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Exam-Room Follies

Anne Whetzel October 31, 2014 14 Comments

Anne Whetzel

Pamela sits on the examining-room stool, looking at me expectantly.

I am in my first year of medical school. I do as I’ve been told to do in Medical Skills class: I observe my patient–without judgment or assumptions–and try to figure out what questions to ask, based on the information I am given.

Pamela has curly, strawberry-blonde hair and looks to be thirty, just a few years older than me. Her infant son lies in a carrier beside her.

Dr. Clark, whom I’m shadowing, has just given Pamela osteopathic manipulative therapy for her chronic headaches. Now the doctor is treating Pamela’s older son, age seven, for back pain; he fell off the school jungle gym a few days ago.

All

The Bodies Green and Blue

Krupa Harishankar September 6, 2014 2 Comments

Krupa Harishankar

Reflections from the anatomy lab
overlooking Central Park

Reluctant, the same green

light over that copse of trees

and sheet of lawn glares and

bends through the lifted-open

cage of ribs, branched veins,

and cragged spine. Exposed,

my hands appear on the gurney

as a child’s. The one across

needled grass applauds small

palms, not distant, but sound

mutes here. Joy does not carry

heft like limbs of the

Rewriting the Script

Adam Weiner August 22, 2014 15 Comments

Adam B. Weiner

Useless….

The word came unbidden into my head.

Oh, no. Here I was, only a few questions into Mr. Marlow’s medical history, and the feeling had begun already.

I’d often experienced this when I was a pre-med student, spending so much time on labs and textbooks instead of with patients. When I’d begun my first year as a medical student, I’d hoped to leave all that behind. Medical school felt energizing: I was ready to see real patients and start helping them!

Q & A

Kyle Bernard June 20, 2014 12 Comments

Kyle Bernard

The interview had lasted fifteen minutes so far, and we’d made minimal progress. I was a medical student doing a rotation at a physical medicine and rehabilitation clinic back in my home state, Wisconsin. It was the end of the day; to save time, the senior resident, Paul, had joined me in the exam room so that we could hear Leora’s medical history together.

A year earlier, Leora, in her mid-fifties, had suffered a stroke. After a few weeks in the acute-rehabilitation hospital, she’d been discharged, and she and her husband, Ellis, had been lost to follow-up. Now they were back, hoping to resume Leora’s care.

The Arm

David G. Thoele June 6, 2014 7 Comments

David G. Thoele

I was on the cusp of my first year in medical school, and time was running out. Classes started in two weeks. I needed a place to live–ideally someplace cheap, not too far from school.

There was an opening at Phi Chi medical fraternity, a large brick house of faded elegance located less than a block from my classes at the University of Minnesota. At $75 a month for a tiny room in the co-ed fraternity, it fit my budget. When I learned about the “beer machine,” an old Coke machine that dispensed beer at 15 cents a bottle (a bargain in 1979), it felt like my kind of place. I signed the lease.

But throughout the entire discussion with my prospective

Embrace

Jessica Liu April 4, 2014 1 Comment

Jessica Liu

About the artist:

Jessica Liu is currently a third-year medical student at the University of California Davis, where she serves as a codirector of the Willow Student-Run Free Clinic. “One of my favorite quotes is from Albert Einstein, who wrote, ‘The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.’ Having a creative outlet while in medical school allows me to continue to stand in

Dear Joseph

Michael Terry February 21, 2014 26 Comments

Michael Terry

I stood right beside them as they slowly slid your head into a plastic bag, looped the coarse twine about your neck and tied it tightly. Like the amateurs they were, they double-knotted it to make sure nothing came loose or dripped out. Then they casually walked away, chatting about what would come next.

Within minutes the bag fogged up, and a clear red liquid pooled at the bottom.

That was just the beginning of the ritual.

I’m sure that under other circumstances you would have put up a fight, Joseph, but today you were no match for them. No matter that they were six slender twenty-somethings, and you at least six feet and 250 pounds; you were on their turf and utterly

Inside the Hospital

Kendall Madden January 17, 2014 5 Comments

Kendall Madden

It’s a desert in here–
the way they suck
the air from one
compartment to another.
I’m parched–
forgotten rain,
blanched mollusk
without the sea.

My stiff face
tries to smile
at a wilted patient.
Pink-tongued lilies
once in a while
overcome the disinfectant,
stale sweat,
with hothouse perfume.

Vanishing Act

Sudeep Dhoj Thapa July 19, 2013 No Comments

Sudeep Dhoj Thapa

It was a summer night during my first year of medical school. Small bugs danced about the school buildings’ lights and filled the air with their penetrating hum.

In the television room, located across a small grassy lawn from the dormitories, I sat watching old movies with my classmate and friend Rajesh.

Rajesh was tall and chunky. He wore his thick, jet-black hair combed back, which made his broad face and smile appear even more so. I’d known him since our first days at medical school.

“Everyone in my hometown knows me,” Rajesh had told me. “I’m the first one in my area to go to medical school.” Clearly he enjoyed being the pride

Illness 101

Madeline Sterling June 7, 2013 No Comments

Madeline R. Sterling

My time as a medical student is quickly coming to an end. Later this month, along with hundreds of my fellow seniors across the country, I will receive a medical degree.

This past winter, with nearly four years of arduous study, countless examinations and numerous clinical rotations under my belt, I couldn’t help but think, Yes, I’m ready to be a doctor.

And then I became a patient.

Behind Closed Doors

Sophia Lee Ryan April 12, 2013 No Comments

Sophia Lee Ryan

I’d prepared as much as I could: I had a huge coffee, a water and every kind of snack imaginable stuffed into my bag. In my head I carried as much information about dilation and curettage as I’d been able to absorb during a study session at Starbucks the night before.

I was a third-year medical student doing my obstetrics and gynecology clerkship, and I was about to spend a day at the local family-planning clinic. The clinic offers support to women on all aspects of contraception, from education and counseling to providing various methods of birth control or carrying out terminations. I knew that this was their OR day, so I’d researched some of the cases that I

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: medical student stories

Exam-Room Follies

The Bodies Green and Blue

Rewriting the Script

Q & A

The Arm

Embrace

Dear Joseph

Inside the Hospital

Vanishing Act

Illness 101

Behind Closed Doors

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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: medical student stories

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