fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

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fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

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Tag: medical student stories

Little Lady

Samyukta Mullangi June 3, 2011 No Comments

Samyukta Mullangi

Growing up, I was the one thought to be the most squeamish about medicine–the needles, the knives, the musty smell of alcohol swabs and the rusty stench of blood. Whenever my mother, an ob/gyn, talked on the phone with her patients about menstruation, cramps and bloating, I’d plug my ears and wish for death by embarrassment. Once, standing in line for a routine TB test, I had a friend pull up a chair for me “in case you faint.” 

So my entire family thought it hilarious when I decided to go to medical school. 

“You know that residents practice stitches on each other, don’t you?” my cousin teased. 

“Consider real estate instead,” my grandmother advised.

In deference to her, I actually did go

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Genuine Touch

Jonathan Gotfried May 13, 2011 No Comments

Jonathan Gotfried

I was a medical student doing my fourth-year rotation on the oncology floor. The floor offered many new sights, and from the first, I was struck by the two mammoth massage chairs sitting in a corner at the end of the longest corridor. 

Their exaggerated curves were plastered with jet-black faux leather adorned with stitching details. Long, smooth armrests of oak jutted out on either side. The remote control was a virtual supercomputer offering thousands of programs designed to enhance one’s massaging pleasure–kneading, fast, pressure, heat, full-body massage. On either side of the plush headrest, strategically placed speakers would play soft classical music, drowning out the low hum of

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Medicine Land Celebrates a Birthday

Paul Gross April 29, 2011 No Comments

Paul Gross

The first real patient of my medical career was a 60-year-old man in the surgical intensive care unit. I met him on the first day of the third year of medical school, when students join teams of doctors doing inpatient medicine.

The surgical team met at 7:00 am–a ludicrously early hour, I thought. There were nearly ten of us–four students, a couple of interns and senior residents and a chief resident.

As the team gathered around the patient’s bed, we students hung back, looking at the form before us. A pale, fleshy foot poked out from under his hospital gown. The room smelled funny.

The patient was comatose. Had he been awake and alert, he might not have been heartened by our team’s

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The House Always Wins

Rashmi Kaura February 18, 2011 No Comments

Rashmi Kaura

Death. A five-letter word. The inevitable conclusion to our accomplishments, dreams, emotions and essence. Feared and ignored by the well, acknowledged and perhaps even welcomed by the ailing.

As physicians we are constantly gambling against this inevitability, playing the odds with our arsenal of diagnostics and therapeutics. Even when the odds against us grow longer, we forge ahead, bidding to prolong life through technology and wonder drugs.

Many times, staring into the tired, tortured eyes of a frail and debilitated patient while preparing to subject him or her to painful tests and treatments with a stroke of my pen, I wonder, Why do I insist on playing this game when the house is likely to win? Isn’t the whole point of gambling knowing when

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Affected

Jessica Tekla Les September 24, 2010 No Comments

Jessica Tekla Les

During my third year of medical school I was performing a routine breast exam, more for practice than anything else. I was trying the concentric-circles-around-the-nipple technique, one of several I’d been taught. About halfway through the right breast I found a lima-bean-sized lump, not far from the breastbone. I took liberties with this particular exam. I poked the lump, tried to move the lump, squished down on the lump. 

I took such liberties because it was my own breast. 

At the time, I responded clinically. I thought to myself, I am twenty-seven years old, with no family history and no risk factors. Nothing to worry about. I knew the likely diagnosis, a fibroadenoma or localized fibrocystic change, both common in my age group. I

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Broken

Jordan Grumet September 3, 2010 No Comments

Jordan Grumet

I was a third-year medical student in the first week of my obstetrics rotation. The obstetrics program was known to be high-pressure, its residents among the best. Mostly women, they were a hard-core group–smart, efficient, motivated–and they scared the heck out of us medical students.

I remember the day clearly: Not only was I on call, but I was assigned to the chief resident’s team. I felt petrified. 

We’d started morning rounds as usual, running down the list of patients in labor. Five minutes in, my chief got a “911” page from the ER, located in the next building. This seldom happened, so instead of calling back, we ran downstairs and over to the trauma bay.

