Home
/
doctor stories
/
Page 16

Tag: doctor stories

Hurricane Sandy: Two Tales of One City

Paul Lapis November 9, 2012 No Comments

Editor’s Note: Hurricane Sandy hit New York, Pulse‘s home, on Monday, October 29. Eleven days later, many parts of our area are still limping toward recovery. Today we bring you two stories, rather than the usual one, about the hurricane’s impact. The first is by a medical student who was suddenly thrust closer to his newly adopted city. The second is an e-mail written to a colleague by a family physician who volunteered time in a City shelter.

New York Welcomes You

Paul Lapis

Just three short months ago, I took my first steps into the medical world when I put on my white coat and began my first day as a student

Epiphany

George Saj April 20, 2012 No Comments

George Saj

It happened one wintry night in 1965. I was in my third year of medical school during a rotation on the pulmonary service.

My supervising intern had been busy all evening admitting a dozen people in various stages of respiratory distress; they were suffering from ailments ranging from flu to double pneumonia.

It was my job to collect each patient’s sputum and culture it on a Petri dish, which would take several days to grow out. I also prepared stained slides of each sample. We did this in hopes of being able to visually identify the offending bacteria, so that we could speedily administer the appropriate antibiotic.

This was painstaking work: the intern and I had to repeatedly re-check

Physician, Heal Thyself

Randy Rockney March 23, 2012 No Comments

Randy Rockney

After a long day’s work as a pediatrician at an academic medical center in Providence, RI, nothing says “relief” like a visit to my therapist. I don’t see him often, but he has helped me through many life transitions. I think we both agree with the Buddhist precept that the only constant in life is change.

One evening after work, a couple of years ago, I arrived early in the neighborhood of my therapist’s office. I was hungry, but there wasn’t time for a meal, so I stopped at a pharmacy to peruse the snack aisle. The smallest and cheapest option available, a bag of roasted pumpkin seeds, seemed perfect.

Escape to HuHot

Jennifer Frank November 11, 2011 No Comments

Jennifer Frank

Hunched, shriveled, pinched
Enclosed in the metal prison of the wheelchair
You long to be free, unencumbered
By the oxygen tube connecting you to life

Each visit with me brings worse news
Creatinine up, red cells down
Carbon dioxide rising, oxygen falling
You have a medication deficiency

Once you were adventurous
Living life on the edge
For your generation,
You defied expectation

Now you are ending like
Everyone Else.
Hospital-home-hospital-rehab
Home-hospital-nursing home
Death is next

Your passions now are distilled into
Shopping at Walmart
Lunch at HuHot Mongolian Grill
I have never been

While I recite the monotony
End-of-life care
Advise hospice
Encourage compliance
Lecture about smoking

Crafting My Own Safety Net

Nicola Holmes November 4, 2011 1 Comment

Nicola Holmes

As I guide my car through the evening traffic, I feel tears on my cheeks.

I am a doctor who plans ahead: I write out plans for my patients. This has led to my nickname, “Plan Doctor.”

Each of my consultations is carefully crafted in separate steps. The conclusion is laid out in my own neat copperplate handwriting on a plain white page. (My father taught me to write copperplate. For hours every evening I would copy stencils of words he’d written out. At the time I felt persecuted; now each day, as my writing flows, I marvel at his wisdom.)

Each plan leaves the room with

Finding a Way Home

Erin Imler October 28, 2011 No Comments

Erin Imler

Preparing to assemble my new bed, I open the wordless instruction manual. The first page shows a picture of a single stick-figure standing there, hands on hips, and sadly regarding a bungled, not-put-together bed; the next image is two happy-looking stick-figures standing with their arms around each others’ shoulders, looking at a successfully constructed bed.

Despite the warning, I’m determined to do this by myself. For almost four years, I’ve slept on my couch, preferring it to my twenty-year-old mattress. Now that I’m starting a new job in a new city, it’s finally time for a new bed.

