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Tag: connecting with patients

The Things We Carry

It has been said that we in health care carry a backpack of sorrows.

There is a sanctity to being on the inside, trusted to care for people in their weakest, darkest and most vulnerable moments. When it feels like control is gone, we steady our voices even when we too feel scared.

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Being There

Being There

Question: What is the most read book in a psychiatric ward?

Answer:
Based on my observations, it’s the Christian Bible. During my psychiatry rotation in the third year of medical school, I saw so many patients researching, reading and preaching the word of God. Clearly, in those pages they found something they needed: vengeance against those who’d wronged them, a secret prophecy, confirmation of their sanity. Or maybe they saw the central message: “You’re loved. We (God, humans, nature, whatever) care for you and will take care of you. We understand you.”
Seeing these patients cling to the Bible felt moving and deeply sad–painful, really. A younger, more innocent me might have seen some grace and faith. But, honestly, all I saw was

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Family Summons

Amy Cowan

Startled out of sleep, I reflexively reach for my beeping pager. For a split second, I lie poised between wakefulness and terror in the pitch-dark resident call room, not sure where I am or what happened. I resolve to sleep with the lights on from now on.

I dial the call-back number.

“Pod A,” a caffeinated voice chirps. It’s Candice, one of the nurses.

“Hi. Amy here, returning a page,” I murmur.

“Oh, hi, Dr. Cowan,” she says. “I just wanted to let you know that the family is all here. They’re ready for the meeting.” Her voice is sweet. At sixty-three, Candice is still practicing ICU nursing–at night, no less. She loves it.

“Candice, what are

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Occupational Empathy

 
On my first day shadowing an occupational therapist, I learned much more than I had anticipated.
 
We saw five patients that morning—with each one, the OT went through a series of exercises to test their strength and mobility. The first four visits were interesting, though uneventful, as the patients completed their exercises with varying degrees of success.
 
The last patient was a man with a history of alcoholism. He had a tube in his throat, which prevented him from speaking. A resident outside the room informed us that no one had been able to get him to cooperate. Judging by the smirk on his face, he didn’t think we were going to get anywhere, either.
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Hope Heals

Hope has been the key to happiness in my life. Lows happen; troubled times are inevitable. But when I can hope that what hurts will be healed and difficulties will be overcome, I can be happy. Hope is something we can hold onto in difficult times and know, trite though it sounds, that the dawn follows even the darkest nights. I have also learned that hope sometimes arrives in different and unexpected packages.

During my sophomore year of college, I hit my personal low. I was drowning in depression and anxiety. Simply making it through the day was a feat in itself. I lacked purpose, and I even questioned my will to live. Hope seemed just beyond my grasp.

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Crash Course

Marilyn Barton

“Nursing students needed to work in the University Hospital, good pay, orientation.”

As a rising nursing-school senior in the 1970s, I naïvely applied for the job above without getting the full details. No one mentioned that I’d be working in a psychiatric unit housing twenty-five aggressive, catatonic or schizophrenic patients, many of whom had been locked away for years.

The entrance sign, which should have read “Locked Psych/Med/Surg Unit,” said simply “5 East.”

On my first evening shift, I overheard two nurses discussing how to monitor a new patient, transferred from the federal psych facility across town.

“Can we get the student to do it?” said one.

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Stubborn Thumbs

 
My maternal grandmother was a psychic medium. She read cards professionally and taught me card-reading when I was child. As a teen, wanting an intuitive skill no one else in the family possessed, I went to the library, checked out books on palm reading and studied them.
 
Throughout my working life, I kept this hobby to myself. Yet I used it both consciously and subconsciously; I believe nurses possess a clairvoyance born of compassion and the will to heal. We earn this through study and years of practice. Yet it is also a gift of heart and mind.
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Recovery Room

Warren Holleman

We’re sitting in a circle: seven women and me. Most are in their thirties and forties, and in their second, third or fourth month of sobriety. They look professional in the suits they’ve assembled from the donations closet of our inner-city recovery center.

I start things off by reminding everyone that this is the last day of the group. The last hour, in fact.

All eyes turn to Dorothy.

Dorothy is a proud woman, tall and tough and strong. And a former track and field star, although now she’s wheelchair-bound.

She speaks in a deep, husky, monotone punctuated occasionally by dramatic earthquakes–otherwise known as spastic tremors. But in all this time, she’s avoided talking about herself, fueling the suspicion that she’s hiding something

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The Ancients Had It Right

Stanley H. Schuman

In Aramaic scripture*, and Aboriginal Dreamtime.
How else could animal life begin
Except by Divine Breath, oxygen-enriched?
How ingenious! Only two atoms: O2,
Ideal for hemoglobin, mitochondria, 
Neurotransmitters, ideal for fight or flight, for vocalizing, 
For clever humans to shape tools, split atoms, 
Compose opera, sow seeds, harvest grain.

Consider my distress, in my just-opened pediatric office. 
Stumped by Angela, a three-year-old
So panicked by my white coat, no way to examine her.

Screaming, clutching Mother, she knew and I knew 
This wasn’t university-hospital, with back-up nurses.
Instead, it was one-on-one, 
Advantage Angela.

Desperate, I felt for a stray balloon in my 
Pants pocket (from my own child’s birthday).
Putting it to my lips, I strained to inflate the stubborn thing.
Instantly,

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Tea and Daisies

Amy Cooper Rodriguez

It’s been almost ten years since Esther died, and I still think of her almost every day. I was her physical therapist at a rehabilitation hospital. My patients had many different diagnoses–head injury, stroke, multiple sclerosis, hip or knee replacements. I was in my early twenties. I thought that if I tried hard enough, I could help everyone. And often, I could.

* * * * *

“What are you going to do to me?” Esther asked, looking up from her hospital chair.

I laughed and pulled up a chair. “I’m Amy, your physical therapist. I’m not going to do anything to you. I’m here to help you get back to doing things you miss.” 

Esther smoothed her long skirt over

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Touched

Karen Myers

“I can feel the life force leaving me,” Mike says as he massages my legs with his rough, careful hands. He doesn’t use oil or lotion like the other massage therapists. Just his sticky, Marlboro-scented fingers. I lie in my underwear beneath a green sheet. My bony shoulder blades and crooked spine press into the table, having long since lost their cushion of muscle. 

“We’re getting older,” Mike says, even though we’ve barely reached forty. “Maybe that’s why we’re so afraid. We don’t have the energy to fight like we used to.”

Mike’s eyes bulge like a bullfrog’s. When I first knew him, I found them a bit frightening. His voice is raspy and deep. He has a fading tattoo on his left

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Piece of Work

Jennifer Frank

“You’re a real piece of work!” he spat at me. He was a patient named Martin; I was the supervising physician, trying to role-model for a second-year resident how to conduct a difficult conversation with patients like this. 

So far, not so good.

At first glance, Martin seemed an ordinary-looking older man, with close-cut gray hair and plain-framed eyeglasses. But I was struck by his scowl–he was expecting an argument, perhaps because during his interview with the resident he’d already encountered some pushback. 

He’d brought a long list of laboratory tests that his biofeedback “doctor” had instructed him to get, saying that his fatigue and other symptoms were caused by “adrenal dysfunction.”

I scanned the list–thyroid, blood count, chemistries, vitamins, adrenal function. “Testing

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