loneliness – Pulse

Going It Alone

Tafadzwa S. Kasambira September 17, 2024 7 Comments

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

Loneliness can creep up on you like a phantom, slipping its cold hand into yours and offering companionship that is both depressing and alluring—particularly when, looking around, you see nobody else whose face mirrors your own.

It was my first day of residency at a top pediatric program in Boston—a predominantly white program catering to a predominantly white patient population in a predominantly white city.

Scanning the room, I realized that, for the next three years, I would be the only Black person among some thirty-five residents.

Only Connect

Anthony Fleg July 28, 2020 8 Comments

It was 5:00 pm in the intensive-care unit, and my team and I had just wrapped up our interview with elderly Ms. Armijo, who was in critical condition after emergency abdominal surgery.

Exhausted after a long day, we headed for the door, the ICU machines and monitors beeping their goodbyes.

Solitary Confinement

Stewart Decker January 10, 2014 14 Comments

Stewart Decker

I’ve made a huge mistake, I thought.

The fever had come back. The fever had come back, and I was stuck on a bus. The first of five buses, actually….

I am a fourth-year medical student at the University of Minnesota, but right now I’m a long way from home. I am spending a year in South America, studying international public-health issues by working in emergency rooms, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), social projects and surgical suites.

When this story began, I’d been living in a small, remote town called Central Yuu, in the Ecuadorian jungle, helping the villagers to build a potable-water spring-protection system. It was on a rainy day there that I collected a connect-the-dots pattern of insect bites on my ankles.

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: loneliness

Going It Alone

Only Connect

Solitary Confinement

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: loneliness

Going It Alone

Only Connect

Solitary Confinement

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