Mementos and Memories

Paul Rousseau July 15, 2011 No Comments

Paul Rousseau

Delores sits tilted to the right in a worn wheelchair, a curtain separating her from a sleeping roommate.

She is wearing a blue blouse stained with something orange, perhaps Jell-O, and white pants and white socks. A worn gold wedding band adorns the fourth finger of her left hand. Her hair is a shiny gray, perfectly coiffed, and her face is etched with deep wrinkles, a testament to eighty-nine years of life.

A tiny bedside shelf displays two faded black-and-white photos from the 1930s or ’40s: one is of Delores in her twenties, a demure smile on her face; the other shows Delores with a young man

An Apology

Jordan Grumet April 8, 2011 No Comments

Jordan Grumet

I’m sorry, Mrs. Lewis, for not making it to the hospital to see you yesterday….

Yesterday was one of those days when I felt like I could never catch up. My wife was going downtown for work, and we had to get up early. While she prepared, I helped my two-year-old son get dressed. We walked my wife to the train, then waited for the nanny. She was running late: I finally made it out of the house by 7:20, ten minutes before a meeting at the office. Since I didn’t have any patients in the hospital–or so I thought–I could go directly.

Past Medical History

Don Stewart January 28, 2011 No Comments

Donald Stewart

My career in medicine began when I was three years old.

Holding tightly to my father’s hand at the end of a dark hospital corridor, I couldn’t keep up with the heavy, sibilant stream of conversation flowing between Daddy and Dr. Mashburn, the man who had delivered me, who had sewn up my chin after I’d slipped in the bathtub a month before and who was now explaining the details of Mommy’s condition. Something, I knew, was making her bad. Sometimes her arms and her back hurt so much she couldn’t even pick me up.

My attention slipped away from the confusing drone of grown-up words and fixed on a bright black-and-white picture shining down from a lighted box on the wall. The

Tryst With The Microscope

Reeta Mani January 14, 2011 No Comments

Reeta Mani

“So what kind of doctor are you?” asks my new neighbor, peering curiously at the MD degree on my visiting card.

“I’m a microbiologist,” I tell her. “I work in the lab and help clinicians to diagnose infectious diseases.”

Her questioning look fades. “So you don’t see patients?”

“No,” I answer. “I don’t have to interact closely with patients, except in a few cases.”

She reflects for a moment, then says, “It’s good in a way. You can help them, but you don’t have to witness their pain and suffering up close.”

I agree. In fact, that was one of the biggest reasons why I decided to specialize in microbiology. (In India, after graduating from medical school you can go straight into a

The Ancients Had It Right

Stanley H. Schuman December 31, 2010 No Comments

Stanley H. Schuman

In Aramaic scripture*, and Aboriginal Dreamtime.
How else could animal life begin
Except by Divine Breath, oxygen-enriched?
How ingenious! Only two atoms: O2,
Ideal for hemoglobin, mitochondria,
Neurotransmitters, ideal for fight or flight, for vocalizing,
For clever humans to shape tools, split atoms,
Compose opera, sow seeds, harvest grain.

Consider my distress, in my just-opened pediatric office.
Stumped by Angela, a three-year-old
So panicked by my white coat, no way to examine her.

Screaming, clutching Mother, she knew and I knew
This wasn’t university-hospital, with back-up nurses.
Instead, it was one-on-one,
Advantage Angela.

Desperate, I felt for a stray balloon in my
Pants pocket (from my own child’s birthday).
Putting it to my lips, I strained to inflate the stubborn thing.
Instantly,

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

Tag: doctor stories

Hurricane Sandy: Two Tales of One City

Epiphany

Physician, Heal Thyself

Escape to HuHot

Crafting My Own Safety Net

Mementos and Memories

An Apology

Past Medical History

Tryst With The Microscope

The Ancients Had It Right

Subscribe to Pulse.

It's free.

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

Tag: doctor stories

Start typing and press enter to search

Subscribe to Pulse.

It's free.