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Family Summons

Amy Cowan January 6, 2017 9 Comments

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.”

Curmudgeon

Lisa Walker December 16, 2016 10 Comments

Lisa Walker

My brother-in-law, Ron, was a curmudgeon; grumpy, sullen, even downright mean at times.

By blood, he and my husband Bill were cousins. In the 1950s, when Bill was just a child, his mother died unexpectedly, and Ron’s mother took Bill in to live with her and her four children. They were an African-American family living in the midst of a middle-class, predominantly white Connecticut township. Their home, located on a wealthy family’s farmland, had one bedroom, wood heat and no running water. Each day, Ron’s mother walked five miles to and from town, where she did laundry and cleaned houses to support the family.

Bill and Ron were close in age; they considered each other brothers. I met Bill when

A Mother’s Son

Hugh Silk August 5, 2016 10 Comments

Hugh Silk

“Why do you want to go into family medicine?” my internal-medicine preceptor asked.

It was an innocent enough question. I’d known from day one of medical school what I wanted to do, so I answered with confidence, and perhaps a bit of a chip on my shoulder.

“I love being with people and getting to know them,” I said. “I’ve always been this way, so it makes sense that’s what I would do for my career. I’m looking forward to having the long-term relationships and seeing where they go.”

A raised eyebrow, followed by his knowing Irish brogue: “I applaud that. My own father was a GP in Ireland. But I’m afraid you won’t find much of that in

A Conversation About Race, Fear and Connection

Paul Gross July 22, 2016 15 Comments

Paul Gross

In the wake of recent events, many speak about the need for conversations about race. In our country, the implications of race are a moral issue, a humanitarian issue, a justice issue and, yes, a medical issue. (One need only examine how racial categorization affects rates of death.) But what would this conversation about race look like?

Today, Pulse’s editor provides one offering. In August, we’ll invite all Pulse readers to join in with their stories, when Race will be the theme of More Voices.

I grew up in Stuyvesant Town, a middle-class housing development just north of Fourteenth Street on the east side of Manhattan. Built after World War II, Stuyvesant Town was a leafy and desirable place to live.

The Making of Me

Hilton Koppe June 14, 2016 No Comments

I was the new doc in a small country town. I wanted to be accepted. I wanted to do best for my new patients.

She was the town matriarch. She had multiple chronic illnesses. She had the power to make me or break me.

White Coat Ceremony

Mary McCarthy June 13, 2016 No Comments

What do you think medicine’s most powerful diagnostic tool is? A CAT scan, perhaps? An MRI?

No. Look at your hands. These will be the most important tools of your chosen profession.

Gloves on Hands

Henry Schneiderman June 3, 2016 3 Comments

When my internal medicine residents put on gloves to examine a patient’s normal abdominal skin, I see red. Don’t they know that the easiest way to make our patients feel dirty and repellent, leprous and untouchable, is to deny them the skin of our hands?

Tough Love

Maria Gervits March 18, 2016 9 Comments

Maria Gervits

I miss Alba. I don’t know why, but I do. She was the most challenging patient I’ve ever had. I dreaded seeing her in the office–and yet, somehow, she won me over.

Alba was fifty-nine, with short, silver hair, a deep, gravelly voice from decades of smoking, and an attitude. She had lung disease, heart disease, depression, arthritis and HIV. She also had a complicated social situation. She’d used cocaine and heroin until her husband had died of HIV. She’d then moved in with her elderly mother and cared for her until her mother died of a stroke. Now Alba lived in a shelter right around the corner from where her father had been shot years before.

The biggest joy

Winning

Amy Odom February 12, 2016 10 Comments

Amy Odom

Like an old Atari video game I attack the folders in my inbox
Successfully devouring each power pellet placed in my path
Gulp, gulp.
Faster, faster.
Pushing to the finish line where husband and kids are waiting.
I am anxious to hear the digitalized music announce my victory.

Apparently, I am accumulating rewards for all of my clicking
            cherries for remembering to recheck labs
            stars for sending patient reminders
            extra lives for erasing the red in my registries
It seems that I am winning the game.
Perhaps on target to my all-time highest score.

Ritual Healing

Joseph Fennelly October 16, 2015 16 Comments

Joseph Fennelly

In recent years the medical profession has witnessed a surge in burnout and depression among physicians and other health professionals. Efforts have been made to address this–for example, by offering Schwartz Center Rounds, in which caregivers openly and honestly discuss the social and emotional issues they face. Health professionals can also reduce stress through counseling, meditation or massage, or through practical steps such as cutting back on their working hours.

In the most traumatic cases–those marked by the death of the patient–physicians have yet another powerful source of comfort and emotional support. This support, offered by the patient’s family, comes within a context that allows the caregiver to accept it without forfeiting professionalism.

Last Writes

Hilton Koppe April 17, 2015 9 Comments

Hilton Koppe

Jeez mate, you are really dead. “Really fucking dead,” as you would say. I don’t need to be a doctor to know that. The cop who rang me was right. You must have been sitting in your lounge chair, dead, for at least twelve hours, maybe more. Looks like you were enjoying a quiet drink when you checked out.

I’ve got to tell you mate, it’s pretty weird sitting here at your dining table, with you there, slumped over all mottled and cold, while I’m trying to fill out your death certificate. With your advance-care directive staring at me from on top of all your papers on the table. Was it left there as a gift for me? I did feel

How Will I Know You’re Not Dead?

Raymond Abbott April 10, 2015 11 Comments

Raymond Abbott

I never thought it would go on for so long–seeing Donald Wyatt, I mean. I certainly didn’t plan it this way.

More than six years ago, I retired at age sixty-six from my social-work job at a mental-health agency. Donald had been my client there for about eight years.

As I was cleaning out my office, his mother called. She explained how Donald’s father had left when Donald was not much more than an infant, which had made him sensitive to abandonment, especially by male figures. Could I, she wondered, meet Donald once in awhile for coffee or lunch?

“Yes,” I said, “I can do that.”

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: doctor-patient relationship

Family Summons

Curmudgeon

A Mother’s Son

A Conversation About Race, Fear and Connection

The Making of Me

White Coat Ceremony

Gloves on Hands

Tough Love

Winning

Ritual Healing

Last Writes

How Will I Know You’re Not Dead?

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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: doctor-patient relationship

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