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The Medicine We Don’t Prescribe

Travis Walker April 10, 2026 6 Comments

I step into the back of a van on a chilly fall day. I’m a family physician; with me are my medical assistant, Lori, and the front-office representative, Maria, from our federally qualified health center in Reno.

This van is our center’s mobile clinic—one exam room, a point-of-care lab and a front desk squeezed into a space no bigger than a typical bathroom.

Today we’re visiting a family shelter, as we do every week.

Moment of Truth

Nancy J. Rennert March 13, 2026 9 Comments

Twenty-five-year-old male, Type 1 diabetes with recent left-leg amputation, poor glucose control.

Routine case, I figured. I was the senior endocrinologist at a community health center, teaching resident physicians and caring for medically underserved patients.

I had prepared a chair to my immediate right for the medical resident, Anna, so that by turning my head slightly away from my desktop computer I would be able to see her face clearly. Although she didn’t know it, I was deaf–and with one of my cochlear implants failing, I needed to lip-read to understand speech.

Empty

HS February 20, 2026 7 Comments

In early February 2020, my husband and I checked into a quaint condo in New Orleans’ French Quarter. We needed a break from our usual lives: My husband worked as a psychiatrist, listening to his patients’ stories of trauma and pain; he was exhausted. I too am a physician; I felt burned out by my administrative job, where I was regularly yelled at and insulted by other physicians.

We hadn’t been coping well. Every evening we sat in front of the television to numb ourselves and quiet the stress enough to go to bed and fall asleep.

“Out, Out, Brief Candle!”

Judy Fine-Edelstein January 16, 2026 11 Comments

I grew up in a multigenerational two-family home in Queens, New York City, during the 1960s and Seventies. Every weekend, my grandparents prepared a feast for the whole family. Among them were my mother’s younger brother, Marvin, and his wife, Inge, an artist who’d immigrated from Germany.

They were childless, but Marvin delighted in his four nieces, including my sister and me. A professor of Shakespearean literature, he read Macbeth and King Lear to us when we were young, along with the more child-friendly works of Lewis Carroll.

The Call

Julie R. Rosenbaum January 9, 2026 6 Comments

I sink into the plane’s window seat, shade pulled down. My eyelids droop toward sleep. Next to me, headphones in place, my husband catches up on the latest Captain America movie.

I can almost forget that our young son and daughter sit in the row behind us, silent and still, plugged into the iPad for reruns of Good Luck Charlie. They sip the Cokes they never have at home. Together, we fly to Arizona for winter break. After months of working ten- to twelve-hour days as a physician in Connecticut, my body, mind and spirit ache for rest and sunshine.

I hear a distant announcement overhead, and one word grips my attention and snaps my eyes wide open:

Holding Out Hope

Ben Colton November 7, 2025 3 Comments

In my twelve years as an American family doctor working in low-resource countries in the Middle East, I’ve seen and treated countless patients with little to no hope for improvement in their physical and emotional problems. Seeing patients in these circumstances is emotionally exhausting, but the importance of my role in supporting these patients continues to draw me back in.

Reflecting on the challenges they face, I often think of one in particular: a baby named Hiba.

Hiba’s mother, Layla, had received very little prenatal care during her pregnancy, as is common among poor, rural patients in low-income countries. She’d suffered from several prenatal complications, and Hiba was born via an emergency cesarean section.

Hiba’s condition was precarious.

A Different Kind of Emergency

Anthony P. Gulotta September 26, 2025 3 Comments

Curled on a gurney beneath the fluorescent glare of the hospital room lights, a girl no more than eight clutched a stuffed giraffe. Her small frame, the slight downward tilt of her eyes, and her delicate jaw and thin upper lip were the visible signs of fetal alcohol syndrome.

This was Elle, whom I encountered as a medical student during an emergency-medicine rotation.

Choosing to Believe

Dua Hassan September 5, 2025 8 Comments

“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.

Report From Gaza: Seeing Patients Among the Bombs

Sami Mahmoud Magharie August 12, 2025 28 Comments

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.

Recovering From Moral Injury

Kim Bui June 13, 2025 10 Comments

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.

When Dads Fail

Zoran Naumovski April 18, 2025 8 Comments

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.

“I Fell Out of the Sky”

Victor Fornari January 24, 2025 34 Comments

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.”

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Tag: doctor stories

The Medicine We Don’t Prescribe

Moment of Truth

Empty

“Out, Out, Brief Candle!”

The Call

Holding Out Hope

A Different Kind of Emergency

Choosing to Believe

Report From Gaza: Seeing Patients Among the Bombs

Recovering From Moral Injury

When Dads Fail

“I Fell Out of the Sky”

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