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

Search
Close this search box.

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

Search
Close this search box.
  1. Home
  2. /
  3. confidentiality

Tag: confidentiality

Stuck

Ken Gordon

I have never told this story to anyone.

It all started one night about ten years ago, three months into my internship. I was on call, having just admitted a man with a possible meningitis.

He now lay curled up in fetal position on the bed in front of me, looking thin and ill. Preparing to administer a lumbar puncture (a diagnostic test that involves removing fluid from the spinal canal), I gently pushed his head further down towards his legs.

He told me that he knew he was dying. AIDS had been ravaging his body for years. He wondered aloud whether this was a punishment for his previous lifestyle–especially the drugs. Everyone he’d cared for had either died or left him. 

As

Read More »

Keeping Secrets

Reeta Mani

Rohit walked into our HIV-testing center in South Mumbai one busy morning. I was struck by how stylish he looked in his jeans and casual linen shirt, very different than the usual patients who visit our sprawling public hospital campus. He paced back and forth in a corner, looking at his watch and whispering into a cell phone.

I guessed that he’d chosen this crowded setting because of the anonymity it afforded; here he stood little risk of running into an acquaintance who might start to wonder.

During Rohit’s pre-test counseling, he confided his fear of being HIV-positive. He told us about having unprotected sex with female commercial sex workers during overseas business trips–and about a routine insurance health checkup that

Read More »
Scroll to Top