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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?”

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.

ICU Surprise!

Marjorie Ordene March 8, 2024 6 Comments

It was 7:15 on a Tuesday morning. What kind of a Tuesday morning, I could not say. How would I know? There are no windows on 8 North, the adolescent ward at Bellevue Hospital, where I was spending my first month as an intern. There could have been a hurricane outside for all I knew.

What I did know was that in about fifteen minutes a pack of fresh, smiling faces would be arriving, and one of them would bring me breakfast: a toasted bagel with cream cheese and coffee. The long night (or should I say nightmare) was ending, and I could look forward to an easy eight remaining hours of work and then sleep, blissful sleep.

Burnt

Maureen Hirthler January 26, 2024 13 Comments

You never forget the smell of charred human flesh. It permeates your skin, your hair, your nose and your mind. It never leaves. You may try to describe it, but there is no equivalent. Not barbecue, not melted plastic, not wood; the smell of the flesh of a once-living human being stands on its own. Even after thirty years, my mind holds the smell in its broken places.

They said it was a Molotov cocktail thrown into the house because of a drug deal gone bad. The man who was the target jumped out a window and left his girlfriend and children behind. The fire consumed everything.

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Tag: doctor stories

Not Knowing

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

ICU Surprise!

Burnt

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