Avalanche dream—heavy breakage of trees, boulders ripped from
their footings. Chunks of ice bouncing past as the swirling white
mass picks up speed. I’m running running running but can’t stay
ahead of it. Lungs burn, tears stream from the effort, the strain.
Glazed in sweat, I wake up to the blare of alarm clock, hurriedly dress
and drive to the hospital.
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.
For the past three years, I worked as a rural primary-care doctor. Two months ago, I resigned to pursue further training in hospice and palliative care. My patients were the inspiration that illuminated every step of my way towards this new path.
Marly came to me for a workup of her persistently elevated liver enzymes. Together, we navigated her new diagnosis—liver cancer—and a series of failed treatments. Eventually, Marly’s thoughts turned to facing her mortality.
One winter weekend, I was walking in a local park that has an ice-skating rink. I stopped to watch the skaters for a few minutes. I’m not a skater myself, but I appreciated the skaters’ wide range of ages and abilities.
Off to one side of the rink, I saw a young boy struggling to skate. He was hanging onto one of the walker frames that were provided, his face a mixture of determination, frustration and a hint of fear as he struggled to stay upright and move forward.
The new patient’s name is Emmanuel. He was sent from his nursing home to our emergency room with a cough and fever. The oxygen level in his blood is well below normal, and he’s gasping for air.
It’s my third week in the local community hospital ER. I’ve been putting in extra on-call time during the COVID pandemic. It’s been rough to get back into the emergency setting while continuing my day job as a family doctor and medical educator. I’ve been sharing admissions with the hospitalist, who’s joined me in the on-call room.
“I’ll take him,” I tell my colleague.
Can you see this patient today?
His appointment is tomorrow,
he came all the way from Nebraska.
Can you work extra tomorrow,
we are short, just four hours extra?
Would you be able to work Christmas this year?
On a damp, overcast Friday morning, I was wandering around the downtown area of a nearby city with my camera. I found an interesting scene and photographed it, carefully adjusting my camera’s settings and the composition until I felt I’d conveyed what I’d felt when I saw it.
Lowering my camera from my eyes, I realized that, for the first time in months, my mind felt clear and my heart felt open. This realization struck me so hard that I sank onto a park bench. Tears of relief and sadness leaked from my eyes.
This essay is modeled after Sei Shonogun’s list “Hateful Things” from her tenth-century classic The Pillow Book. She listed everything she hated about being a lady-in-waiting to the Japanese empress, ca. 966-1017.
I wrote my list as a family physician working in community health centers, ca. 2005-2020. As our nation grapples with endemic racism while also facing the COVID pandemic, my trials and tribulations may seem trivial–but they also reflect a broken medical system that badly needs fixing, for everyone’s sake.
As I struggled my way through nursing school, I never expected my first job as a nurse to feel like this; I was too busy dreaming of the day when I could hold the title of Registered Nurse.
I never expected to come home crying. I never expected that, at times, I’d mumble the words “I hate my job.” I never expected many of the challenges I face daily–but here I am, six weeks into my first hospital job, fighting to make it. Here I am, figuring out what it means to be a nurse, learning what to expect.
It is early afternoon, and I have just finished administering my last midday medication. I emerge from the patient’s room to find that five call
This month, at medical schools across the country, first-year students will officially don the physician’s traditional white coat for the first time.
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