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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,

Things That Matter

Paul Gross December 24, 2010 No Comments

Paul Gross

For me, the best part of being a doctor, and the biggest privilege, is getting to talk with people about things that matter.

“You look sad today,” I say to a patient I’m seeing for the first time–a thirty-eight-year-old woman with a headache. In response, her lower lip starts to tremble, and she wipes an eye.

As I reach for the box of tissues and hand it to her, I know that whatever has caused her tears will be more important than her presenting symptom.

A forty-five-year-old man comes in wanting help sustaining erections. When I ask for a few details, it turns out he’s having sex every single day of the week, and he’s finding it a challenge to maintain an erection

Postmortem

Sandy Brown February 5, 2010 No Comments

Sandy Brown

Coming out of my exam room on a Monday morning, I saw two overweight police officers standing in my waiting room. From past experience, I knew that they were there to tell me that one of my patients had died and to collect information for the coroner’s report. Even as I geared up to hear the impending bad news, the doctor in me couldn’t help wondering how they’d passed their department physicals.

“Do I need to call a lawyer?” I joked, trying to guess which of my patients it could be.

“Michael Freund died on Saturday,” said Dalia, my office manager.

It was a shot to my gut. Mike was seventy-three years old, but one of my healthiest patients

Maman

Paul Gross November 20, 2009 No Comments

Paul Gross

At a recent religious service I attended with Maman, my 87-year-old mother, I watched her fumbling attempts to find hymn number 123, “Spirit of Life,” in the hymnal. I held my book up, opened to the appropriate page, so that we both could sing from it.

She glanced up momentarily, tightened her lips, hunched forward and resumed turning pages, finally arriving at the song when the congregation was singing the second verse, which she needed help finding–what with her poor vision and the swirl of notes and words on the page.

As this ritual repeated itself, hymn after hymn, it occurred to me how much cozier it would be if my mother and I could share from the same hymnal.

The Resilient Heart

Paula Lyons October 30, 2009 No Comments

Paula Lyons

He was applying for a job on a refuse truck working for the City. This is a very good job for someone whose hiring prospects are otherwise limited. Excellent benefits, all state and federal holidays off, health insurance for oneself and one’s family, physical exercise in the fresh air. (All right, this was Camden, New Jersey, so exercise in some kind of air.) And one more plus: If the team is efficient and hardworking and get through their rounds by 11:30 am or noon, they can take the rest of the day off, yet get paid as if they’d worked the whole 5 am-to-1 pm shift.

I was the doctor doing his pre-placement physical exam–designed to determine if the potential employee has

Second-Guessed

Andrea Gordon October 9, 2009 No Comments

Andrea Gordon

It was a good night, but it’s been a brutal morning.

As a family doctor who does obstetrics, I generally enjoy my time with laboring patients. When I arrived on the maternity floor last night to start my call, things looked pleasantly uneventful. Several patients were in labor. Only one wasn’t progressing well: Ana, age twenty-two.

I was told that Ana had come to the floor two days earlier, leaking puddles of clear fluid but not contracting. She still wasn’t contracting, even after two days on pitocin, the drug that causes or strengthens uterine contractions.

To add to this difficulty, there was Ana’s shift nurse, Barbara.

Barbara and I had a history. Another night, caring for a very annoying patient,

Late Again

Paul Gross September 18, 2009 No Comments

Paul Gross

One thing I love deeply about being a family doctor is that I get to take care of people–body and soul. A patient comes into my exam room with a litany of physical symptoms (“My shoulder…my knee…my stomach…so tired…this nausea…”) and then, in response to a questioning look, suddenly bursts into tears.

It’s all mine to deal with. The shoulder. The stomach. The tears. I get to gather the pieces and see if we can’t put this broken person back together again.

What a privilege.

And yet the joy of primary care is also its curse. With each patient, I have to keep track of everything–the trivial and life-threatening, the physical and mental, the acute, the chronic and the preventive. And

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

Tag: doctor stories

An Apology

Past Medical History

Tryst With The Microscope

The Ancients Had It Right

Things That Matter

Postmortem

Maman

The Resilient Heart

Second-Guessed

Late Again

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