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Hospice

Joanne Wilkinson November 21, 2008 No Comments

Joanne Wilkinson

My patient’s beagle is very quiet. He lies next to the brown leather living-room chair she used to sit in when I would come to see her at home. His nose is down on his paws, and his round eyes look up at me, up at the nurses, the home health aides, the family members who go back and forth between here and the back bedroom. He is very alert, but silent. He stays perfectly still.

My patient’s sons want to know things. How much longer will it be, will she be in pain, what will the end be like, will she be conscious? Should they take the rest of the week off from work, should they call the son in California and

My Patient, My Friend

Larry Zaroff November 7, 2008 1 Comment

Death is not always the same. Quantity, fixed: one per patient. Quality, variable.

Doctors see many deaths, of different kinds. This is true of any doctor, whether or not he or she is a surgeon, as I am.

It’s easier for the doctor when death is expected, following a long illness, a chronic disease. Harder when it’s unforeseen–the heart attack, the accident, the gun shot, the sudden death in a young man or woman who seemed a conqueror.

Halloween Horrors

Paul Gross October 31, 2008 No Comments

Paul Gross

One October evening last year, I went to our local pharmacy to pick up a prescription for my daughter. I made sure to bring Cara’s insurance card because my employer had switched us to a new health plan.

I wasn’t sorry about the change. Our prior plan had been operated by incompetents–although they might only have been crooks, I couldn’t be sure–who also managed our flexible spending accounts. These accounts, you may recall, collect pre-tax income from your pay and then return it to you to pay for out-of-pocket medical expenses.

With that plan, nothing ever worked as advertised. I would submit a dental bill for reimbursement and the company would review it for three months before sending me a denial notice, stating

In the Nick of Time

Barry Thompson September 26, 2008 No Comments

Barry Thompson

When the ringing woke me at 3:00 a.m., I hoped that it was my alarm clock. For a neurologist on call, middle-of-the-night phone calls mean trouble; as a rule, you don’t get awakened at that hour unless it’s something really serious.

At 6:00 p.m. the prior evening, a young man had shown up in the ER of one of our satellite hospitals with a severe headache. He’d been diagnosed with a tension headache and discharged with a prescription for acetaminophen with codeine. No imaging studies had been done.

Nine hours later, the patient presented to the ER at our main hospital. He was no longer fully alert, the ER doc told me. I told him to get an immediate CT scan of the

Losing Tyrek

John Harrington August 22, 2008 No Comments

John Harrington

Tyrek’s mother and I must have spoken for two hours in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, covering every topic but the one that was glaring at us: death. A fourteen-month-old child is not supposed to die–and even though I knew the situation was dire, I couldn’t bring myself to face it. So I excused myself, sat down with her son’s chart and stared blankly at it.

I first met Tyrek and his parents when he was just three months old. Tyrek had Down syndrome, clubbed feet and a large sternal scar on his chest from surgery to repair a complicated heart defect. Despite his bad luck, Tyrek’s most impressive characteristic was his cheery disposition. His mother was a tall African-American woman with straightened

Once

David Goldblatt August 1, 2008 No Comments

David Goldblatt

Movement disorders can be horrifying. Afflicted persons are solidified or contorted. They may flail so violently that a fork endangers their lives. As a beginning neurologist, I assumed that all such patients curse their fate. Once I got to know Brian, though, I realized that I could be wrong.

Brian and one of his brothers had inherited Wilson’s disease, a rare, genetic movement disorder that had spared their eight siblings.

People who have Wilson’s disease can’t handle dietary copper properly. It accumulates in–and poisons–the kidneys, liver and brain. Avoiding foods rich in copper does not halt the progression of the disease, but it helps. If patients are also treated early and consistently with a drug such as penicillamine, which binds copper and aids

Our Town (Chinese Spoken)

Jan Qiu July 11, 2008 No Comments

By the time Mrs. Zhang came to see me, her headache, left-sided weakness and facial numbness were two weeks old. Like many Chinese immigrants in this country, she’d hesitated to seek medical care because of language and cultural barriers and her apprehensiveness about Western medicine. In fact, she hadn’t seen a physician in the ten years since she and her husband had come to America. Only after a friend told her about me, the sole Chinese primary-care physician in a small Pennsylvania town, did she and her husband come to see me.

Mr. and Mrs. Zhang struck me as a typical older Chinese couple. With smiles on their faces, they bowed repeatedly to everyone in my office.

A Brush With the Beast

Paul Gross June 13, 2008 No Comments

It all begins one Sunday morning when Mrs. Morris, a 75-year-old retiree with a heart condition, trips on her way out of church. She falls flat on the sidewalk, can’t get up, and ends up in our Bronx emergency room. A CT scan shows a pelvic fracture, and she’s admitted to our inpatient team.

When I join the family medicine residents to see Mrs. Morris the following day, she can’t get out of bed. She’s got short, unruly white hair and a gee-whiz expression that charms us. “What a pain!” she says. Given how close she lives to the brink–terrible circulation has cost her one heart attack and several toe amputations–I’m impressed with her good cheer.

Things looks promising. Follow-up studies confirm that the

The Pencil Man of Western Boulevard

Paula Lyons June 6, 2008 No Comments

Paula Lyons

His history was Dickensian. As a little boy, born with an IQ of about 80 and a wandersome nature, he’d toppled onto the train tracks and gotten run over. How he didn’t die is a mystery–this was more than fifty years ago, and he lost both legs up to his hips–but live he did.

I met him in the hospital, where he’d had surgery on the pressure sores that came from long hours perched in a wheelchair. When I asked him to roll over so I could see, he hoisted his whole body (200 pounds without legs!) out of the bed via the orthopedic trapeze. His arms were massively strong, his disposition was sweet, and he spoke and behaved like a well-mannered six-year-old.

Mothers and Meaning

John G. Scott May 23, 2008 1 Comment

“Dr. Scott, this is Dr. Font.” The call came from my mother’s cardiologist as I was about to see my first patient of the morning. “Your mother is worse. You’d better come as soon as you can. I don’t think she’ll survive the day.” Those blunt words shattered my denial: I had convinced myself that it was possible to fix the cumulative, lifelong damage wreaked on my mother’s heart by her atrial septal defect, a congenital condition.

My War Story

Marc Tumerman May 16, 2008 No Comments

Marc Tumerman

My practice is in a small rural Wisconsin town just down the road from a large military base. I see soldiers pretty regularly these days; they stay here for several weeks of pre-deployment training before shipping off to Iraq. They come from all over the country–men and women of various ages, some single, some married and with families. Their health-care needs aren’t too different from those of my civilian patients: maternity care, chronic illness management and the usual scrapes and bruises. I like having them on my schedule; their Boston accents and Georgia drawls make a pleasant change from my neighbors’ familiar, made-for-radio Midwestern monotone.

I don’t dwell much on what these soldiers do for a living. I do my best to take

Well Baby Check

Joanne Wilkinson April 13, 2008 No Comments

I get to clinic early today, undaunted by the double- and triple-bookings in my schedule. “We have a baby coming today,” I tell the medical assistant. “A new baby. Six pounds. Born yesterday. Bring him right back when he comes.”

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

Tag: doctor stories

Hospice

My Patient, My Friend

Halloween Horrors

In the Nick of Time

Losing Tyrek

Once

Our Town (Chinese Spoken)

A Brush With the Beast

The Pencil Man of Western Boulevard

Mothers and Meaning

My War Story

Well Baby Check

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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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