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Collateral Damage

Brenda Scearcy May 16, 2014 13 Comments

Brenda Scearcy

Dr. Robert’s office felt right to me, with a musical birdsong soundtrack, soft lighting and fresh green tea, and I had my best friend in tow: piece of cake. In this serene atmosphere, I was sure that I’d find out what to do next to finish treating my endometrial cancer.

It’s probably gone now, since my hysterectomy two weeks back, I thought. But let’s play it safe; he’s the gynecological-cancer guru.

Like a general gearing up for combat, Dr. Robert said, “We can beat this. We’ll do a second surgery to remove lymph nodes and omentum–robotically, of course, so your recovery time will be quick. Down the road we’ll definitely do radiation and chemo, and your odds of recurrence will go way down.”

The Pros and Cons of Living with a Terminal Illness

Ellen Diamond May 9, 2014 8 Comments

Ellen Diamond

Before I retired in 2000, I worked in a state agency as a peer counselor, or more formally, an employee assistance program (EAP) coordinator. The “coordinator” part was there because my job description wasn’t actually to do counseling; it was to assess the problem and refer the client for help.

But of course both of those processes involved counseling. We just couldn’t call it that.

In 1986, shortly after I’d begun the job, I was separately visited by two employees with HIV/AIDS. Treatments such as the antiviral drugs used so successfully today were nearly a decade away, and a diagnosis of HIV meant almost certain death. These clients were understandably upset and frightened, but they each made it clear to me that they

Unsuspected Symphony

Jeremiah Horrigan April 8, 2013 No Comments

Jeremiah Horrigan

No one goes to a hospital to heal. They go because they must–as I did three years ago, when a one-hour colonoscopy turned into a four-day surgical sleepover.

My grandfather had warned me long ago against hospitals. “You don’t want to go there,” he said. “That’s where the sick people are.” Pop died at the age of ninety-four, at home.

His warning came strongly to mind as I walked into the place that I’ve come to call HospitalWorld. Silently, I replied: Hospitals are where the sick people are, all right. They’re also where the doctor people are. I have no choice.

I was fifty-nine years old, and, after years of foot-dragging, this would be my first colonoscopy.

Desperately Seeking Herb Weinman

Steven Lewis March 15, 2013 1 Comment

Steven Lewis

Minor chest pains that woke me early one morning–and which did not go away three, four, five, six hours later–landed me flat on my back at a local emergency room, a perversely comforting beep beep beep issuing from the monitor hanging precariously over my head.

Frankly, I didn’t really think that I was having a heart attack–as a former EMT, a devoted watcher of medical television, and a cultural cousin of Woody Allen, I’m ridiculously well versed in the symptoms of a myocardial infarction. However, after I’d endured a morning of chest pains at an age where all warranties have lapsed, it was prudent to go to the hospital. And since my wife was out of town–and my grown kids off with

Five Years to a Cure

Ellen Diamond August 24, 2012 No Comments

Ellen Diamond

Recently, while reading a post in an online chat group for people with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), I spotted an intriguing comment. At an important conference, a world-renowned hematologist had referred to a “five-year timeline” for a cure.

This took me back fourteen years, to when I’d just been diagnosed with CLL. There was a Gilda’s Club near my workplace; I’d always passed it quickly on my way home. Now I found myself stepping through the doorway to hear a top specialist talk about my disease.

I recall his closing words: “Give me five years, and I’ll give you a cure.”

As desperately as I wanted to

Cadaver Happy Face

Rachel Willis July 13, 2012 No Comments

Rachel Willis

Sitting with my mother in a white-walled exam room, awaiting the surgeon’s arrival, I felt happy.

Earlier this spring, I’d landed hard on one leg during a volleyball game and collapsed, hearing my knee make a terrible cracking sound, like all ten knuckles firing off. When I resumed playing, after several weeks of rehab, it happened again.

Now we were awaiting the MRI results.

You’d think I’d be nervous. I was seventeen, college-bound on a full-ride volleyball scholarship. Would this injury jeopardize that? But I felt glad–and touched with a kind of glamour. During hundreds of boring or grueling practices, I’d longed to sprain an ankle or

Small Talk

Greg Fuson October 7, 2011 No Comments

Greg Fuson

Turns out I’m anemic.

