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.
I had to drive across town for my appointments with the high-risk obstetrician. I had been referred to him by my normal-risk obstetrician due to my age (thirty-six the first time, and now again at thirty-nine) and my two previous miscarriages.
The waiting room was never crowded. It was dimly lit, with photographs of babies and children plastered across one wall.
Today, as at every visit, I studied the photos fiercely while waiting for my name to be called.
Ever since my primary-care pediatric group practice adopted electronic records, we’ve used them to give our patients pre-visit online questionnaires that screen for various things: tuberculosis, lead exposure, developmental issues, autism, drug and alcohol use, postpartum depression, food insecurity and so on.
I started off thinking that the questionnaires were intended to save precious visit time by asking patients about these subjects before the appointment. Then I realized that our practice bills the health-insurance companies for administering these questionnaires (and some pay quite well). More recently, I’ve realized that these surveys offered another benefit as well—perhaps the most valuable of all.
For my young patient Remi’s three-year checkup, his parents completed all the recommended pre-visit online screenings.
Squeak…Squeak…Squeak….
I stood against a wall in a narrow hallway to avoid blocking a meal cart passing through on its morning voyage. Inside this cart were a series of compartments, each containing a tray bearing a hospitalized patient’s breakfast. My attending physician stood beside me, inspecting a list of patients’ names as the cart rolled past.
Squeak…Squeak…Squeak….
“That’s a good case for a med student,” my attending declared, gesturing at a name on the paper. “Take this one.”
Editor’s Note: This piece was a finalist in the Pulse writing contest, “On Being Different.”
Loneliness can creep up on you like a phantom, slipping its cold hand into yours and offering companionship that is both depressing and alluring—particularly when, looking around, you see nobody else whose face mirrors your own.
It was my first day of residency at a top pediatric program in Boston—a predominantly white program catering to a predominantly white patient population in a predominantly white city.
Scanning the room, I realized that, for the next three years, I would be the only Black person among some thirty-five residents.
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