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Mirror

Karen Arscott August 17, 2017 No Comments

As I drove home after seeing my CT scan, I thought about how I could avoid telling anyone my diagnosis. It would be easy, I figured. I would wait until I had written confirmation of what I had seen. A few days passed, and I was able to maintain the deception–I loved acting, and this was an easy role for me, as protector of my family.

When the radiology report arrived, I felt like I was reading a report about one of my patients: “…suggestive of malignancy,” it said. I kept looking at the name and birthdate–yes, this was my report. Thus began my path down the rough road of lung cancer.

The First Time

Darren Colyn April 19, 2017 No Comments

Walking with my mother through a recent time of ill health was unlike the countless times I had supported individuals and families through their own times of grief and loss. As a spiritual health practitioner (aka hospital chaplain) at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital, on an island near Vancouver, I found the setting and the situation very familiar. But the emotions were anything but.

Unmasked

Carly Bergey April 14, 2017 40 Comments

Carly Bergey

It’s called a missed miscarriage: You arrive, as I did, at the doctor for your first-ever pregnancy appointment, suffering from morning sickness and filled with joyful anticipation–only to learn that your body has not yet registered the death of your small embryo. Despite all of my doctor’s tinkering and double-checking, the ultrasound screen showed no movement. There was just the outline of a baby in me, quiet and still.

Hoping for a natural miscarriage, I told my coworkers what had happened, but asked that we not discuss it at work.

Day after day, I went to the Denver office where I worked as a speech pathologist, carrying my baby deep inside me, like a single stitch woven within fold after fold of

What a Honeymoon!

Paula Symoens March 2, 2017 No Comments

I finally remarried.

The day came and went quickly, though I had been having bouts of nausea and vomitting throughout the day. Just figured it was nerves. After the reception, we went to the hotel room and I felt better. Next morning off to Jamaica.

Chemo Brain

Anne Webster February 3, 2017 11 Comments

Anne Webster

Since a doctor gave me poison pills that left
my heart a swollen slug, killed off my bone marrow,
set my lungs to clamoring, I can get brain-freeze
without eating a snow cone. When I walk
my neighborhood’s knotted streets, lost drivers
stop to ask directions. After thirty years, I know
the pretzel-turns, but when they motor off, I wonder,
Did I say left when I meant right? My husband
gets that look when words change lanes
without bothering to signal. Like soap bubbles
they pop from my mouth–“bird” for “tree,” “cat” for “dog.”

Riñones al Jerez

Sarah Buttrey January 3, 2017 No Comments

“You do not need an MRI,” I told my father emphatically as he stood in my living room, explaining to me that his beloved doctor had ordered this for his low back pain. He was hoping for a quick fix before meeting his brother in Spain. “You need physical therapy.”

I dislike playing doctor to my family, not trusting myself to dissociate emotion from evidence, but this was just too much. Sure, his back hurt him sometimes, but there was nothing to suggest anything dangerous going on, nothing an intervention would fix. Nothing but the dreadful aches and pains of growing old.

Vinyl Cushion

Jack Coulehan April 22, 2016 6 Comments

I arrive in the waiting room nearly a half hour early and confirm my existence with two insurance cards and a questionnaire that asks me yet again to list my illnesses, allergies, and medications. Most seats are occupied by old people, older than me. Or maybe the same age. It’s difficult to say who is with whom because those who are not making love to their cell phones are paging through OK!, People and Star. Nobody’s eyes are on anyone.

A Day in the Life of a Psychiatrically Hospitalized Clinician (Part 2)

Liat Katz December 25, 2015 13 Comments

Editor’s Note: This is the conclusion of Liat Katz’s remarkable story. Part 1 was published last week.

Lying here on this hard bed on the psych floor, staring at the white walls and ceiling, I think of my clients–and I don’t feel so alone. Their everyday experience is not so different from my short-lived experience here at the hospital. Often, they endure a whole day’s wait in the dirty Social Security and social-services offices, only to be treated patronizingly and have their needs go unmet.

Ten-Minute Miracle

Melissa Zhu Murphy October 2, 2015 11 Comments

Melissa Zhu Murphy

On Mother’s Day 2007, as I was finishing my freshman year at Vanderbilt University, I joined my parents for a warm, happy reunion in an Italian restaurant, celebrating both the day and the completion of my first year of premedical studies.

My father was blissfully breathing in the steam wafting up from his ravioli in lobster cream sauce as my mother prepared to dig into an enormous plate of basil penne pasta with spicy meatballs.

I took a bite of crusty Italian bread and lifted a forkful of manicotti to my mouth, getting ready to describe how hard I’d had to study for my biology and chemistry finals. Then I realized that something was wrong.

Very wrong.

He Ain’t Heavy

Edward Beal May 22, 2015 9 Comments

Edward Beal

In my decades as a psychiatrist, I’ve seen many different kinds of patients; only in the past five years, though, have I worked with soldiers.

I see them through TeleHealth, an organization that offers patients long-distance care via a sophisticated form of Skyping.

I originally took this job for financial reasons (during the economic downturn of 2008), but I quickly discovered its unique rewards.

Early on, for instance, as I stood waiting for an elevator, a quadriplegic soldier maneuvered his electric wheelchair alongside me.

When the doors opened, he looked up and said, “After you, sir.” That’s not a memory that fades.

My Father’s Girl

Maureen Hirthler March 20, 2015 23 Comments

I’m walking very slowly with my dad down the produce aisle at the local supermarket, past the colorful waxed apples, Mexican mangoes and Rainier cherries, and imagining my life’s blood trickling onto the floor from an invisible wound.

As I pass by the misting system spraying the bins of green, red, yellow and orange peppers, past the lady reaching for carrots, past the stock guy balancing the heirloom tomatoes into a precarious stack, I want to scream. The sense of loss is overpowering.

Sick of Getting Sick

Mimi Emig February 6, 2015 8 Comments

I awoke one Saturday morning to a terribly familiar feeling–a tight, barky cough, fast breathing, severe shortness of breath and burning in my chest. Another severe asthma attack. I knew I was in trouble.

Twenty-three years ago, when I was an internal-medicine resident, I went to be evaluated for recurrent pneumonia. I wound up being diagnosed with cough-variant asthma. Most asthmatic patients wheeze; when my asthma is bad, I cough.

I now realize that I’ve probably had asthma all my life. When I was a child, though, cough-variant asthma wasn’t recognized as a disease, at least not in the small upstate New York town where I was raised. So, instead, I was the “sickly child”–the one who got a cold with a cough

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Tag: doctor as patient

Mirror

The First Time

Unmasked

What a Honeymoon!

Chemo Brain

Riñones al Jerez

Vinyl Cushion

A Day in the Life of a Psychiatrically Hospitalized Clinician (Part 2)

Ten-Minute Miracle

He Ain’t Heavy

My Father’s Girl

Sick of Getting Sick

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