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Elderly Multigravida
I had to drive across town for my appointments with the high-risk obstetrician. I had been referred to him by my normal-risk obstetrician due to my age (thirty-six the first time, and now again at thirty-nine) and my two previous miscarriages.
The waiting room was never crowded. It was dimly lit, with photographs of babies and children plastered across one wall.
Today, as at every visit, I studied the photos fiercely while waiting for my name to be called.
My Blankie
One evening, at the age of four, I ran frantically into my bedroom, tears burning in my eyes, and started overturning the furniture, peering under my bed and scrabbling through piles of clothes. I bounded back downstairs into the kitchen to check the chair I’d sat in for dinner. Over and over, I asked my four siblings and my parents:
“Have you seen my blankie?”
Finally, I retraced my steps to the piano bench. There sat my blankie, a soft, bright yellow mound. I let out a sigh of relief, safe at last, and headed off to bed.
Checking Our Assumptions
Editor’s Note: This piece was awarded an honorable mention in the Pulse writing contest, “On Being Different.”
“Don’t leave menus in the apartments!” a voice called sternly as I stood by the elevators in the building where I live.
The speaker was a substitute doorman I’d never seen before. I was holding a plastic bag typically associated with Chinese takeout food, and I realized that he assumed I was there to deliver meals to weary or sedentary New Yorkers.
A variation of this scene took place another time with a different doorman.
“Doctor Sahib, Mamnoon!”
Growing up in Pakistan, I aspired to be a doctor. I was fascinated by movies and TV shows centered on the medical profession and the day-to-day work and lives of physicians. To me, they were superheroes, wearing white coats instead of capes.
A familiar figure in the panoply was the stereotypically brilliant and successful physician/surgeon. (Remember Dr. Melendez in The Good Doctor?) Insanely smart and talented, he was also hard-edged, competitive and almost robotic in his laser-sharp focus on reaching diagnoses and treating symptoms.
Observing similar traits among my mentors while in medical school and during my internship, I concluded that while perfect politeness is the norm, feeling or displaying emotion must be atypical.
Stubborn Ghosts
It’s a sunny day, and I’m slowly pacing along the memorial brick path that winds through an untended garden in a vacant healthcare complex.
Scanning the bricks, I stop in my tracks when I spot Mary’s name.
I’ve arrived here early to meet my friend, Tom, with whom I worked years ago when these grounds, in Hillsborough, NC, were home to a busy hospice inpatient facility. In its bereavement offices, counselors like us provided a space for those who were grieving to express their pain and begin to heal.
“Are You a Girl or a Boy?”
Ever since my primary-care pediatric group practice adopted electronic records, we’ve used them to give our patients pre-visit online questionnaires that screen for various things: tuberculosis, lead exposure, developmental issues, autism, drug and alcohol use, postpartum depression, food insecurity and so on.
I started off thinking that the questionnaires were intended to save precious visit time by asking patients about these subjects before the appointment. Then I realized that our practice bills the health-insurance companies for administering these questionnaires (and some pay quite well). More recently, I’ve realized that these surveys offered another benefit as well—perhaps the most valuable of all.
For my young patient Remi’s three-year checkup, his parents completed all the recommended pre-visit online screenings.
The Real Me
Editor’s Note: This piece was a finalist in the Pulse writing contest, “On Being Different.”
“What are you?”
It’s impossible to count the number of times I’ve been asked this question, directly or indirectly.
When my family moved to Milwaukee from the South, I was twelve.
One day soon after, I was digging in my locker at Audubon Middle School when a girl named Tammy walked up to me.
Breathless
Editor’s Note: This piece was a finalist in the Pulse writing contest, “On Being Different.”
I was a disaster in fourth grade—too chubby for my Girl Scout uniform, which gapped where it should not have gapped. I dragged my right foot, so I wore orthopedic shoes. My horn-rimmed glasses made me look like a sixtysomething church lady. My jet-black hair with five cowlicks had been partially tamed with a beauty-shop permanent. I was the last chosen for red rover and other recess favorites.
Ten-year-olds know when they are different from their peers. I didn’t want to be different and felt self-conscious. Then came the coup de grâce.
Beyond the EMR
Squeak…Squeak…Squeak….
I stood against a wall in a narrow hallway to avoid blocking a meal cart passing through on its morning voyage. Inside this cart were a series of compartments, each containing a tray bearing a hospitalized patient’s breakfast. My attending physician stood beside me, inspecting a list of patients’ names as the cart rolled past.
Squeak…Squeak…Squeak….
“That’s a good case for a med student,” my attending declared, gesturing at a name on the paper. “Take this one.”