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Letter From the Dead

Ann F. Beach August 30, 2024 23 Comments

Gross Anatomy class is a rite of passage, and has been so for a few hundred years. Generations of first-year medical students have spent months dissecting cadavers and painstakingly learning the intricacies of human anatomy.

I well remember my first day of class—the overpowering smell of formaldehyde and the unnerving sight of a roomful of twenty-five dead people lying supine, their faces and genitals covered, on metal tables.

Assigned by the alphabet, four students to a cadaver, my peers and I (Fabert, Ferris, Flamm and Fleming—my maiden name) stood gingerly next to our cadaver, careful not to get too close. We shifted uneasily. Touching our cadaver (a woman) for the first time, even with gloves on, was disquieting.

Not Knowing

Kay White Drew August 23, 2024 11 Comments

A few days after I’d rotated off the adolescent ward at the university hospital where I was a second-year pediatric resident, I stopped in at Billy’s room to see how he was doing. He was pale, with a few fresh bruises below the sleeves of his hospital gown, but his big brown eyes brightened when he saw me.

“Where’ve you been?” he asked.

“She had to go to work on another ward,” his mom said, rubbing his forearm gently. “I told you that, remember?”

Teddy

Sun Young Jeong August 9, 2024 21 Comments

Before I started my cardiology fellowship, I was warned that the training, while rewarding, would also be tough, demanding and intense. That was true: Learning to read the four different cardiac-imaging modalities, trying to master the art of right-and left-heart catheterization, and juggling the cardiac-care unit, clinic and consults was arduous. Yet, for me, the most challenging part of my fellowship took place in the third month of my first year, when my geriatric pup of eleven years died.

Teddy had been an impulsive addition to my life, during the lowest point of my twenties. A chance visit to a shelter brought me face to face with a scruffy little black dog with crooked lower teeth, passed over by other would-be adopters.

A Little Bit of Lagniappe

Alexandra Belardo-DeFelice August 7, 2024 6 Comments

Editor’s Note: This piece was a finalist in the Pulse writing contest, “On Being Different.”

Throughout my pediatrics clerkship as a third-year medical student, I resisted the urge to say “sha.”

“Sha,” as in “Sha baby,” “Oh sha,” or “Come here, sha.” “Sha,” a term of endearment, an instinctive utterance at the sight of something cute—for example, all of my patients in the newborn nursery. “Sha,” a word from Acadiana, a word that only people from Acadiana use.

Her Call Was Tougher Than Mine

Julie Miley Schlegel July 19, 2024 12 Comments

“Is he in pain?” Joshua’s mother asked, after I told her who I was. She had finally answered the phone after fifteen days of letting my calls go to voicemail.

“I don’t think so,” I answered. The truth was, at that point in my early career as a pediatric resident, I didn’t know whether he was in pain. “We’re giving him medicines to keep him comfortable.”

“Okay,” she said. I could hear young children laughing in the background. I knew from her obstetric records that she had five besides this newborn.

“Any questions?” I asked.

The Dreams That Bring Us Here

Heba Armoush July 12, 2024 14 Comments

It is a quiet Thursday evening in the fall of 2015 at the Dara Medical Center in Brooklyn, where I’m volunteering as a medical observer. The Center is almost empty. At the far end of the corridor, I see an elderly man wearing a black sweater and eyeglasses. His face is pale; his eyes and hands are creased and wrinkled.

“Where are you from?” he asks.

“I’m Palestinian,” I answer.

“Pakistan?” he replies incredulously.

Happiness Loves Company

Suyash Jha May 31, 2024 4 Comments

I remember the first time I saw the gates of the Missionaries of Charity home for the destitute and dying, on the outskirts of my hometown, Pune, in western India.

I must have been nine or ten. To my annoyance, my parents had woken me early that Sunday morning to go with them to visit the home and bring donations of clothes and other necessities.

“How much longer, Papa?” I kept asking as we drove.

When Is the Right Time?

Erin Yang May 29, 2024 6 Comments

Stephanie passed away this morning.

In an email from her husband, Frank, I learned that I’d lost my dear friend of two decades.

Stephanie was only forty-two. An administrator at a local bank, she was also a devoted wife and the loving mother of three daughters.

Lessons From My Teachers

David G. Thoele April 19, 2024 14 Comments

In July 2003, a few days after I had started service as inpatient attending pediatric cardiologist at Lutheran General Children’s Hospital, the neonatologists, nurses and I met with Jenni and Tony to discuss their daughter Grace’s health status.

Grace, now two and a half weeks old, had seemed normal at birth. After a few hours, her skin color had turned blue: Her oxygen level was dangerously low. She’d been whisked off to the neonatal intensive-care unit (NICU), where tests showed that her heart function was poor due to high blood pressure in her lungs. Her heart and lungs began to fail, so we’d placed her on a heart-lung machine (ECMO) for sixteen days. Now taken off the machine, she was breathing with the help of

“How Long Have You Had These Symptoms, Doctor?”

Deborah Pierce April 5, 2024 5 Comments

“How long have you had these symptoms?”

Dr. Quantrell’s tone was kind and inquisitive, but with the CT scan on the computer between us displaying a two-centimeter kidney stone, I couldn’t help hearing: How long have you been ignoring this problem?

Much has been written about the experience of doctor as patient. Like many of my colleagues before me, I’d fallen into the trap of trying to diagnose myself before calling my family physician.

Powerless

Maria Gervits March 15, 2024 14 Comments

“I know it wasn’t really your fault, but I blame you on some level,” said my patient Aisha, sounding husky over the phone. “I’m working on forgiving you, but I’m not there yet.”

Tears sprang to my eyes, but I kept my voice steady as I replied, “I understand. I’m sorry about my role in what happened. Please let me know if you ever feel ready to come back to see me, but I can refer you to another doctor in the meantime.”

What had I done to deserve such harsh words? I hadn’t prevented her traumatic childbirth experience.

Our Shared Journey

Courtney Burnett March 12, 2024 6 Comments

Editor’s Note: This piece was awarded an honorable mention in the Pulse writing contest, “On Being Different.”

It took a terrifying and life-changing experience of being different for me to realize a fundamental truth: I’m the same as everyone else.

This truth has redefined my goals and reshaped the way I practice medicine.

At age twenty-nine, during my third and final year of internal-medicine residency, I received a diagnosis of a rare and malignant brain cancer called anaplastic astrocytoma. Quite suddenly, I was different.

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

Letter From the Dead

Not Knowing

Teddy

A Little Bit of Lagniappe

Her Call Was Tougher Than Mine

The Dreams That Bring Us Here

Happiness Loves Company

When Is the Right Time?

Lessons From My Teachers

“How Long Have You Had These Symptoms, Doctor?”

Powerless

Our Shared Journey

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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

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