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Penal Code

Lisa S. Gussak June 21, 2019 6 Comments

When I see Rosa’s name on my patient list, I smile. I have known her nearly eight years. Under my care, she’s given birth to her last two children, and although she takes the kids to a pediatrician rather than me, we have an uncanny habit of bumping into each other outside the office. I’ve seen her and the kids in the market, at a park and in the hospital lobby, and I have been invited to, but could not attend, a family birthday party.

All I Could Do

Leigh B. Grossman April 5, 2019 10 Comments

Leigh B. Grossman ~

The clinic in rural Haiti is a small stucco building with no electricity or running water. The temperature inside the clinic is 103 degrees, and there is no breeze. The examining-room walls are only seven feet high and afford no privacy.

This is my fourteenth trip to Haiti as a volunteer pediatrician. My twenty-fifth patient of the morning is a three-month-old infant named Joceylyn Marquee, who is completely swaddled in a dirty blanket and is carried in by her mother, Lucie.

In our tiny cubicle, Lucie sits with Joceylyn on her lap. The interpreter, Fredeson, and I are also seated. We’re all so close together that our knees touch. The acrid smell of human dirt, sweat and anxiety

The Patient I Didn’t Want

Krithika Kavanoor February 1, 2019 6 Comments

Krithika Kavanoor ~

When I first met Ms. Ruiz, I was barely three months into my first year as a family-medicine resident. I was working harder than I’d ever worked before, and continually facing new challenges. I knew that I was learning, and so I persevered, but opportunities for self-doubt were abundant.

Maybe that was why Ms. Ruiz made such a big impression on me.

A middle-aged woman with a small frame and short black hair, she’d been admitted to the hospital overnight for severe abdominal pain and jaundice. Resting quietly in her bed, she listened intently to my colleague’s presentation of her case, her sharp eyes fixed on his face. I too listened carefully, and gathered that she would be

The Man Who Handed Me His Poop

Allie Gips January 25, 2019 8 Comments

In broken English, against the backdrop of the emergency department’s chaos and clatter, Mr. Simon relayed his story: unintentional weight loss, gradually yellowing skin, weeks of constipation. He punctuated his list of devastating symptoms with laughter–exaggerated but genuine guffaws.

Over the next few days, as the medical student responsible for his care, I was also responsible for handing him piece after piece of bad news. An obstructing gallstone in his bile duct. Actually, an obstructing mass. Likely a malignancy. Chemo. Radiation.

With each update, he would grin. And then he would laugh.

About Last Night

H. Lee Kagan December 21, 2018 11 Comments

H. Lee Kagan ~

It was a night like many others. I was taking call from home for my medical partner and myself. My wife and I had settled in, planning to stream the new season of Goliath on Netflix. But the internet was down, so we were watching a talent competition on regular TV instead.

At 8:30, my phone rang.

“Hello, this is Dr. Kagan.”

A long pause, then a tentative “Hello….”

I muted the TV. “Can I help you?”

More silence, then I heard a woman’s voice uttering inarticulate sounds.

“Who is this?” I asked. “Are you looking for the doctor?”

Me Too

Frozan Walyzada October 12, 2018 9 Comments

It’s late on a Friday afternoon in the outpatient clinic where I’m a third-year psychiatry resident. I’m wrapping up my appointment with Jane, a thirty-five-year-old woman with a mild intellectual disability who comes every month to refill her antidepressant prescription.

“Have you been watching the court case on TV?” she whispers.

I stop what I’m doing and look at her.

“The case with the judge and the doctor,” she says.

I sit back in my chair and give her my full attention.

“I’ve been reading about it,” I say. “Why do you ask?”

She looks down at her hands. “It’s just so hard to watch.”

Wounded Healer

Jamie Sweigart September 7, 2018 11 Comments

Jamie Sweigart ~

It was a sunny Sunday afternoon on my urban college campus. I’d been sitting on the grass outside a lecture hall where my premed classmates and I would study together on weekends. This particular weekend, I was alone. Campus was empty, except for a man with a backpack who occasionally passed by.

