anxiety – Pulse

Elderly Multigravida

Lisa Sieczkowski October 25, 2024 7 Comments

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.

The Black Dog

Julia Loosen July 28, 2023 9 Comments

It was a particularly sunny morning, and golden light streamed through the clinic windows. Seated in my preceptor’s office, I scanned her list of patients for the day. As a first-year medical student, I was to do preliminary interviews with some, and I hoped to find a few cases that would offer a chance to test my diagnostic reasoning.

The list held a lot of the usual–medication follow-ups, annual physicals, well-child checks—plus Ernest, a seventy-eight-year-old man who’d come into the emergency room for a urinary-catheter issue. This seemed promising, so I volunteered to see him.

At Three O’Clock

Adriana Añon July 2, 2021 14 Comments

Running to make my Tuesday biopsy appointment, I tripped, landing viciously on my hands and knees at the corner of Madison Avenue and 79th. Embarrassed, I was helped up by a gray-haired lady in her eighties. For an instant, I wondered if I’d get to be her age.

Walking into the clinic, I saw my husband, who’d insisted on meeting me there. My beige pants were slightly ripped and bloodstained, my knees tingling and smarting.

COVID Birdsong

Chase Crossno June 15, 2021 3 Comments

Once I spent days, which became weeks, which become months, by myself in a small house in the village of Oshikango, Namibia. Two years prior, I had arrived there as a newly minted college graduate, eager to begin my new NGO job of teaching high-school science and HIV education.

It didn’t take long for the bubble of confident competence to burst.

The Magic Touch

Betsy Willis April 6, 2018 4 Comments

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

Blueberry Picking

Roz Levine June 26, 2015 3 Comments

Roz Levine

We ran from an outbreak of polio
Abandoned the Bronx for a summer hideaway
In the shadow of the Catskill Mountains
Each day we traipsed craggy trails
Stooped low beneath clear skies
Plucked mounds of dark blues
From bushes bursting with ripe fruit
Filled our baskets to overflow

It should have been all this:
Sunshine on eight-year-old skin
Fresh air on innocent girl soil
Thoughts of jam on toast for breakfast
Happy days of laughs with the family

When anxiety overwhelms the mind
Blueberry picking equates to worries
Of prickly thorns and bee stings
Sunburns and infected blisters
Rattlesnake bites and botulism in jelly

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

Tag: anxiety

Elderly Multigravida

The Black Dog

At Three O’Clock

COVID Birdsong

The Magic Touch

Blueberry Picking

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

Tag: anxiety

Elderly Multigravida

The Black Dog

At Three O’Clock

COVID Birdsong

The Magic Touch

Blueberry Picking

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