We walked into pure chaos. The patient

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Dr. B Gets an F

Gregory Shumer August 20, 2010 No Comments

Gregory Shumer

Flashback to a year ago: I’m a first-year medical student–a fledgling, a novice–trying to integrate countless facts into a coherent understanding of how the human body works. Professors slam me with two months’ worth of information inside of two weeks’ time. They tell us that this is a necessary process, one that all doctors must go through: we must first learn the science of medicine before we can master the art of healing.

My life revolves around tests, labs, deadlines, long hours in the library and very close relationships with the baristas at Starbucks.

In the midst of this chaos, I developed a crippling ankle condition that transformed me into a concerned patient for the first time in my life. The pain started

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Trauma in the ER

Michael Gutierrez July 9, 2010 No Comments

Michael Gutierrez

It was 5 pm on a cold November day. I was a third-year medical student heading into my first night on surgery call.

Changing into my scrubs, I wondered what it would be like. I knew that we had to carry a “trauma pager” and, when paged, get to the ER as fast as possible. There my job would be to listen as the ER physician called out his exam findings and enter them on a history-and-physical form.

I felt a mix of things. I was excited about the learning possibilities, but I also knew that whoever gets wheeled through the ER doors is someone’s daughter, son, mother or father. I decided not to think too hard–I’d just take what came my way

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Pearls Before Swine

Kate Lewis May 28, 2010 No Comments

Kate Lewis

I’m a third-year medical student, and I’m starting the second day of my new rotation–a month that I’ll spend with a family physician, Dr. Bauer, in his small, efficient home-based office.

Yesterday, my first day, a young woman named Sara came in for “strep throat.” She had dark Latina eyes, broad cheekbones and a delicate tattoo of the Chinese character for “dream” on her left wrist. She was 17 and seeking out a primary-care doctor for the first time in her life; I applauded her for taking responsibility for her own health care. Her tonsils were big and purple, covered in pus, but the rapid strep test was negative. She also reported a vaginal discharge. Dr. Bauer wanted to do a pelvic exam

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May I Have Your Attention, Please?

Adam Phillip Stern January 15, 2010 No Comments

Adam Phillip Stern

Some sentences should never be interrupted. 

“We have the results of your HIV test,” the attending physician had begun. But fate interrupted with a seemingly endless loudspeaker announcement:

“May I have your attention, please? Would the following patients please report to the nurse’s station for morning medications….”

Nothing about Benjamin’s story was ordinary. He had been voluntarily admitted to an inpatient psychiatry unit after reporting many symptoms of depression–extreme somnolence, fatigue, thirty-pound weight loss with poor appetite, diffuse pain, decreased energy and joylessness for about three months.

Benjamin was charming, smart and eager to follow medical advice. As a relatively inexperienced medical student, I found interviewing him a refreshing change of pace from my difficult interactions

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Looking for Respect

Ashrei Bayewitz August 21, 2009 No Comments

Ashrei Bayewitz

This may sound strange, but I secretly looked forward to my colonoscopy.

I was excited to see the people in the colonoscopy suite–the receptionists, the nurses and my doctor. I knew that they would like me, because I would be brave and respectful. That’s what’s always happened since I was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease ten years ago. During my multiple colonoscopies and countless doctor visits and other outpatient procedures, I invariably build up a rapport with someone, be it a doctor, nurse or staff member. I’ve always been a good patient, and now that I’m a second-year medical student as well, I can understand their work a little better. I expect them to sense my goodwill and to treat me in turn with

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The Save

Dan J. Schmidt July 10, 2009 No Comments

Dan J. Schmidt

I started medical school thinking I wanted to be a family doctor–someone who could work in a small town and deal with whatever walked through the door. But in our third year, when we received our first taste of clinical medicine, I found my surgery and ER rotations exciting. I was at our state’s major trauma center, and I loved it. Fixing things gives me a thrill–and the power to save a life is even more alluring.

Each “save” felt like a miraculous triumph. Take the nineteen-year-old visiting Australian, stabbed in a random street altercation, his blood pressure dropping as fluid accumulated around his heart. Right there in the ER, he had his chest split open and his right ventricle patched by

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