As in, I have anemia. When I mention this, true friends will retort, “Yeah, you’ve been anemic for as long as we’ve known you.” Ha ha. (Assholes.) That’s because a true friend is comfortable enough to make fun of you; it’s the always-polite ones you have to wonder about. But that’s not where I’m going with this.

Apparently anemia is rare in males, and when it occurs, doctors want to figure out why. You get a phone call from your physician (“I want to run some tests”), hang up, try to finish what you were working on, and discover that you can’t. That it was

A Skeptic Stands Corrected

Kyna Rubin March 18, 2011 No Comments

Kyna Rubin

I’m prostrate in a Fujian hospital bed. It’s 1980 China, where I’m on a job interpreting for National Geographic–my first gig after graduate school. Fourteen-hour workdays have worn me down, and I’ve contracted bronchitis.

The clinic doctors are required to treat me with both Western and Chinese medicine, which explains the daily shots of tetracycline in my now bruised thigh and the grainy little brown pills I gamely down with boiled water.

“What’s in them?” I ask.

I think I hear something about deer’s antlers and bear sperm, and I don’t want to know much more. But I recover.

Was it the modern or the traditional treatment that

Falling in Love With My Doctor

Judith Lieberman September 10, 2010 No Comments

Judith Lieberman

The other doctors I consulted called him brilliant. His past patients praised his compassion. He actually responded to e-mails. And, lastly, he was known as the best-looking doctor at the cancer center. What more could I ask?

On the other hand, what choice did I have? After twelve years, I was facing a recurrence of a relatively rare oral cancer, located inconveniently at the base of my tongue. The treatment options were not great. The radical surgery recommended by one prominent cancer center could have left me unable to swallow, talk or eat normally.

My incredible husband stayed up many nights researching surgery, radiation, chemotherapy and all the combinations. On the bright side, my teenagers cleaned their rooms without being asked!

The last

Mistaken Identity

Kathleen Grieger April 10, 2009 No Comments

Surgery finished,

I finally sleep

Pushing my shoulders,
the technician wakes me

“Come now, we need
a chest x-ray”

Smiling, she pulls me
into position

The x-ray machine
tight against me

Finally getting a chance,
I ask what she is doing

“Oh,” she says “I have
the wrong one

You are not a 64
year old male”

Lying me down,
she walks away

As I fall back to sleep,
I wonder, now bald

what I must
look like

About the poet:

Kathleen Grieger has published poetry in many venues, including Free Verse, Caduceus, Blood and Thunder: Musings on the Art of Medicine, The Healing Muse and online in Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine and Breath and Shadow. She has written hundreds of poems about her brain surgeries as well as her

Chemo? No, Thanks

Elaine Whitman January 23, 2009 No Comments

Elaine Whitman

“If I were you,” said the radiologist, as I sat on the gurney discreetly wiping goo from my right breast, “I’d make an appointment with a breast surgeon as soon as possible.” His somber tone of voice, the white blotch radiating ugly spider tendrils on his ultrasound screen…neither of these made me nervous. If anything, I felt mild interest: “How very odd. He must think I have breast cancer. Or something.”

Ten days later, after a lumpectomy and sentinel lymph node biopsy, my husband and I sat in the breast surgeon’s office. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “You have Stage IIb breast cancer. There’s a 1.1 cm tumor in your right breast, and the cancer has spread to three of your lymph nodes.”

Carmen’s Story

Carmen Diaz October 10, 2008 No Comments

Carmen Diaz

I used to be a shy woman who didn’t like the spotlight and never did any public speaking. Ovarian cancer has changed all that. Now I look for opportunities to tell my story.

I am a 62-year-old, Puerto Rican-born, New York-raised mother of two. I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2004. But for more than a year before that, my symptoms weren’t recognized.

In January 2003, I started to suffer from abdominal discomfort, back pain, indigestion and heartburn. My primary-care physician told me to change my diet and prescribed medication for my indigestion. After weeks with no improvement, I went to a gastroenterologist, who diagnosed gallstones. In March, I had gallbladder surgery.

Most people go back to work within ten days, but

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: patient stories

Collateral Damage

The Pros and Cons of Living with a Terminal Illness

Unsuspected Symphony

Desperately Seeking Herb Weinman

Five Years to a Cure

Cadaver Happy Face

Small Talk

A Skeptic Stands Corrected

Falling in Love With My Doctor

Mistaken Identity

Chemo? No, Thanks

Carmen’s Story

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: patient stories

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