Home
/
patient stories
/
Page 2

Tag: patient stories

Kindness in the Face of Loss

Yuval Topper September 4, 2024 6 Comments

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

I’ve just received a call from a hospital: An urgent appointment at its fetal-medicine unit has been arranged for me for tomorrow.

I try to get all the critical information.

“Which hospital did you say?” I ask. The medical secretary repeats the name, sounding a little surprised. I haven’t heard of this hospital; but then, I haven’t really heard of any, except for our local one.

Finding the Upside

Amy Gietzen August 28, 2024 19 Comments

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

Being different is often viewed as bad. At a young age, I learned that it meant you didn’t belong. I vividly remember watching the Sesame Street puppets dance and sing about an object that “didn’t belong” because it was “not like the others.”

Throughout my school years, I tried hard to fit in. Being overweight, and as uncoordinated as they come, I constantly felt out of place in my body and among my peers. I remember trying so hard to make people laugh, to win them over.

Treasuring Our Differences

Finley Kernan-Schloss August 20, 2024 6 Comments

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

I dread visits to the gynecologist. Even though I’m a healthcare professional myself—studying to become a physician assistant after years as a clinical-research coordinator—I struggle with the prospect of the impending visit on a deeply personal level.

The crinkly gown, the pressure of the cold speculum and the pinch of the tiny brush that scrapes the cervix. A pap smear was bad enough when I identified as a woman—but as a nonbinary person with gender dysphoria, these visits act as a reminder that I was born into a body I don’t identify with, and I find visits to my gynecologist unbearable.

A Family History of X

Lori Jakiela August 13, 2024 6 Comments

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

When I was diagnosed with breast cancer, my doctor, Dr. Thompson, who looks like the comedian Norm MacDonald and tells smart-ass jokes and likes to draw stick-figure breasts on a whiteboard to show surgical options, asked, “Do you have a family history of breast cancer?”

He had already drawn a series of disembodied breasts before he asked this. The breasts were squared off, with Lego nipples—nothing Victoria’s Secret-ish, nothing human.

Superpower

Cara Statucki August 2, 2024 8 Comments

I sometimes tell my children that they have superpowers—usually when they’ve done something amazing, unique or powerful.

I’d like to think that I, too, have a superpower: I can move physical pain from a 9 to a 0, just with my thoughts.

I’ve been practicing this power—honing it—for more than twenty years now.

Next of Kin

Jo Rendle July 16, 2024 2 Comments

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

The Early Nineties

A number of things happened the moment I realized I was gay. From the moment I came out to myself and to those around me, I felt the scales fall from my eyes. The sky was brighter, the air crisper. I felt free, excited by the world and all it had to offer.

How could it have taken forty-four years to work this out? I kept asking myself.

Small but Mighty

Jesse Lyle June 18, 2024 5 Comments

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

I was born with what was described as a “mild” case of achondroplasia, a genetic condition that affects bone growth and causes short stature.

The average height of an adult female with achondroplasia is 4 feet 1 inch; I am 4 feet 5 inches tall. I do not have some of the “characteristic” facial features such as a prominent forehead or flattened nasal bridge. The average person remains unaware of my condition until I stand up.

This condition does not run in my family.

I Can’t See Pictures in My Head

Liana M. Scott June 11, 2024 11 Comments

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

Visual imagination is like a superpower or a sixth sense: We take it for granted. On demand, we conjure up images of those we hold most dear: family, friends, our beloved pets. We envision people, places and things that we’d like to experience in the future. We revisit cherished memories simply by picturing them, essentially reliving them, all in our mind’s eye.

That is, unless you have aphantasia—like me.

What’s Wrong With You?

Jessica May 21, 2024 5 Comments

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

“What’s wrong with you?”

The words cut through my mind and hit me in the gut. My fragile fifteen-year-old ego splintered like a glass cup slipping through fingers onto hardwood.

Tears welled up, and my lips pursed, ready to respond. But I couldn’t find the words—for in that moment, I truly knew that I was broken, I was ugly, I was wrong. And even my mother knew it.

Another Way to Listen

David Hagstrom May 14, 2024 7 Comments

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

“David, from this moment forward, you’ll need to listen with your heart.”

It’s been forty years since I heard these words, but they ring as clearly in my mind as if it were yesterday.

My night nurse, Jill, whispered them into my left ear—the only one still able to hear after my fourteen-hour brain surgery to remove a tangerine-sized growth from the acoustic nerve, which affects hearing and balance.

Over the Rainbow

David Corbin May 10, 2024 17 Comments

Two days after the bus crash, I died. It was March 1996. A bus traveling at 60 mph had hit the car I was in, shattering my fifth and sixth cervical vertebrae and instantly paralyzing me from the shoulders down.

I was only twenty years old, and father to a one-year-old son. I spent the following forty-eight hours at a nearby hospital, on life support in the ICU. I couldn’t speak or breathe on my own.

I survived those two days on a sense of faith, expressed in a mantra: This is just temporary.

Many Shades of Different

Cali Gaston April 23, 2024 18 Comments

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

Having stage IV cancer at twenty-one made me different from my peers.

I was already different: By the eighth grade, due to my mother’s quest for greener pastures, I’d attended twelve schools, many of them outside of the US. I was a Yankee when my family lived in Australia, but also when we lived in Florida. I was a gringa when we lived in Mexico, then in Peru. In places where English was spoken, I stood out because of my accent. In places where Spanish was spoken, although I became quite fluent, I was clearly a foreigner.

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

Tag: patient stories

Kindness in the Face of Loss

Finding the Upside

Treasuring Our Differences

A Family History of X

Superpower

Next of Kin

Small but Mighty

I Can’t See Pictures in My Head

What’s Wrong With You?

Another Way to Listen

Over the Rainbow

Many Shades of Different

Subscribe to Pulse.

It's free.

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

Tag: patient stories

Start typing and press enter to search

Subscribe to Pulse.

It's free.