uncertainty Archives

Three Weeks in December

Susan Van Pelt Petry August 15, 2025 15 Comments

In my crowded triage room, I hear the emergency-room physician say, “Trauma blood, STAT!”

I have been rushed to the ER after throwing up liters of blood at home. I have GI bleeding.

I’m tipped back on the gurney, head lower than my limbs, with my mean arterial pressure in the low mid-60s. Paddles are ready; transfusion begins.

Two days later, I undergo an endoscopy. Is it ulcers? Something else?

In a box she waits,
Neither dead nor alive,
Until observed.
In three months,
The box opens.
Tested, probed, scanned,
She learns the cancer has recurred,
In which case she is dead.
Or it has not returned,
In which case she is–not alive.
Boxed in once more,
Neither dead nor alive,
She again awaits the allotted period
Until the box is opened,
A quantum superposition which only death
Can collapse into a state of certainty.

Beginner’s Mind

Jessica C. Stuart June 7, 2019 7 Comments

Jessica Stuart ~

I paced in the hallway outside of the patient’s room, going over my mental checklist of items to do during the history and physical examination. Bringing in a paper list was discouraged; we were meant to “flow” through the exam “naturally.”

I stuffed my hands into the pockets of the white coat I’d received three weeks earlier, during the White Coat Ceremony for first-year medical students. Feeling around the deep pockets to make sure that I had everything I needed, I felt my left hand graze a cold metal reflex hammer with a sharp tip, used to test for nerve damage in the feet of diabetic patients. (Alternatively, it could be used as “a medieval torture device,” my mother had

Playing a Hunch

Amy Crawford-Faucher December 8, 2017 7 Comments

Amy Crawford-Faucher ~

There’s one thing about being a family doctor: After a while, almost every patient you see is a familiar face. This can be a blessing or a curse, but mostly it’s a blessing.

This morning I’m in my office, reviewing today’s patients with Julia, the medical student rotating in our office.

I’m especially looking forward to my 10:30 appointment. It’s the first checkup for a newborn girl named Ella. I’ve known her parents, Emily and Dave, since before they had their first daughter, Katie, now three. I think of them as one of “my” families.

Emily and Dave, in their late twenties, have been together since college. Emily works full-time in a management position. Everything about her is

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

Tag: uncertainty

Three Weeks in December

Schrödinger’s Patient

Beginner’s Mind

Playing a Hunch

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

Tag: uncertainty

Three Weeks in December

Schrödinger’s Patient

Beginner’s Mind

Playing a Hunch

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Subscribe to Pulse.

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