ob/gyn – Pulse

Don’t Ever Let Them Break You

Lissa Rankin November 28, 2023 21 Comments

Editor’s Note: This piece was awarded an honorable mention in the Pulse writing contest, “On Being Different.”

I was a woman in medical school before there were more women students than men—back when women were expected to be more masculine than the men if they wanted to succeed as doctors, back when the idea that we could report our medical-school professors for sexual harassment was just a twinkle in the eye of someone braver and less conflict-avoidant than I was.

Womb in Waiting

Carol Barrett August 20, 2021 3 Comments

“Yes, death will make the poem end.” – Danielle Chapman

i History

Fact: my mother had a hysterectomy at age 80.
Fact: she had birthed six children, miscarried one.
Fact: she told us she did not need those parts anymore.
Fact: she was diagnosed with breast cancer at 94.
Fact: her sister was diagnosed at 98.
Fact: my aunt chose a mastectomy, lived to 103.

My Friend, My Patient

Andrea Eisenberg May 18, 2018 6 Comments

Andrea Eisenberg ~

Seeing patients in my ob/gyn office this morning, I try to stave off the mild nervousness rumbling inside of me. My good friend Monica is having a C-section this afternoon, and I’m performing it.

We met ten years ago, when I walked my three-year-old daughter into Monica’s preschool classroom for the first time. Monica sat on the floor, a child in her lap and others playing around her. Like them, I felt drawn by her calm, soothing manner and infectious laugh.

Over time, our friendship grew: At school or social gatherings, we always ended up giggling together. We took family trips together, trained together for marathons and supported each other through heartaches–my divorce, the closing of her childcare business–and

Perfect Timing

Linda Kobert December 23, 2016 5 Comments

Linda Kobert

Monday, 7:30 am, DR two. I’m circulating,
the nurse who isn’t sterile, the surgical team’s link
with the unclean world. Before the incision,
I have ten things to do. I keep the list in my head:
check suction, position lights, turn on Bovie, toe
the steel bucket next to the surgeon’s feet.

The scrub nurse and I do the count: sponges, needles, clamps.
I chart these numbers. Post op the count must match. I snag
the tips of the ties on the surgeon’s sterile gown. He spins

Speeding Ticket

Andrea Eisenberg November 13, 2016 No Comments

I’m an ob-gyn, so the middle of the night is like a normal workday for me. I view the drive in at 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. as my transition time from interrupted sleep to an important moment for my patient and spend it reminding myself to make the shift from fulfilling my needs to theirs.

This Time, I’m Happy to Wait

Violet Kieu May 6, 2016 No Comments

It is the same old waiting room, but something is different. It is my first visit to my obstetrician after having my baby.

We Pretend That We’re Not Afraid

Caitlin Bass April 22, 2016 15 Comments

Caitlin Bass

We stand outside in the heat. We swat at the occasional persistent mosquito. We try to ignore the sweat beading down our foreheads and the backs of our necks. We retreat to the deepest recesses of shade we can find. We wish for a hint of a wisp of a smidgen of a breeze. We hold court on life and love. We laugh and tease and are determined to have a good time. We could be in Atlanta or Austin or Anytown, USA.

We pretend that we’re not afraid.

We are afraid, though. Our fear is legitimate: Some people hate us. And some of them are armed and dangerous.

Birth of a Hospice Nurse

Sara Conkle July 10, 2015 18 Comments

Sara Conkle

The woman lying on the transport cot in the examination room was terrified. I could see it plainly in her eyes, but there was no time to stop and comfort her.

I was a young, recently graduated nurse in a busy urban emergency room, struggling to keep up with its daily array of shootings, stabbings and crises. ER nurses hustled. We dealt with life and death, and we did it quickly. That may be why I paid so little attention to the pain and fear in the woman”s eyes.

I asked her to get onto the examination table and duly recorded the facts: her last menstrual period had taken place several months before; her bleeding and cramping had started earlier

Birth

Albert Howard Carter III April 24, 2015 1 Comment

Albert Howard Carter III

(for NCC and RAC)

My wife lies in the little room,
tight as a drum, and even more convex.
She breathes hard as the contractions come.
The doctor, some 20 feet away,
shares his lunch with me,
the husband and coach;
My wife, lunchless today,
hears this act of betrayal
and resents (I learn later)
that we are eating cake:
she’s clearly in “transition,”
when even the nicest women
can become cranky.

Groans and wails fill the hall;
The place sounds like a zoo.

november

Allie Gips November 7, 2014 9 Comments

Allie Gips

tucked into the chaos of the emergency department
is a single room with stirrups, a floor spackled with blood,
& a woman whose face betrays nothing.
the bodies of all those i have touched who have then
died pile before me like so many broken eggshells
so i stand against the wall to distance myself from her
& her cramping uterus, her dark red clots that fall
like sleet, her blank eyes that stare strictly at the ceiling
while we busy ourselves with machinery: the speculum,

lub dub lub dub

Sterling Haynes January 3, 2014 No Comments

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: ob/gyn

Don’t Ever Let Them Break You

Womb in Waiting

My Friend, My Patient

Perfect Timing

Speeding Ticket

This Time, I’m Happy to Wait

We Pretend That We’re Not Afraid

Birth of a Hospice Nurse

Birth

november

lub dub lub dub

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: ob/gyn

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