Cindy Winebrenner is an emergency physician who blogs at Mom-Wife-Doctor Thoughts.

Our roots are deeply secured and extensive. We hope this storm will pass and not leave us uprooted.

Physician
September 27, 2021

My seven year old has a favorite tree in our backyard. It is an expansive tree with full branches of lush waxy, dark green leaves, providing the best shade on sunny, cloudless days. When every other mature tree was cut down to build our new neighborhood, it was somehow spared, and left to thrive in our backyard. My daughter lies in the hammock under that tree on hot, summer days …

Read more…

Our roots are deeply secured and extensive. We hope this storm will pass and not leave us uprooted.

A patient’s last 24 hours

Physician
April 29, 2019

There are those 25 minutes before my workday begins that I either drive in silence, or blare the radio and jam out to pop hits priming myself for the unexpected hours ahead. When the music is loud, and the tempo is upbeat, it transports me back to being 21 on a summer day in Chicago, before kids and bills, headed nowhere too important, definitely not too fast, stuck in traffic …

Read more…

A patient’s last 24 hours

When a baby arrives dead in your emergency department

Physician
February 15, 2019

When a baby arrives dead in your emergency department …

… the world stops. You stop breathing. You are gasping for air. She is limp; she is cool; she is pulseless. Chest compressions on the tiniest six month old I have ever met are done with the finger pads of my index finger and middle finger. Quick, synchronized beats. I look at her blue, blue lips. It should never be like this.

Her eyes …

Read more…

When a baby arrives dead in your emergency department

A doctor cries therapeutic tears with her patient

Physician
May 19, 2018

He wasn’t particularly likable upon first encounter. He wasn’t apt to answer questions asked. He had a long pause and a long drawl and a tangential, winded story — and backstory — all of which he was bound and determined to tell to its detailed completion. With an irregular heart rate in the 170s and a respiratory rate in the 30s, I tried to steer him in the direction of …

Read more…

A doctor cries therapeutic tears with her patient

How this emergency physician’s shift really went

Physician
March 18, 2018

She is 61, and she can’t help but smack her lips together repetitively. She has no teeth, and the curvature of her spine makes her a miniature version of what she once was. Her frizzy hair is a purple-gray tone, and there are dark particles of something in the knots alongside her left temple. Her clothes are too loose, and there are food stains on her shirt. The ambulance arrived …

Read more…

How this emergency physician’s shift really went

We didn’t save his life. We did better than that.

Physician
December 19, 2016

“Well?  Did you save him?” “No. We did better than that.”

He came in pulseless. The machine performing chest compressions with the rhythmic thud, thwack, thump. His ribs heaving under the force of the compressor, keeping his heart artificially beating. The plastic tube secured in his airway forcing puffs of air to inflate his lungs.  His skin slightly purple-gray, on that narrow brink between life and death. His eyes like speckled …

Read more…

We didn’t save his life. We did better than that.

Laughter? That’s the sound of resiliency you hear.

Physician
August 21, 2016

Sometimes, the loudest sounds I hear in the emergency department are laughter. It may seem irresponsible. It may seem discordant. It may seem callous. To me, it is the sound of survival. It is the sound of resiliency. It is the sound of making it through the day.

My father was at work when he suddenly became cold, clammy, and collapsed to the ground unresponsive. His staff did the right thing …

Read more…

Laughter? That’s the sound of resiliency you hear.

Physicians are jaded, but this is what keeps them in medicine

Physician
December 15, 2015

I am constantly coming across articles of physicians with strong voices. Physicians that are jaded.  Physicians that didn’t go into medicine to be defined by patient satisfaction surveys. Physicians that didn’t go into medicine expecting that people wouldn’t trust in their training because the Internet begs to differ. Physicians that cringe at the drive-through mentality that patients can present with diagnoses in hand and demands for tests to be done. Physicians …

Read more…

Physicians are jaded, but this is what keeps them in medicine