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Scars

Whittier Mikkelsen March 19, 2024 6 Comments

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

In the summer between second and third grade, when I was eight, I first realized that it was safer for me to hide my surgical scars.

I had two huge scars starting at my hip joints and running halfway down my outer thighs. They were “Dr. Frankenstein” scars, with obvious cross-hatches that couldn’t be missed when I wore shorts or bathing suits.

That summer, my scars brought odd looks and comments from both children and adults.

Our Shared Journey

Courtney Burnett March 12, 2024 6 Comments

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

It took a terrifying and life-changing experience of being different for me to realize a fundamental truth: I’m the same as everyone else.

This truth has redefined my goals and reshaped the way I practice medicine.

At age twenty-nine, during my third and final year of internal-medicine residency, I received a diagnosis of a rare and malignant brain cancer called anaplastic astrocytoma. Quite suddenly, I was different.

A Puzzling Impulse

Jasmine Maleka Hasan February 27, 2024 5 Comments

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

My mother has always advised me that it is good to be “different.” She herself, growing up, wanted to be different in both her personality and her fashion. But her wish to be unique is not something I’ve inherited.

Beginning in elementary school, the last thing I wanted was to be different from my school friends—in fact, I wanted to be them. This made things difficult, as I was the only brown person in my primarily white friend group.

My Invisible Illness

Leah Able February 16, 2024 11 Comments

Growing up, I was a healthy child. I only went to the doctor for check-ups, vaccinations and school forms.

So when, at age fourteen, I woke in the middle of the night in excruciating pain and crawled into my parents’ bedroom to wake them to take me to the emergency room, I wasn’t prepared for what awaited on the other side of those sliding glass doors.

My experience was like a medical TV-show montage—bright lights, beeping monitors, medical professionals hovering over me and talking incomprehensible jargon, soft cries from patients in surrounding rooms, concerned looks on my parents’ faces.

Assistant Head Wrapper

Judith Hannah Weiss February 13, 2024 18 Comments

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

I’m an antique. I started working as a junior copywriter at Time in 1972. I was a token Jew, a token hippie and a token “female professional” among hordes of perky typists and preppy males. The executives wore Cartier cufflinks engraved with initials and numbers, like GSW III or CMJ IV. My bosses were George the Third and Christopher the Fourth, while I was J, the only.

The Quest of a Lifetime

David J. Nieuwkoop January 30, 2024 18 Comments

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

From a young age, we’re encouraged to stand out—to be who we truly are and to be proud of that person. We strive to understand both our strengths and our weaknesses. In doing so, we’re driven to move forward, knowing we’re doing our best. But sometimes we get stuck in a rut and can’t find our way. That’s where my story begins.

In the mid-Seventies, at age sixteen or seventeen, I was diagnosed with a genetic disorder called Klinefelter syndrome. There were no computers or internet, which meant no easy access to medical knowledge. Living in rural Northern Michigan complicated matters further. Our small town had no medical specialists, and medical journals

Under the Microscope

Deborah Levin January 12, 2024 10 Comments

I was walking into my kitchen with an armful of groceries when my cell phone rang. It took a second to register the caller’s name: Dr. James. The surgeon I’d met two weeks earlier.

I wasn’t expecting this call. My biopsy had occurred only a few days ago, and I’d been told that, because of the Christmas holiday, the results would be delayed.

Why is she calling?

None of My Mom Friends Are Dying

Katherine Peter January 9, 2024 27 Comments

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

I’m squarely in the middle of my friends, in terms of when we became “mom friends.” However, one aspect sets me apart: None of my mom friends are dying.

None had excruciating pain during pregnancy, unrelenting constipation or unexplained blood in their stool. None went septic five days postpartum or were ultimately diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer with liver, lung and peritoneal metastases. None are parenting a two-year-old, knowing that they might not see him turn three.

A Duplexity of Maladies

Robin Kemper December 19, 2023 8 Comments

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

I have a body besieged by two chronic illnesses, namely multiple sclerosis (MS) and bipolar disorder. My health profile has been described as “abnormal,” but I’ve always resisted that term in favor of “atypical,” for my poor health renders me unusual but not inhuman.

Still, the truth is that I am essentially and profoundly sick. My imbalanced body frequently aches, hurts and falls, my labile mind races or crawls. While medications can ameliorate my symptoms, they cannot cure my illnesses.

My body betrayed me when I was on the cusp of adulthood.

The Genesis of Forgetfulness: A Poet’s Journey

Shahé Mankerian October 24, 2023 6 Comments

“The poet’s job is to translate unspeakable things on to the page…” – Roger Robinson

In the beginning, the Lebanese civil war barely seeped through the ceiling of our living room. It didn’t shatter windows or infiltrate through cracked walls. It became a slow fixture at our dinner table, nibbled on Mama’s delicately wrapped grape leaves, inhaled Father’s unfiltered cigarettes, listened to my older brother practice scale after scale on the upright piano and sat on the Persian carpet with my younger brother to rearrange his Matchbox cars. In our Armenian family of five, the war felt mute—a sixth character without words, an unobtrusive intruder who was given permanent residency.

Lessons From the Heart

Susan Bodiker August 18, 2023 1 Comment

This can’t be happening to me, I thought. Yet here I was, on a gurney being wheeled into a cath lab for an angioplasty and possible stent.

This can’t be happening, I thought again.

But it was.

A little background: I have always thought of myself as healthy.

My Castle

Nancy Scott July 21, 2023 18 Comments

Moving to an independent-living facility requires finding a balance between controlling the things that you can, and accepting help, or changes, with the things that you can’t. It also means striking a balance between being part of a more regimented community and being part of the outside world.

I’m nearly seventy, which is young for this move. But my hearing and balance are not what they were. I’ve had no family for twenty years, having outlived parents, husband and brother. Friends who have helped me in the past are aging into their own disabilities. My apartment of twenty years needed renovations that needed me gone. The timing felt right.

But my transition comes with extra challenges, because I’m congenitally and totally blind.

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

Tag: patient stories

Scars

Our Shared Journey

A Puzzling Impulse

My Invisible Illness

Assistant Head Wrapper

The Quest of a Lifetime

Under the Microscope

None of My Mom Friends Are Dying

A Duplexity of Maladies

The Genesis of Forgetfulness: A Poet’s Journey

Lessons From the Heart

My Castle

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

Tag: patient stories

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