Finished with studying, I started walking down a deserted sidewalk back to my apartment, a few blocks away. On the way, I dialed my best friend from home, Laura, and we began chatting.

“Hang up the phone,” said a man’s voice behind me. I felt the cold blade of a knife against the side of my neck.

My Immigrant Patients

Joanna Sharpless July 27, 2018 12 Comments

Joanna Sharpless ~

In the living room of the house where I grew up hangs a framed copy of a seventeenth-century map of Pennsylvania. The land is divided into tiny plots, each painstakingly labeled with a family name.

When I was little, I’d stand in front of the map and search for the little squares labeled “Sharples”–the original version of my last name. I’d imagine my distant ancestors, John and Jane Sharples and their seven children, dressed in bonnets and breeches as they sailed across the Atlantic in 1682. As Quakers, they’d purchased land from William Penn and had fled religious persecution in their home country, England.

To a young girl, their immigration story sounded romantic; but as I grew older, I

Just What the Doctor Ordered

David Edelbaum June 29, 2018 11 Comments

David Edelbaum ~

I began practicing as an internist/nephrologist in the early 1960s. Having rented an office in Los Angeles, I introduced myself to the local medical community and set out to build a practice.

With a growing family, a mortgage and an office to support, I was hungry for patients. Hospital emergency rooms were good referral sources, so I took ER call at three different hospitals.

Late one Friday night, I got a call from one of these hospitals: A middle-aged engineer was in the ER complaining of chest pain. His electrocardiogram showed minor abnormalities, and he needed to be admitted for observation to rule out a heart attack. Back then, this meant several days of blood tests and repeated electrocardiograms. Uncomplicated

A Tingling Sensation

Mitch Kaminski March 23, 2018 10 Comments

Mitch Kaminski ~

It had been a hectic day in the urgent-care clinic of my large family practice, and I was starting to worry about the time: My last two patients had put me thirty minutes behind.

I felt relieved when I saw the note for the next patient: “Seventy-four-year-old female with UTI.”

A urinary-tract infection! This should be quick and uncomplicated….

I walked into the room to find a well-dressed older woman seated on the exam table. I had just enough time to wonder fleetingly, Why do some patients decide to wait on the exam table while others stay seated in the chair nearby? Then I turned my full attention to the woman before me.

A Stranger Comes to Town

Syed M. Ahmed January 19, 2018 21 Comments

Syed M. Ahmed ~

Twenty-five years ago, having completed my family-medicine residency, I left Houston to start a two-year stint practicing in a remote village of fewer than 2,000 souls in the Appalachian Mountains of Ohio.

The day I arrived at my new workplace (a two-person practice in the only clinic for fifty miles), my new colleague Dr. Jones told me that she was leaving the next day on a two-week vacation.

Hearing this, I felt anxious, to say the least. I’d expected her to take time off, but so soon? Also, not only were this Appalachian town and its folks completely unknown to me, and vice-versa, but I was the first Asian physician to come to those parts.

Playing a Hunch

Amy Crawford-Faucher December 8, 2017 7 Comments

Amy Crawford-Faucher ~

There’s one thing about being a family doctor: After a while, almost every patient you see is a familiar face. This can be a blessing or a curse, but mostly it’s a blessing.

This morning I’m in my office, reviewing today’s patients with Julia, the medical student rotating in our office.

I’m especially looking forward to my 10:30 appointment. It’s the first checkup for a newborn girl named Ella. I’ve known her parents, Emily and Dave, since before they had their first daughter, Katie, now three. I think of them as one of “my” families.

Emily and Dave, in their late twenties, have been together since college. Emily works full-time in a management position. Everything about her is

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 stories

Penal Code

All I Could Do

The Patient I Didn’t Want

The Man Who Handed Me His Poop

About Last Night

Me Too

Wounded Healer

My Immigrant Patients

Just What the Doctor Ordered

A Tingling Sensation

A Stranger Comes to Town

Playing a Hunch

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Tag: doctor stories

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