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Never Say Die

Christine Todd August 26, 2016 26 Comments

Christine Todd

In November of my intern year, I had trouble finding the sun. It was dark when I woke up for work, and it was dark when work was done and I headed back home. I’d picked up the service on the cancer ward from an intern named Bob, and Bob had left me six handwritten pages on the subject of Jim Franklin.

And this was the deal: Jim Franklin, thirty-seven years old, had been living on the cancer ward for the last three months. He had a two-foot-high stack of records, and the pity and admiration of nearly every nurse, tech and doctor in the hospital. He’d been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma four years earlier, treated with chemotherapy and thought to

Listening to Light

Donna Doyle August 5, 2016 No Comments

Donna Doyle

About the artist:

“My work as a poet and as a photographer is inspired by experienes I am unable to let go of–images, thoughts and feelings. These reflective practices help me grow. A year-and-a-half ago, the medical library where I work relocated from a building (with windows) outside the hospital to a windowless space in the center of the hospital. The transition has been challenging for me. As an introvert and a highly sensitive person, I experience the hospital environment most often as a kind of sensory overload. Writing poems and making photographs are my way

Showing Up

Sarah Bigham June 10, 2016 9 Comments

Sarah Bigham

Years ago, as I left my college dorm room, the posters caught my eye. Plastered everywhere, they announced a bone-marrow drive led by a fellow student in search of a match for his brother, diagnosed with cancer.

A confirmed needlephobe, I’d recently fled a Red Cross blood drive at the mere thought of the tourniquet. Registering as a bone-marrow donor seemed like a terrible idea–but the sibling connection grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. The eldest of four, I pictured my sisters and brother at home, two states away. If any of them had developed this terrible illness, I knew that I, too, would implore my classmates to be tested. So, with several friends, I made the trek across campus to

Desperate for Change

Pamela Freundl Kirst May 4, 2016 2 Comments

It is a mild Sunday afternoon in October, and I am standing in front of a closed reception window, desperate for change. It is the early 1990s, and we don’t yet have cell phones. I have already exhausted my supply of coins, making calls on the public phone hanging on the wall in the ER waiting room.

Hope

Greg Manship May 3, 2016 3 Comments

Who knows how many voices created the cacophony that filled the waiting room that night? Words, wails and whispers gave sound to the gamut of human experiences and emotions. But as I listened, I heard one clear, unwavering note that floated above the clamor.

“Hug Lady, Pretty Dress, Crying?”

Shirley Phillips May 2, 2016 3 Comments

I am sitting in the all-too-familiar waiting room of my local emergency department on a Saturday night in July. I am here with my daughter, Ashley, who is nineteen but could pass for a typical twelve-year-old—until she starts to talk. Ashley has a rare genetic disorder. On the good days I laugh and say that she will make a great ventriloquist because she talks without ever moving her lips. This is not a good day. She has a fever, a wet cough, and she snuggles up against me.

The Comfort of Strangers

Ellen Rand May 2, 2016 No Comments

Mind your own business, I say to myself. It’s like being in a crowded subway car: avoid eye contact, and give these people their space. Try and focus on that sappy family drama that’s playing on the TV.

Special Delivery

Deborah Pierce September 4, 2015 3 Comments

Deborah Pierce

I first met Marie five years ago. A petite, soft-spoken woman in her thirties, she was the patient of one of the residents whom I supervise at our community hospital. Marie worked in housekeeping for a large corporation; she and her husband, a bus driver, had a six-year-old son. Now she was twenty-six weeks (six months) pregnant with their second child.

Marie’s blood pressure was markedly elevated (168/120), she had fairly high amounts of protein in her urine, and her baby measured small on the ultrasound. These pointed to severe preeclampsia–a serious complication that can quickly worsen, leading to kidney damage, seizures or even death for mother and child, and that can only be cured by delivering the baby.

The

Valhalla Over Connacht

Sandra Shea June 26, 2015 2 Comments

Sandra Shea

About the artist:

Sandra Shea is an associate professor at the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine. “As a colon and skin cancer survivor, I know WAY too much about how health care works from the inside! Ireland holds a special place in my heart, as my father’s family ‘s homeland, as a place where I spent my junior year of college, and a place to which I have returned whenever possible. My most recent trip, in 2013, was the first trip with a digital camera and an iPad, as evidenced by an average

A Little Ray of Hope

Tara Jaffery May 15, 2015 2 Comments

Tara Jaffery

About the artist:

Tara Jaffery is an internist working in Shifa International Hospital in Islamabad, Pakistan. She was a FAIMER (Foundation for Advancement of International Medical Education and Research) fellow at the time she took this photograph in late 2005, when northern Pakistan experienced the worst earthquake in its history. She sends this photograph “for the people of Nepal…a little ray of hope.”

About the artwork:

“When Nepal suffered its

Beating the Numbers Racket

Thuy D. Bui July 18, 2014 10 Comments

Thuy D. Bui

“What’s my number?” shouted Betsy as I entered the examination room one day last fall.

“Oh, you mean your A1C? It’s nine-point-four!” I answered. A sentence sped through my mind: “The hemoglobin A1C number tells how well a patient’s diabetes is controlled–seven or less is good.” In my seven years as Betsy’s primary-care doctor, I’ve repeated this information at visits and included it in appointment reminders as well.

Betsy is a pale, stocky woman in her sixties, with short, neatly cropped hair. Her rather tentative smile, to me, always seemed a bit forced, as if covering up for underlying pain. And she’s had plenty of pain in her life.

Sick and Tired

Paul Rousseau January 20, 2012 No Comments

Paul Rousseau

“You told me you’re tired–tired of all the transfusions, and tired of being sick. Do you want to stop all the transfusions, Nancy?” I asked the woman lying in the hospital bed.

She was silent. Her husband of nineteen years, sitting nearby, was silent as well.

“What are you thinking, Nancy, can you tell me?” I asked.

Nancy, forty-eight, was suffering from chronic muscle inflammation, severe lung disease, pneumonia and–most severely–from terminal myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), a blood and bone-marrow disease for which she had to receive transfusions of platelets and red blood cells every other day.

Fed up with the transfusions, she’d asked to speak with the

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: hope

Never Say Die

Listening to Light

Showing Up

Desperate for Change

Hope

“Hug Lady, Pretty Dress, Crying?”

The Comfort of Strangers

Special Delivery

Valhalla Over Connacht

A Little Ray of Hope

Beating the Numbers Racket

Sick and Tired

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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: hope

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