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Interpreter of Cries

Melanie Tioleco-Cheng May 17, 2017 1 Comment

It happens daily. I enter a room and come face to face with someone who’s afraid of me. But we make friends, we may even laugh and share a high five or two. Then I leave. And from the room next door, I can hear the horrendous cry. The aftermath.

I’m a pediatrician, and the aftermath is when my capable medical assistant or nurse goes in after me to give a vaccine or check a hemoglobin level or administer a shot of antibiotics because the oral antibiotic isn’t working.

A Doctor Confesses: I Screwed Up

Marc D. Wager May 12, 2017 5 Comments

Marc D. Wager

When I was in medical school, more than thirty years ago, I felt I received pretty good training on how to communicate clearly and effectively with patients and families. I even remember the name of the fictitious character we had to practice telling about his wife’s demise: “Mr. Gottrocks, I’m afraid that your wife has taken a turn for the worse; I think you should come to the ICU right now.” As a pediatrician, more recently, I’ve been trained to discuss vaccines in a nonjudgmental way with parents who, contrary to my wishes, decide not to vaccinate their children.

Despite all of this training, though, and despite many articles on the merits of doctors admitting their wrongdoing, nobody ever taught

Resilience

Cathleen Mahan April 21, 2017 No Comments

Cathleen Mahan

About the artist:

Cathleen Mahan is a contemporary visual artist and a former critical-care nurse. She maintains an active studio practice in Portland, Maine. “Putting pencil to paper or hands to clay is, for me, a doorway into a nonverbal world outside of time that offers deep healing and balance. It is also where I feel most alive.”

About the artwork:

“Brought to tears by the change-of-shift report describing the circumstance of this young boy’s traumatic injuries, I struggled to enter

Before Ultrasound

Judith Murphy January 10, 2017 No Comments

Mary looks not too bad for having a two-week-old baby only now getting good at nursing. He looks content. His weight is not quite where I would like to see it, but not worrisome.

Lifted in my hands, his tone is great, his gaze intensely locks on mine. Put back down, his arms and legs flail enthusiastically. Cheeks are chubby, soft skin is pink. He passes the gestalt test – no worrisome sense that something is not quite right.

Haunting Diagnosis

Ronna L. Edelstein January 2, 2017 No Comments

The day began like every other summer day. My eight-year-old son and six-year-old daughter ate their cereal, watched Sesame Street, and played—him with his Star Wars figures and her with her Barbies. After lunch, they gathered a few favorite books and toys to entertain them while they waited in the pediatrician’s office for their annual physicals.

Normalcy ended when the physician announced: “Your daughter has a severe curvature of the spine. She needs to see a doctor who specializes in scoliosis.”

Going Through the Grits

Scott Newport December 30, 2016 9 Comments

Scott Newport

It was another day at a renovation project on the fourth floor of an office building. Glancing at my iPhone, I noticed that my buddy Dave had called a couple of times. Now, coming down a stepladder for what seemed like the hundredth time, I saw his name pop up again. This time I set down my hammer and found a quiet place.

“Hey Scott, ol’ buddy, I got a request,” Dave said. “Last week at hunting camp, a friend of mine was impressed with my restored knife. As we were sitting around the campfire, I told him that you’re kind of a blacksmith, and that you refurbish knives. I wonder if you could fix up his, too. He lent it

The Playground

Layne Morowitz December 7, 2016 No Comments

I stand squinting in the sun as the kids parade off the buses. Quickly, the campgrounds fill with smiling faces, colorful t-shirts and baseball caps. From afar, there seems to be no difference between this place and any other summer camp.

However, underneath many of the t-shirts are chemotherapy ports and surgical scars, below the hats are bald heads and behind the smiles are fears, memories and young lives impacted by cancer. Yet walking through the camp’s rainbow-adorned gates, I lead the children into a world of hope. A place without needles, hospital beds, pain or isolation, a place where they can be free. Free of IV poles, free of worries, free of the stares of strangers, free of the word “cancer.”

We Got the Call

Jacqueline Dooley October 29, 2016 1 Comment

Note to reader: The following is a verbatim transcription of what I posted to my blog the night we got the call from the liver team that they’d found a viable donor for my 11-year-old daughter who, at the time, had a 24 cm tumor which spread from her portal vein to her liver.

Rough Start

Jutta Braun July 15, 2016 2 Comments

Approaching the hospital bassinet, I glimpse his hair first–long, carrot-colored fuzz sticking out in all directions from his pink, bowling-ball scalp. A chubby, scrunched face comes into view next, cherry-red lips forming a Cheerio and one eyelid wavering just enough to reveal a soft blue puddle beneath it.

Gingerly, I slide my hands under his sausage-like arms, my fingers cradling the doughy curves of his tiny neck, caressing the orange-yellow cornsilk on his occiput. Slowly, I lift him from the sterile white mattress he’s called home for the month since his exit from the womb, since his insurmountable hurdles began.

Cartoons and Shots

Paul Gross April 22, 2016 1 Comment

I have vivid memories of the HIP (Health Insurance Plan of Greater New York, a prepaid health plan) waiting room on East 23rd Street in Manhattan, which I often visited as an elementary school child. I most remember two things about that room: the magazines, and the anticipation of a possible shot.

Never Leaving Wonderland

Jacqueline Dooley January 15, 2016 15 Comments

Jacqueline Dooley

Three years ago I spent the entire month of September by my daughter’s side in her hospital room. From Ana’s window, we watched summer fade into fall as we waited, day after day, for her to be discharged, which finally happened in early October.

During her forty days in the hospital, Ana was diagnosed with an obscure, slow-growing cancer called inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor. The tumor, roughly the size of a cantaloupe, engulfed her liver. Her oncologists formulated a plan of action involving chemotherapy, steroids and a Herculean attempt to save her liver so that she wouldn’t need a transplant.

Ana was eleven years old and about to start sixth grade when she was hospitalized. She loved singing, drawing and being

On Earth As It Is in Heaven

Trisha K. Paul November 27, 2015 No Comments

Trisha Paul

About the artist:

Trisha Paul is a second-year medical student at the University of Michigan. She recently published a book based on her undergraduate thesis called Chronicling Childhood Cancer: A Collection of Personal Storiees by Children and Teens with Cancer. Trisha blogs about her experiences learning, researching and teaching about illness narratives at illnessnarratives.com.

About the artwork:

“I started volunteering with children with cancer when I was a teenager. My experience in pediatric oncology awakened me to the

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

Tag: pediatrics

Interpreter of Cries

A Doctor Confesses: I Screwed Up

Resilience

Before Ultrasound

Haunting Diagnosis

Going Through the Grits

The Playground

We Got the Call

Rough Start

Cartoons and Shots

Never Leaving Wonderland

On Earth As It Is in Heaven

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

Tag: pediatrics

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