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Stepping Back From the Edge
Bill Ventres
I can walk.
It’s not pretty. It’s not easy. It’s not without assistance. But I can walk.
Six weeks ago, I wasn’t able to walk. A few days before that, I’d begun a visit to the city of Antigua, in Guatemala, and was enjoying its colonial ambiance with friends.
Then, after a brief bout of sore throat, I contracted Guillain-Barre Syndrome, an autoimmune disorder that afflicts the peripheral nervous system. My body’s defense system, its antibodies triggered by the offending virus, had decided to attack the nerves in my arms, legs and trunk.
Upon awaking at 7:30 am on November 2, 2011, I could barely get out of bed. On rubbery legs, I made my way to the bedroom door to call for
Natural Selection
Jeremy Shatan
By the time my wife and I reached Hospital B’s exam room, early in the afternoon, we’d already put in a very long day.Â
Across the room, which was no bigger than a galley kitchen, stood three doctors. One–I’ll call him the Chief–was the bearded, bushy-maned head of the pediatric oncology program. His explosion of salt-and-pepper hair made a startling contrast to his posh British accent. With him were Dr. Transplant, a small, kind-faced woman who specialized in bone-marrow and stem-cell transplants, and Dr. Nice, a genial young pediatrician with a Midwestern accent.
We were there with our fourteen-month-old son, Jacob. A week earlier, he’d had brain
Cracking the Code
Zohar Lederman
I am a medical student in Pavia, Italy, doing my fifth year out of six. It is summertime, and, as I’ve done every summer for years, I’ve returned to my small hometown in the south of Israel. There, among other things, I volunteer as an emergency medical technician (EMT) with Magen David Adom, the Israeli Red Cross.Â
It’s 7:30 on a Friday morning. I’m at the Red Cross office, talking with the paramedic and a doctor, when a young volunteer runs in.Â
“There’s a car pulling up outside–they’re bringing an unconscious patient!” he says.
The paramedic goes to get the advanced life support equipment, and the doctor
Pained
Remya Tharackal Ravindran
The light from my pen torch strikes the steel-blue eyes of the patient lying before me. Her pupils stand wide open and still.
My pager’s shrilling pierces the quiet. Fumbling with the buttons, I read the message: “Call 7546 STAT.”
It’s my first rotation on the floor as a new internal medicine resident. I dial the number, various possible disasters bubbling through my head.
“The patient in 723, Mr. Martini, is complaining of severe abdominal pain,” says a nurse’s voice. “The day-shift resident ordered one milligram of morphine, but he refused it. I want you to come and evaluate him right away.”
“Can you give me
Crafting My Own Safety Net
Nicola Holmes
As I guide my car through the evening traffic, I feel tears on my cheeks.
I am a doctor who plans ahead: I write out plans for my patients. This has led to my nickname, “Plan Doctor.”
Each of my consultations is carefully crafted in separate steps. The conclusion is laid out in my own neat copperplate handwriting on a plain white page. (My father taught me to write copperplate. For hours every evening I would copy stencils of words he’d written out. At the time I felt persecuted; now each day, as my writing flows, I marvel at his wisdom.)Â
Each plan leaves the room with
First, Do No Harm
Alison Block
It’s one of my earliest memories: I’m wrestling with my brother, and I’m losing, because I’m five and he’s seven, and he’s bigger and stronger than I am. So I bite him, hard.
Instantly I know I’ve crossed some sort of line, and I employ my most primitive defense mechanism, shouting out, “He bit me! Jon bit me!” I feel shame, because I am old enough to know it is wrong to hurt people–and to lie.
Some years later, I am accepted to medical school. I go to the first ceremony of my medical career–the one where I get my short white coat–and I take a modernized version of the Hippocratic Oath. I will try to do the best I can for my
Finding a Way Home
Erin Imler
Stigmata
I started my third year of medical school as a surgery clerk.
With this eight-week clerkship came a flood of conflicting advice from older, wiser peers: “Ask a lot of questions, but speak only when spoken to.” “Offer to help, but stay out of the way.” “Be friendly and likeable, but not too friendly–or too likeable.” For the medical student, such is the mystique of the OR.
Three weeks into my general surgery rotation, I was helping my senior resident to see patients in the clinic and evaluate them for surgery. She grabbed the first chart off the day’s pile, knocked on the exam-room door and turned the handle, glancing at the chart before saying, “Hello, Mister–”
“Tran,” the patient finished.
Small Talk
Greg Fuson
Turns out I’m anemic.
As in, I have anemia. When I mention this, true friends will retort, “Yeah, you’ve been anemic for as long as we’ve known you.” Ha ha. (Assholes.) That’s because a true friend is comfortable enough to make fun of you; it’s the always-polite ones you have to wonder about. But that’s not where I’m going with this.
Apparently anemia is rare in males, and when it occurs, doctors want to figure out why. You get a phone call from your physician (“I want to run some tests”), hang up, try to finish what you were working on, and discover that you can’t. That it was