- Home
- /
- Stories
Stories
Homecoming
Ronna L. Edelstein
For years, and especially as he entered his nineties, my father kept begging me not to “dump” him into a nursing home. He had seen too many of his cronies abandoned in this way by family members; his visits with these friends left him feeling depressed and hopeless for days. I assured Dad that I’d never put him in a facility.
It was an easy promise to make. I didn’t want him in a One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest setting with a Nurse Ratched supervising his care. I didn’t want him waking up at night disoriented and lonely. Because he was inching closer to death, the greatest unknown, I didn’t want a facility, with all of its unknowns, to
Last Stand
E. Wesley Ely
The first time I saw Jessa, she lay crumpled in the ICU bed, paralyzed, expressionless and unable to speak. A military veteran, she had fought in Desert Storm, but she now was facing a deadlier and more inexorable foe: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), aka Lou Gehrig’s disease.
This disease causes progressive loss of muscle control, and Jessa was unable to speak, eat or breathe on her own. Her only means of communicating was through small facial movements–opening and closing her eyes or mouth, raising her eyebrows.
A dozen people made up her ICU team: three interns, three residents, a pharmacist, a nurse, a respiratory therapist, a social worker, a hospital chaplain and myself–the lead physician, or intensivist.
Birth of a Hospice Nurse
Sara Conkle
The woman lying on the transport cot in the examination room was terrified. I could see it plainly in her eyes, but there was no time to stop and comfort her.
I was a young, recently graduated nurse in a busy urban emergency room, struggling to keep up with its daily array of shootings, stabbings and crises. ER nurses hustled. We dealt with life and death, and we did it quickly. That may be why I paid so little attention to the pain and fear in the woman”s eyes.
I asked her to get onto the examination table and duly recorded the facts: her last menstrual period had taken place several months before; her bleeding and cramping had started earlier
No Crying
Riddhi Shah
“There’s no crying in baseball!”
Over the years, my fellow surgery residents and I heard these words shouted countless times by Dr. Norris, a cantankerous elderly surgeon with whom we had the dubious pleasure of working.
Dr. Norris was a former Navy ship surgeon. He didn’t operate much anymore, but he fondly remembered the “good old days” when trainees spent days on end in the hospital. The phrase emerged whenever he felt a need to remind us that medicine was a grueling pursuit with no room for weakness, perceived or actual.
I don’t know if his remark was a thinly veiled sexist jab or merely an allusion to the movie A League of Their Own, but it stopped mattering once
I Need a New Stethoscope
Jenni Levy
I need a new stethoscope. I have to wrap my fingers around the fissures in the tubing to make this one work.
For me, these days, listening to the patient’s chest is more a ritual than a means of diagnosis. After twenty years as a primary-care internist, I now work full-time in hospice and palliative care. I spend more time listening to stories than to hearts and lungs. Even so, there’s something about leaning over and finding the right spot on the chest that makes me feel like a real doctor and helps my patients know that they’re being cared for.
Every morning I put this stethoscope around my neck and walk down the hall of our inpatient hospice unit,
Say It Ain’t So
Dominic Donato
I am in my twenties.
I am a student in dental school. My seven classmates and I have gathered, notebooks and pens in hand, for the first day of our ten-day rotation at the Veteran’s Hospital oncology department.
Dr. Steele, a published expert in oral cancer, instructs us to follow him to the outpatient clinic. Some of those he’ll examine are initial consultations; others are follow-up exams. All are U.S. veterans. Many are homeless alcoholics, whose lifestyle, we’re told, predisposes them to oral cancers.
“I want each of you to take a look at this lesion on the right lateral border ventral side of the tongue,” says Dr. Steele in resonant tones. We bob our heads to find the
Pimped
Anne Whetzel
It’s two months into my second year of medical school, and I’m at the clinic, preparing to shadow Dr. Neiland, a primary-care physician.
I didn’t want to come here this morning.
Yesterday, one of my preceptors decided that it was my turn to be “pimped.” Pimping, in medical education, is when the preceptor asks you questions until you get one wrong. Then he asks more questions, highlighting your ignorance. Theoretically, this ensures that once he tells you the correct answer, you’ll never forget it. This works for some students, but not for me. I get defensive, and the right answer, whatever it is, goes in one ear and out the other.
He Ain’t Heavy
Edward Beal
In my decades as a psychiatrist, I’ve seen many different kinds of patients; only in the past five years, though, have I worked with soldiers.
I see them through TeleHealth, an organization that offers patients long-distance care via a sophisticated form of Skyping.
I originally took this job for financial reasons (during the economic downturn of 2008), but I quickly discovered its unique rewards.
Early on, for instance, as I stood waiting for an elevator, a quadriplegic soldier maneuvered his electric wheelchair alongside me.
When the doors opened, he looked up and said, “After you, sir.” That’s not a memory that fades.
Finding a Bed in Bedlam
Jo Marie Reilly
There’s a full moon tonight.
“That’s when crazy things happen,” my superstitious mom always says.
I’m a family physician doing weekend call at my urban community hospital. My pager rings incessantly. As I answer yet another call from the emergency room downstairs, I think, Maybe Mom has a point.
“Got a suicidal patient with nowhere to go,” the ER physician yells into the phone, against the background commotion. “This guy John has been here for three days. He’s casted on both feet and can’t walk. The insurance company’s authorization nurse says she can’t admit him because it’s not medically indicated–but if a doctor gives her an indication, she’ll authorize it. Can you do it?”