“We got into a fight last night,” Maria said, more to herself than to me, her fingers tracing invisible patterns on her jeans.
“About what?” I asked.
“I told Louis, ‘God doesn’t exist—because if God did exist, why would this be happening to you?’ ” she answered.
She stood and started pacing the hospital room where her son, fifteen, had spent the past two weeks.
I am twenty-six years old, and in June 2023 I graduated from Al-Azhar University-Gaza (AUG) Faculty of Medicine, in Northern Gaza. Two months into my internship at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, the Gaza War started.
I was assigned to the emergency department for fifteen months, serving as a junior surgeon to treat patients injured by bombs—shrapnel wounds in the hips, back and head; crushed arms and legs; burns everywhere; difficulty breathing; internal bleeding.
I tried to block out the shouts, crying and moaning and focus on the task and the patient in front of me—while, in the background, bombs were exploding.
The nurse’s murmur was gentle: “Dr. Bui, Ms. Sanchez is still waiting for her Pap test.”
More than an hour earlier, I’d left Ms. Sanchez waiting in an exam room while I rushed to see the rest of the patients on my schedule. And then I’d forgotten about her.
I’d had the inevitable difficult moments in my early career as a family doctor, but this marked a new low.
My youngest son Camron, was only ten years old—and he was feeling bereft, because he’d lost all connection to his friends. His iPad was on the fritz, less than a year after we’d purchased it.
Camron had yet to dive into the electronic age as his classmates had done. Mostly he played outside with his dogs and cats, fed and chased his goats and bounced on the trampoline with his brother. But during the one hour per day when we permitted him to play games online with his friends, he grinned from ear to ear and laughed nonstop.
Now his iPad had quit working.
It had happened before; the previous time, it was a phone call on a Tuesday morning. This time, the message came by email on a Friday.
“Do you remember me?” wrote the sender.
“Do I remember you?” I wrote back. “I think of you often and fondly, although it has been over twenty-five years since we last spoke, and thirty-four years since we first met.”
Reflecting on the start of my medical studies and career, I realize that it took me more than ten years to refine my ability to practice the art of listening. Partly that may have been because English is not my mother tongue; but it was also because listening is an arduous task. As Kate Murphy writes in her book You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing & Why It Matters: “Understanding is the goal of listening, and it takes effort.”
My first hard lesson in this area occurred when I was a medical student, doing research at a needle-exchange program. A patient named Haris had been screened for HIV, and his test result was positive. He was the first patient to whom I had to give such bad news.
Shattering the relative peace of an early Sunday morning, a chorus of assorted ringtones echoes through the emergency department where I work as an attending physician. The noise is a heads-up from an incoming ambulance, directed to the ED staff members’ portable phones.
I sigh and set down the cup of cafeteria coffee I’d been enjoying: The pace of the day is about to pick up. I unclip my phone from the waistband of my scrub pants. Sitting next to me, Ben, the senior resident, grabs his phone from the pocket of his fleece vest.
Editor’s Note: This piece was a finalist in the Pulse writing contest, “On Being Different.”
On the night Bea’s chest pain began—when the heaviness like a fist took her breath away, the beads of sweat gathering on her forehead—it frightened her, as it did not stop. She was alone, and as she reached for the phone, she paused. Who should she call?
The pain increased. She reluctantly dialed 911. She mumbled the answers to the operator and remembered to open her door before collapsing on the couch.
The toughest work emails always seem to come on days when I am post-call, feeling tired and pensive. This particular email came from Patient and Guest Relations at the urban hospital where I practice as a neonatologist.
“I received feedback from a patient who claims that she had a negative interaction with you…during her C-section surgery. She is requesting a visit from you….”
My heart sank.
Editor’s Note: This piece was a finalist in the Pulse writing contest, “On Being Different.”
Omar M. Young and Camille A. Clare are two Black academic OB/GYNs from different walks of life. Together, they offer their respective observations on what it means to be Black in medicine. “Through speaking from our lived experiences, we hope to help those who have historically been minoritized in medicine know that they are seen, that they are heard and that their experiences are valid.”
I survived — Omar M. Young
The sun was gloriously blinding, and the air as calm as could be on a warm June morning, more than a decade ago.
It has been years, decades really, since I have watched television. I have the box, watch movies, but haven’t had cable ever. My two children were in first and second grade when I divorced their dad, and the house we moved into had no reception.
“Oh, well,” I told them, “no TV.” They were too little to grumble, but years later my daughter thanked me, saying, “We did so many other things.”
Now I find myself newly single and in transition for the winter, living in a rented house with—you guessed it—a TV with a full complement of channels and full reception.
Donna dropped her blood-thinner tablets on the floor prior to surgery.
“It’s a sign I shouldn’t be taking them,” she said.
Now, sometime later, it makes me smile to think of it; she’s recovered well from the surgery and has resumed her medications. I’d told her to stop taking them just prior to the surgery—a complex hernia repair—and to resume them the day after, but she’s the type of person who does what she wants, what she thinks is best.
© 2024 Pulse - Voices from the Heart of Medicine, Inc. All rights reserved.
