Sunday, October 31, 2021. Micalyn’s eightieth birthday.
A week ago, I texted my friend Sandy:
I had a reasonable day, but I felt lonely.
It’s so damn frustrating to have lost my best friend, Micalyn. Whenever I think of something I will want to tell her the next time I see her, reality comes crashing down on me.
It was midmorning at the hospital where I was a clinical medical-surgical instructor. I was standing at the medications cart with Sally, one of my third-year nursing students. One of the floor nurses approached.
“You have Anna in Room 44, don’t you?” she asked Sally.
Sally nodded.
“You better go in there,” continued the nurse. “She doesn’t look too good.”
he found the gate unlatched,
crossed the downy path
into the volant field,
Scott Wilson ~
God,
Take her breath, still her heart, and
clean her body out with a spoon.
Wring her spirit in the river and
place her eyes beside the moon.
Fold up her memories in a dresser and
frame her smile in the sky.
Turn up her laughter in the darkness and
let her freckles start to fly.
Smoke her love out with tobacco and
sow her kindness into the seas.
Diffuse her voice upon the mountains and
pollinate her sorrow with the bees.
Daniel Becker
During the service, after the mensch acclamation
and before the sermon-sized metaphor
that started with a tree then lost me
a comrade from the morning shift at college–
they shared a lecture hall and the appreciation
that all sleepy students are sleepy in different ways–
quoted John bragging about having the North Grounds pool
all to himself at sunrise. Morning people brag
about their mornings. This morning the lifeguards,
proving they do pay attention to the lives they guard,
have the music tuned to oldies–Sam Cooke crooning
you-ou-ou-ou send me as Sam’s fans adjust their goggles.
John, easy to spot in that shameless bathing cap
he claims helps part the
Katie Lin
It’s 2:00 am, and the fluorescent bulbs flicker gently overhead along the quiet hallways of the intensive-care unit.
Tonight I’m the ICU resident on call, and the weight of that title sits heavily on my shoulders. My team is in charge of keeping our critically ill patients safe from harm overnight. Although the supervising physician is only a phone call away, I’m the acting team lead for any codes called during the night on patients elsewhere in the hospital who may need our life-support services. Code Blue: cardiac arrest. Code 66: anything else requiring assistance.
The metronomic beeping of the life-support machines keeps time as I blink the weariness from my eyes and share a few muted smiles with the
Cathleen Mahan
About the artist:
Cathleen Mahan is a contemporary visual artist and a registered nurse specializing in critical care. “I’ve long known that my experience as a nurse informs my artwork. The same quality of touch that reassures a frightened patient becomes a creative source in the studio. Never, however, has my artwork been so directly linked to my patients as in the body of work that includes this drawing.”
About the artwork:
“One day last year while attending to the
Julie List
Two years ago, I’d just begun my new post as clinical supervisor at the caregiver-support center at a large medical institution. The center offers emotional and practical support to families of patients who are dealing with serious illnesses and hospitalizations.
In my short time there, I’d already encountered many memorable clients, but somehow I felt a special connection with one woman, Maria. A small, intense woman with piercing dark eyes, she often came to see us between her visits to her husband, Felipe, who lay gravely ill in the hospital’s cardiac intensive-care unit.
Always with Maria on her visits to Felipe were their three twentysomething daughters, Rosa, Alicia and Blanca. The family’s closeness touched me–especially when it became clear that Felipe’s
Jenni Levy
I need a new stethoscope. I have to wrap my fingers around the fissures in the tubing to make this one work.
For me, these days, listening to the patient’s chest is more a ritual than a means of diagnosis. After twenty years as a primary-care internist, I now work full-time in hospice and palliative care. I spend more time listening to stories than to hearts and lungs. Even so, there’s something about leaning over and finding the right spot on the chest that makes me feel like a real doctor and helps my patients know that they’re being cared for.
Every morning I put this stethoscope around my neck and walk down the hall of our inpatient hospice unit,
Cortney Davis
It was a Wednesday in late spring, 1972. I was a nursing student in my final months of training, eagerly awaiting graduation.
When I arrived on the maternity ward that morning, my nursing instructor told me that I’d be caring for a baby, only hours old, with special needs.
I thought she’d send me to the neonatal ICU. Instead, to my surprise, she motioned toward the linen closet, its doors closed tight.
“The baby was born without a complete brain,” she said. “A condition called anencephaly. He can’t see or hear. And,” she added, “they don’t expect he’ll live out the day. So try not to get attached.”
Martin Kohn
(for Helen)
This openness into
This brightness onto
This bodied and
dis-embodied
sunken-eyed
knowing
This close
and blinking
moment
This shutter stop
goodbye
Your round soft
shoulder pillowed
beneath a feeble
hug
The Lord
“not quite ready”
to take you
even though you
and Trixie your cat
had walked the dark path
to him again
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