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

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A Flower in Winter

A Flower in Winter

It’s winter of 1993. A cold, snowy day. Windy. A blizzard. The phone rings.

I’m not on call for my patients today–except for one. Daisy has been in my care since the early 1970s, and given the risk that she may suffer a serious downturn, I’ve instructed her nursing home to call me whenever necessary.

This is that call. Daisy, my dear lady, the old artist, is dying.
Throughout her nine decades of life, her passion for poetry and painting, and her ability to engage the people around her, have been her constant companions on what has been a fraught journey. Her heart, however, has grown weary and is finally giving out.
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Being There

Being There

Question: What is the most read book in a psychiatric ward?

Answer:
Based on my observations, it’s the Christian Bible. During my psychiatry rotation in the third year of medical school, I saw so many patients researching, reading and preaching the word of God. Clearly, in those pages they found something they needed: vengeance against those who’d wronged them, a secret prophecy, confirmation of their sanity. Or maybe they saw the central message: “You’re loved. We (God, humans, nature, whatever) care for you and will take care of you. We understand you.”
Seeing these patients cling to the Bible felt moving and deeply sad–painful, really. A younger, more innocent me might have seen some grace and faith. But, honestly, all I saw was

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My Black Bag

Retirement means downsizing. “If a thing doesn’t give you joy, throw it away,” says the current mantra, as if it were that simple.
In my study closet, behind my obsolete Kodachrome lecture slides (about as necessary these days as a harpsichord), sits my little black bag. Does it give me joy? It’s much more complicated than that.
The bag holds all the medical instruments I carried through my training as a doctor–internship, residency and fellowship: sphygmomanometer (no longer functional), stethoscope, ophthalmoscope, otoscope, reflex hammer. There’s also a moldy leatherette case containing the dissecting kit that I used in classes from college biology through gross anatomy. The instruments are still shiny and sharp, which is more than I can say for myself.
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Shock Treatment

I sat in the cold, sterile examination room, anxiously awaiting my new orthopedic doctor–the fourth in two months. I was losing hope of ever finding a doctor who would listen to me. The first three had suggested that my pain was all in my head
I want someone to take me seriously, I brooded. I don’t want to be brushed off as the stereotypical hysterical female. My pain is real, and I’m not crazy. I need someone to believe me.
Finally, there was a soft knock on the door.
“Good afternoon, I’m Dr. Lee.”
In front of me stood a man with an impeccably groomed goatee. He glanced at my elbows, which I have a habit of bending too far backwards while relaxing. Brow furrowed,

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Heightened Awareness

No power-down switch to arrest
That incessant activity of the mind and senses
Not even for our wedding anniversary
Getaway.

At the airport my eyes reflexively dart
From the cashier’s cheery smile to fix on her arm
Laid bare by her Dunkin’ Donuts uniform
And the glaring track-mark trail
As she carefully hands me my scalding hot coffee.

On board American Airlines my ears instinctively pinpoint
That paroxysmal brassy cough of the man in seat 20C
Debating whether it could be pertussis.

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All I Could Do

Leigh B. Grossman ~

The clinic in rural Haiti is a small stucco building with no electricity or running water. The temperature inside the clinic is 103 degrees, and there is no breeze. The examining-room walls are only seven feet high and afford no privacy.

This is my fourteenth trip to Haiti as a volunteer pediatrician. My twenty-fifth patient of the morning is a three-month-old infant named Joceylyn Marquee, who is completely swaddled in a dirty blanket and is carried in by her mother, Lucie.

In our tiny cubicle, Lucie sits with Joceylyn on her lap. The interpreter, Fredeson, and I are also seated. We’re all so close together that our knees touch. The acrid smell of human dirt, sweat and anxiety

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Just What the Doctor Ordered

David Edelbaum ~

I began practicing as an internist/nephrologist in the early 1960s. Having rented an office in Los Angeles, I introduced myself to the local medical community and set out to build a practice.

With a growing family, a mortgage and an office to support, I was hungry for patients. Hospital emergency rooms were good referral sources, so I took ER call at three different hospitals.

Late one Friday night, I got a call from one of these hospitals: A middle-aged engineer was in the ER complaining of chest pain. His electrocardiogram showed minor abnormalities, and he needed to be admitted for observation to rule out a heart attack. Back then, this meant several days of blood tests and repeated electrocardiograms. Uncomplicated

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Lean on Me

Joseph Fennelly ~

One morning in my office, a tall, slim package arrives along with a note, a portion of which follows:


Dr. Fennelly,

I can’t apologize enough for not getting your walking stick back sooner. Since my dad’s passing we have had to move my mother (who has a memory problem) several times, and with each move the walking stick moved too.



In some ways it reminded me of my dad and the relationship you and he had. It was comforting for him and us to know he had you in his corner to lean on and support him.



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Learning Respect

David Edelbaum ~

When I finished my medical training, almost sixty years ago, I was like many new graduates: I thought I knew it all.

I opened a private office in Los Angeles and paid courtesy calls on the local physicians to let them know my qualifications and my availability for consultation, as both an internist and a nephrologist. (The treatment of kidney disease was then in its infancy, and I was the area’s first such specialist.)

With a wife, two children under age four, a home mortgage and an office to support, I needed to make a living. I took call at the local emergency rooms, worked nights at the VA Hospital and told my answering service to mention my availability

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Saving Private Ryan

Gregory Rutecki

The late Eighties was the worst of times in medical education–the era when doctors in training worked a virtually unlimited number of hours each week. This unceasing and inhumane workload led residents, understandably, to view patients purely as collections of physical ailments.

Back then, I was an attending physician at a community teaching hospital. One day, as usual, I was preparing to make morning rounds and, simultaneously, to do my best to teach my team of internal-medicine residents.

Fourteen patients awaited us, every one of them quite sick. As my team and I proceeded from one bedside to the next, struggling to cram the patient interviews into ever-dwindling snippets of time, I felt a familiar sense of growing pressure; it

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Choices

 
My current life as a locum tenens–a doctor who travels around to fill in for vacationing or ill physicians–is lonely. I spend endless days in hotel rooms, away from my family. But I chose this existence as an antidote to the professional exhaustion that threatened to end my surgical career. Regular panic attacks, maladaptive coping behaviors and compassion fatigue had turned me into a person I did not like or recognize.
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