Cia Bishop is a pediatric palliative care physician.
I was warned about it before we walked into the room.
So when I did walk in, I made sure my eyes stayed focused on his eyes, my gaze high and attentive. I smiled, possibly more than normal, to make sure he felt comfortable. Like a puppeteer holding up his doll, I knew it wasn’t time for me to drop down my eyes yet.
The resident with me began the routine visit …
While sitting in the study lounge of my med school, I had on my computer screen one of our three slides on anencephaly. I was trying to memorize the two key phrases framing the graphic photograph of a stillborn baby with bulging eyes and a cratered head — “anterior neural tube defect,” and “elevated alpha-fetoprotein.” A third year walked past me and sneaked a glance at my screen. Without faltering …
“You have the nurse hand you the equipment, that way she doesn’t just stand and stare like a chaperone,” my doctoring mentor explained to me before we entered the room to do a pap smear on a young, 35-year-old woman. My doctoring mentor is a middle-aged, 6-foot-5, exceptionally hairy, broad-shouldered man that carries a warm, jovial presence. Yet the reality of the fallen world is that no matter how sweet, happily …
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