have an almost rhythmic quality: “Ahhh!”…(three seconds)…”Ahhh!”…(three seconds)…”Ahhh!”
It’s Ms. Burton. I’ve just gotten back from checking on her, but I plod back again.