Home
/
memorable patients
/
Page 2

Tag: memorable patients

Heart and Soul

Fredy El Sakr March 10, 2017 20 Comments

Fredy El Sakr

“Help!” I yelled out of our open apartment door.

I was seven years old, and my family had recently emigrated from Egypt to the US. We’d been feeling elated that week because, after months of interviews, my father had matched into a pediatric residency.

That morning he’d awakened feeling nauseated. My mother and sister went to buy some soothing food. I noticed that he’d vomited in the bathroom; now he was feeling worse.

He knew it was serious, because he put on his brown leather jacket and lay back in our blue recliner, waiting for my mom to return and take him to the emergency room. Now and then he’d look at me reassuringly with deep, dark, pain-stricken eyes,

If Only

Beatrice Leverett January 20, 2017 5 Comments

Beatrice Leverett

When I first met Jason, I was a third-year medical student halfway through my psychiatry rotation, and he was a newly admitted patient halfway through a nasty comedown from crystal meth.

He sat slumped in his chair, scowling, his face hidden by a baseball cap and black hooded sweatshirt, growling responses to my interview questions.

“Why do I have to do this? I hate this crap. I’ve answered these bullshit questions a million times. I’ve been in the psych ward a million times, and it’s never done anything for me.”

Reading his records, I realized that “a million times” wasn’t such an exaggeration. At only twenty-five, he’d been admitted to most of the local psychiatric hospitals. For several years,

Perspective

Margot Gardin January 12, 2017 3 Comments

“Your ovaries never developed.”

I am trying—and failing—to wrap my mind around those four words, to grasp the weight of their meaning, but every time I try to speak or swallow, the sharpness of the word “never” lodges in my throat. Never, meaning never counting the number of fingers on an ultrasound, never feeling the flutter of little toes against your abdomen, never arguing about whether you prefer the name Sophie or Sophia, never wondering if your baby girl will recognize your voice when you get to hold her for the first time.

Seeing Patients for the First Time

Anna Delamerced December 2, 2016 No Comments

I wish I could see his eyes, hidden beneath a pair of shades. A tweed cap, or as I like to think of it, the “grandpa cap,” covers his head. With his hands resting on a cane, he leans his back against the chair.

Relay Race

Remya Tharackal Ravindran November 26, 2016 No Comments

I sit across from my sixty-year-old patient, whom I know to be a sprightly woman, although she is now busy scanning the floor with her eyes.

I place my hand over her interlaced fingers. “What’s the matter?” I ask.

Deathbed Epiphany

Christina Johnson November 4, 2016 11 Comments

As a family-practice resident, I’ve found that a premium is placed not only on my clinical acumen but also on how well I respond to my patients’ mental and emotional experience of illness.

Yet the work of learning to be a doctor is just that–work. And in overwhelming amounts. Time management becomes ever more vital: As I take the time needed to gently break bad news and to console a patient, I must also stay conscious of the next patient’s appointment, the next phone call to make, the next exam to study for, the next lecture to attend, the next research project to complete and the next practice guideline to learn.

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

Happy Feet

D. Micah Milgraum June 24, 2016 12 Comments

D. Micah Milgraum

It’s a typical chaotic day on the hospital’s hematology and oncology floor. I’m sitting in a side room with one of my fellow medical students, doing paperwork and making follow-up calls for our medical team.

That’s when the music starts. The sounds of two guitars, a tambourine and a few maracas drift down the hallway. I can’t make out how many people are singing, but the happy voices and the song’s upbeat tempo make me curious: I never thought I’d hear this type of music on the “cancer floor.”

As I look up in surprise, Kevin, our team’s intern, appears in the doorway.

He catches my eye, and after a moment, we both start bobbing our heads to

Letter to My Patient

Sunita Sridhar June 5, 2016 2 Comments

Dear Ms. S,

I’m honored to have known you, I’m glad I had a chance to hold your hand before your surgery, and I will forever remember you as my first patient who passed away.

Within the first few seconds of meeting you, I knew you were a sweet person and had a wonderful, giving soul. I hope you are at peace where you are now. I hope you are no longer suffering.

No Crying

Riddhi Shah July 3, 2015 9 Comments

Riddhi Shah

“There’s no crying in baseball!”

Over the years, my fellow surgery residents and I heard these words shouted countless times by Dr. Norris, a cantankerous elderly surgeon with whom we had the dubious pleasure of working.

Dr. Norris was a former Navy ship surgeon. He didn’t operate much anymore, but he fondly remembered the “good old days” when trainees spent days on end in the hospital. The phrase emerged whenever he felt a need to remind us that medicine was a grueling pursuit with no room for weakness, perceived or actual.

I don’t know if his remark was a thinly veiled sexist jab or merely an allusion to the movie A League of Their Own, but it stopped mattering once

Mrs. Finch and Ms. Virginia

Evan Heald October 24, 2014 2 Comments

Evan Heald

A Different View

Most days, Mrs. Finch’s perspective was outrageously optimistic and embarrassingly complimentary. Although she had the typical assortment of nonagenarian maladies, she would not let that define her; whenever she visited my office, it was hard to get to a chief complaint because of her relentless focus on how nicely the parking lot had been graveled, or “what a sweet, sweet nurse you have,” or my partner’s haircut or the “clever, clever little hooks” holding the geraniums at the entry.

Never mind the treasure trove of doubled superlatives she saved for me, her physician.

Fateful Encounter

Amy Eileen Hiscock August 1, 2014 13 Comments

Amy Eileen Hiscock

I cannot take my eyes from his face.

It has been destroyed in the wreck, along with the rest of his body. His head is misshapen, bloodied. Someone has tried to staple together one of the larger lacerations–extending diagonally across his face and under his chin–but there was little point. They gave up partway through.

I have never seen a dead body. I am twenty-five and in the second of five terms of nursing school.

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: memorable patients

Heart and Soul

If Only

Perspective

Seeing Patients for the First Time

Relay Race

Deathbed Epiphany

Never Say Die

Happy Feet

Letter to My Patient

No Crying

Mrs. Finch and Ms. Virginia

Fateful Encounter

Subscribe to Pulse.

It's free.

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: memorable patients

Start typing and press enter to search

Subscribe to Pulse.

It's free.