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A Doctor’s Dilemma

Jessica Zitter September 12, 2014 12 Comments

Jessica Zitter

It was my first day at my new job, practicing a new specialty. Having spent fourteen years as an ICU physician–including a four-year pulmonary/critical-care fellowship in this very hospital–I had just completed a palliative-care fellowship. Now I was the hospital’s palliative-care consult attending.

When I set eyes on the patient in room 1407, my first thought was: THIS LADY NEEDS TO BE INTUBATED–STAT!

The only trouble was that my job was to ease this patient’s passing, not to prolong her life.

The team had told me that Mrs. Zelnick, an eighty-two-year-old widow, was dying from pneumonia and didn’t want to be put on life support.

Beating the Numbers Racket

Thuy D. Bui July 18, 2014 10 Comments

Thuy D. Bui

“What’s my number?” shouted Betsy as I entered the examination room one day last fall.

“Oh, you mean your A1C? It’s nine-point-four!” I answered. A sentence sped through my mind: “The hemoglobin A1C number tells how well a patient’s diabetes is controlled–seven or less is good.” In my seven years as Betsy’s primary-care doctor, I’ve repeated this information at visits and included it in appointment reminders as well.

Betsy is a pale, stocky woman in her sixties, with short, neatly cropped hair. Her rather tentative smile, to me, always seemed a bit forced, as if covering up for underlying pain. And she’s had plenty of pain in her life.

my hospital rounds

Randy Robinson December 20, 2013 No Comments

Be Lucky

Kenneth Zeitler November 29, 2013 15 Comments

Kenneth Zeitler

In 1996, visiting a mall during an out-of-town trip, I suddenly felt dizzy while descending on the escalator. The sensation rapidly resolved, but to be on the safe side, I went to a local emergency room. My evaluation included a CT scan of my head; the results, I was told, were “normal.”

Shortly after returning home I received another call. The CT results were not normal, and I should see a neurologist to have an MRI scan.

I panicked, as anyone would, but I had more reason than most: I’m a medical oncologist. I knew the implications of this news, and they were mostly quite dire.

The MRI revealed a brain tumor, likely “low grade.” I found this a bit reassuring–but still, it

Escape from Chemo

Ellen Diamond August 2, 2013 No Comments

Ellen Diamond

And while the stuff drips in, I’m rolling over
in my mind the two words: Kemo Sabe.

It’s the name that Tonto called his friend
the Lone Ranger, back in radio days.

I could use a trusty sidekick now,
crouched behind the white screen near the door,

ready in an instant to unsheathe
his blade, then back us slowly to the window.

What We Carry

Sandra Miller June 21, 2013 No Comments

Sandra Miller

When I was an intern, we carried everything.
We carried manuals and little personal notebooks, frayed and torn,
crammed with tiny bits of wisdom passed on by a senior or attending.
Yet when a midnight patient rolled in with a myocardial infarction
we didn’t look anything up because there were only four drugs we could use:
morphine for the crushing pain,
nitroglycerin to flush open the vessels,
lidocaine for rebellious rhythms,
and furosemide for sluggish fluids.
I’m old.
We had nothing to block the betas or the calcium channels,
nothing to inhibit the ACEs,
no fancy clot-dissolvers,
just the patient and the strip.
Some made it, some didn’t.

The Pronouncement

Carl V. Tyler June 14, 2013 No Comments

Carl V. Tyler

I knew from last night’s house call that my patient Bessie’s time was near. All day long I’d felt the familiar churning inside, the sickly sweet combination of anticipated dread and anticipated relief. So when the phone rang while I was exercising at home, I wasn’t surprised. I quickly dropped the barbell weights to answer the call before it went to voice mail.

It was Bessie’s daughter, Susan.

Now We Are Five

Paul Gross April 26, 2013 No Comments

Paul Gross

“I’m glad that you’re the one calling me with this.”

John’s comment takes me aback. It’s an unexpected, almost tender, confession from a twenty-year-old young man whom I’ve called with some good news and some not-so-good news.

“The good news is that your HIV test is negative,” I tell him. “You do not have AIDS. But the not-so-good news is that you tested positive for chlamydia, another sexually transmitted infection.”

I want to give him a moment to let this sink in, but he jumps in anxiously: “Can you treat it?”

“Yes, we can treat it. It’s easy to treat. It’s curable.”

“And I’ll be okay?”

“Yes, you’ll be fine. Once we treat it, the infection will be gone.”

I hear the sigh

The Story of Pulse

Paul Gross March 27, 2013 No Comments

One Monday morning, a number of years ago, the administrators at the family health center where I used to work instituted a new and time-consuming procedure for registering patients. They did this in an attempt to satisfy the rules and requirements imposed by the many different insurance plans our center accepted.

There was just one problem: the administrators forgot to tell anyone what they’d done–not even the center’s medical director, who happened to be on vacation at the time.

As the clerical staff stumbled over a brand-new, complex set of protocols that day, a line of patients, mostly poor, snaked around the lobby, out the front door onto the sidewalk. Tempers grew short. A fight nearly broke out. We providers sat in the back twiddling

Hurricane Sandy: Two Tales of One City: Part 2

Alice Teich November 9, 2012 No Comments

Not Your Usual Halloween

Alice Teich

Hey Manisha,

Last night–Halloween–I went and volunteered at a shelter in a school basement/gymnasium in the Nineties on the Upper West Side.

There were more than 100 folks staying there, mostly evacuated from the Lower East Side. The shelter, run by the City, had some volunteers at the front desk, a few security people, a medical team that consisted of myself, one other doctor and a nurse (volunteers through the NYC Medical Reserve Corps–if you’re a provider, you can sign up online; it only takes fifteen minutes), and more than twenty awesome volunteers of all ages.

It was a mess.

Quite a few folks staying there

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

Tag: doctor stories

A Doctor’s Dilemma

Beating the Numbers Racket

my hospital rounds

Be Lucky

Escape from Chemo

What We Carry

The Pronouncement

Now We Are Five

The Story of Pulse

Hurricane Sandy: Two Tales of One City: Part 2

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fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

Tag: doctor stories

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