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She Likes Chocolate

Nadine Semer November 17, 2017 4 Comments

Nadine Semer ~

“She doesn’t like vanilla,” Mr. Wyatt says, staring at the nutritional drinks sitting on his wife’s bedside hospital table. 

I’m here as the palliative-medicine consultant. As my resident Susan and I stand still, taken aback, Susan’s expression says it all: She’s dying, and her husband is worried about which flavors she likes?

Mrs. Wyatt, fifty-six, came to our urban hospital’s emergency room with abdominal pain. She was admitted and given intravenous fluids and broad-spectrum antibiotics. Her workup revealed widespread, untreatable cancer. Her medical team has consulted us because they’re frustrated at her family’s unwillingness to acknowledge that she’s failing.

“Explained her poor prognosis; she needs to be DNR,” read the consult request. “But still, the family wants everything

Fighting the Odds

Evelyn Lai November 10, 2017 18 Comments

Evelyn Lai ~

Monday

I walk into your room in the pediatric intensive-care unit as two nurses are repositioning you. Your parents stand nearby–your dad in his frayed baseball cap and khaki cargo shorts; your mom, her baggy jeans wrinkled with the same worry as the lines near her eyes. Your little sister sits near the window with a blue hospital mask over her mouth, hugging her knees; Grandma sits snug beside her, back straight and hair done, expression cordial.

You are a fifteen-year-old boy with leukemia who came into our emergency department last week with fevers, but spiraled quickly into septic shock with multiorgan failure.

Lean on Me

Joseph Fennelly October 20, 2017 12 Comments

Joseph Fennelly ~

One morning in my office, a tall, slim package arrives along with a note, a portion of which follows: 

Dr. Fennelly,

I can’t apologize enough for not getting your walking stick back sooner. Since my dad’s passing we have had to move my mother (who has a memory problem) several times, and with each move the walking stick moved too.  

In some ways it reminded me of my dad and the relationship you and he had. It was comforting for him and us to know he had you in his corner to lean on and support him.  

My First Code

Jessica Greenberg August 4, 2017 3 Comments

Jessica Greenberg ~

“Code Blue, Interventional Radiology suite,” blare the overhead speakers.

I am a new third-year medical student, doing my first rotation in internal medicine at Yale New Haven Hospital. This morning, I’ve been rounding on patients with my medical team.

The alarm sends us lumbering down the halls, struggling to keep our clogs from falling off our feet, clutching our white jackets to our chests to keep the pockets full of stethoscopes and pens and patient lists from bouncing.

Arriving in the IR suite, I stop about twenty feet from the middle-aged woman lying in the patient bed. More than a dozen physicians and nurses crowd around her, obscuring my view.

Simple Acts

Dianne Avey July 29, 2017 14 Comments

Dianne Avey ~

One night on my nursing shift in the cardiac intensive-care unit, I received a new patient from the operating room: an eighty-eight-year-old woman who had suffered a major heart attack and had just undergone emergency coronary-artery bypass surgery.

Her bed was wheeled into the room along with the usual accoutrements: six different IV drips, a ventilator, an aortic balloon pump and various other lines and monitoring devices. Her name, I saw on the chart, was Mrs. Green.

The young surgeon took me aside.

“I don’t care what it takes, just keep her alive for twenty-four hours,” he told me, clearly more worried about his surgical-outcome stats than he was about Mrs. Green’s welfare. The hospital and insurers kept

Who Would Want to Do This?

Kristin Beard July 7, 2017 24 Comments

Kristin Beard ~

“Get the patient on the monitor.”

“How long has he been down? Someone get on the chest!”

“Keep ventilating. He’s in v-fib. Defibrillate at 200.”

“Charging, everybody clear?…Shock delivered.”

“Resume compressions. Push one of epinephrine…Hold compressions. What rhythm is he in?”

“He’s asystole, resume compressions.”

We repeat the process a hundred times over. The medic said they started coding the patient an hour ago. The family is in the consult room with the chaplain.

A Day Out From the Nursing Home

John Grey June 30, 2017 7 Comments

John Grey ~

Your bones tremble.
Freedom no longer suits you.
Warm sun on skin feels wasted.
The smell of pine…
where’s that old familiar ether?
So many active people on the sidewalk,
behind the wheels of cars.
Who have they come to visit?

Your daughter grabs your hand,
tries to pull you back into your old life,
but it’s no longer known in these parts.
The house you grew up in…
well so she says.
The field where you played ball…
what’s ball?
She even dares to kiss you.
But where’s the pill to go along
with that painful touch of flesh?

Matching Rings

Joy Liu June 16, 2017 8 Comments

Joy Liu

The room is stuffy, but the woman is shivering.

Her husband stands by her bedside. An interpreter that they’ve hired to stay with her day and night stands at the foot of the bed. And then there’s me, the doctor (I’m an intern), waiting to deliver one of many sad speeches I must give today.

Smiling wanly, she struggles into a sitting position and shakes my hand.

Even with a diagnosis of metastatic stomach cancer, she has movie-star looks. She’s only twenty-six–the same age as me. I can imagine her stepping out of a red-carpet premiere in Shanghai. Instead, having hired personal interpreters and taken a flight halfway across the world, here she is in this hospital bed, waiting

Reverse Burnout

David Coulter May 5, 2017 No Comments

I have a long commute to the hospital where I work. I’ve been doing this for a long time and have thought about retirement. So when I’m stuck on the turnpike in morning rush-hour traffic, when it takes me 60 to 90 minutes to get in to work, I often say to myslf, “Why am I doing this? Why not just quit, retire and enjoy life at home? I don’t need this aggravation.”

A May-December Friendship

Hanan Rimawi May 5, 2017 20 Comments

Hanan Rimawi

Ms. Connie was known, to her delight, as the Jackie Kennedy of Our Sanctuary nursing home. A tall, eighty-something woman who tucked splashy flowers into her voluminous curls, she’d strike up a conversation with anyone she encountered.

These chats were never a half-hearted “How are you?” tossed off before zipping away in her wheelchair. She’d ask an aide if her ailing daughter was feeling better, or check whether the receptionist’s son had heard from his dream college–“I’m keeping my fingers crossed for him!”

Ms. Connie shared a suite with Ms. Alice, a woman who was in her nineties. Ms. Alice was more reserved, but equally good-natured. Morning and evening, you’d find her sitting in her room, absorbed in a book.

Weary and Wishful

Ronna L. Edelstein May 1, 2017 No Comments

I was living just two blocks away from my parents, but I spent more time at their condo than I did at my apartment. I shopped for them and cooked, cleaned, and did laundry for them. I took them to appointments. I tried to help them lead lives of quality. Every night I went home feeling tired–after all, I was in my sixties–but also feeling glad that I could support them after all the years they had supported me.

The Home

Nolan Snider April 28, 2017 8 Comments

Nolan Snider

People say it’s the last place
They want to go.
But when push comes to shove,
It’s the next-to-the-last place.
Although there are some who are
Ready to move on to that last place.
Others stay as long as they can in this,
The last place they thought
They would ever want to go.
Clinging on, year after year,
Staying here to avoid
The last place.

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: end of life

She Likes Chocolate

Fighting the Odds

Lean on Me

My First Code

Simple Acts

Who Would Want to Do This?

A Day Out From the Nursing Home

Matching Rings

Reverse Burnout

A May-December Friendship

Weary and Wishful

The Home

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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: end of life

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