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Casting Out Demons
Jef Gamblee
As I stand beside the bed in Mr. Jerome’s living room, his pit bull puppy sniffs the body bag lying on a stretcher nearby. His cat curls up on the bedside shelf.
“That dog gonna be a problem?” asks Jude, one of the crematory guys.
“She might get underfoot,” says the neighbor, whose name I can’t remember. “But she’s a lover, not a fighter.”
Jude and Chuck are here to pick up Mr. Jerome, who died of prostate cancer today. His body lies on the bed–the wasted husk of a once lively, athletic man who had taught history in a New Jersey middle school.
I’m a hospice chaplain; Mr. Jerome was my client. I’d known him for about six
Friday Before Christmas
Deborah Pierce
On the Friday before Christmas, I received an unusual gift.
Like any job, being a primary-care physician has both challenges and rewards. The challenges are many, and the rewards are often fleeting–a smile or a “thank you” from a patient or coworker, for instance. And I’ve found that being a teacher of medical students and residents brings an additional layer of rewards and challenges.
One Friday before Christmas, these arrived in an especially potent mix.
Chemo or Lourdes? Welcome to Cancerland
Michael Carbine
Dr. Peterson, the radiation oncologist, gets right to the point.
“The medical center’s tumor board has concluded that your cancer is inoperable, incurable and untreatable,” he says flatly. “Any chemotherapy or radiation treatments would be palliative in nature.”
He begins explaining the reasons behind the board’s verdict, but everything he’s saying washes out. My mind stopped working as soon as I heard the words “incurable” and “palliative.” I am sliding into shock.
Dr. Peterson pauses.
The Case of the Lima Bean
Matthew Webb
“Matthew, go see this lady about her breast mass,” says my attending physician at the clinic where, as a third-year medical student, I’m doing a family-medicine rotation.
Okay, I think. I’ve done my ob/gyn rotation; breast masses are no big deal.
I don my short white coat, freshly baked from sitting in the back of my car as I drove to work on this oppressively hot morning. As I sling the stethoscope around my neck, I feel my inner voice (my constant companion amid the stresses of medical school) gearing up, ready to offer insights, questions, distractions….
Two Timelines
Timeline One
Day 1: For over thirty-five years my strong, spirited spouse, Carlo, served around the world in the Air Force. Now retired from the military, he still serves at the air base as a civilian security police officer.
His neck hurts. A lot. He blames the pain on the unbalanced weight of the bulletproof vest that Uncle Sam added last year to the uniform he proudly wears every day.
Exam-Room Follies
Anne Whetzel
Pamela sits on the examining-room stool, looking at me expectantly.
I am in my first year of medical school. I do as I’ve been told to do in Medical Skills class: I observe my patient–without judgment or assumptions–and try to figure out what questions to ask, based on the information I am given.
Pamela has curly, strawberry-blonde hair and looks to be thirty, just a few years older than me. Her infant son lies in a carrier beside her.
Dr. Clark, whom I’m shadowing, has just given Pamela osteopathic manipulative therapy for her chronic headaches. Now the doctor is treating Pamela’s older son, age seven, for back pain; he fell off the school jungle gym a few days ago.
All
Mrs. Finch and Ms. Virginia
Evan Heald
A Different View
Most days, Mrs. Finch’s perspective was outrageously optimistic and embarrassingly complimentary. Although she had the typical assortment of nonagenarian maladies, she would not let that define her; whenever she visited my office, it was hard to get to a chief complaint because of her relentless focus on how nicely the parking lot had been graveled, or “what a sweet, sweet nurse you have,” or my partner’s haircut or the “clever, clever little hooks” holding the geraniums at the entry.
Never mind the treasure trove of doubled superlatives she saved for me, her physician.
Dance in Three Movements
Anna Schmidt
Reprieve
Once the weeks of morning sickness subside, I feel as if I’ve grown wings.
Even with the fatigue, it’s as though someone has pressed a great “reset” button on years of inflammation. That elbow joint that hasn’t straightened fully for years suddenly rediscovers its full range of motion. My knees, too, become straighter and stronger than they’ve been in many years.
Even without the meds, ditched in honor of my growing baby’s health, it is my best and most dramatic remission since my teen years–the last time my hormones went to town.
One Last Gift
Edward Beal
During most of my career as a psychiatrist, I haven’t often dealt directly with death. For the past five years, though, I have had the privilege of spending two days a week treating service men and women returning from deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq. Listening to their stories and talking with them about their war experiences, I’ve spent much more time thinking about death and dying.
Despite this, I was shocked when my wife recently told me she was planning to donate her body to science–specifically, to the Georgetown University Medical Center’s anatomical donors program.
My first thought was that she obviously has never been a first-year medical student in a Gross Anatomy lab. My next impulse was to warn her