grandparents – Pulse

Truth in Translation

N.Y. Sun September 5, 2023 10 Comments

Editor’s Note: This piece tied for first place in the Pulse writing contest, “On Being Different.”

I learned from my grandfather how to lie to doctors the same way that baby birds learn chirping: by mimicry.

“All healed,” I would translate for my grandfather at appointments. “I used to smoke, but not anymore.” “The pain is very faint.”

A good apprentice, I knew that he was lying, and I translated it anyway. I was eight years old, and a fast learner.

Mrs. Hernandez is a ninety-two-year-old Spanish-speaking woman, originally from Mexico, with high blood pressure and high cholesterol, who arrived in the emergency department of the hospital where I’m a fourth-year medical student.

Her right arm and leg were weak, the right side of her face drooped; her speech was slurred, and she seemed confused. Her CT scans showed that a blood clot had blocked her middle cerebral artery, in the area of the brain that governs language. Mrs. Hernandez was a stroke victim.

Mrs. Hernandez is also my abuela.

An Ounce of Empathy

William Liakos April 22, 2020 14 Comments

I am a medical student in my third year of studies. For medical students, this is the point at which, after two years of book learning, we rotate through hospital clerkships that give us our first experience of delivering hands-on care to inpatients.

Earlier in the year (it feels like many lifetimes ago), I read that COVID-19 was “just the flu.” We heard from scientific sources and popular media that other maladies were much worse, and that it would be a mistake to overreact to this one. Like many people, I accepted these assurances without too much concern. It all seemed a bit remote to me–the way I imagine issues like food stamps may seem to a politician who’s never needed them.

But now

My Love Affair With Jude

Larry Bauer February 22, 2019 23 Comments

Larry Bauer ~

In August 2016, our daughter Rachel and her husband Alberto traveled up from Memphis with their two children, Noel and Jude, to visit my wife and myself in Dayton, Ohio.

One afternoon during their stay, I was sitting in my favorite reading chair beside our kitchen area. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw seven-year-old Noel playing. Beside her, lying tummy-down on the floor, was three-year-old Jude. He was in a trance, fixated on the screen of his LeapPad computer tablet, his “most favorite toy in the world.”

Seeing Jude there triggered something inside me. We’d always gotten along well. He would come to me, and I’d pick him up, cuddle with him and carry him around. He enjoyed being

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: grandparents

Truth in Translation

Mommy Chuy

An Ounce of Empathy

My Love Affair With Jude

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: grandparents

Truth in Translation

Mommy Chuy

An Ounce of Empathy

My Love Affair With Jude

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