Lauretta Stombaugh is a pediatrician.
If you make a wrong turn and end up in the heart of it all, there’s a light brown hue over things. The leftover mud. Sometimes on the trees. Other times on the asphalt. Up the rock walls while driving. A reminder that destruction happened here.
If you make a wrong (or right) turn, you can see piles of wreckage. An office chair. Metal debris. Plastic things. Relief and aid workers …
Reflections: Day 5
It’s a strange feeling to look down at my phone calendar and realize that nothing will be grayed out because it happened, but only because time keeps ticking.
It’s interesting and beautiful to watch my kids keep moving forward as the community around us is so devastated: playing music, rediscovering the joy that is reading, helping clean up the yard, making a game out of who does which chore …
“Quarantine for 14 days. Quarantine for 10 days. Wear a mask. Wash your hands. Watch for breathing difficulties. Call me with any questions.”
These are the phrases I’ve said over and over for months. Now they are the recurrent thoughts in my own mind as my family endures this horrid disease from the other side. COVID, and the isolation that trails beside it and behind it, reaches so many levels. I …
If you ignore the masks, the missing exam room toys, and the “astronaut doctor” PAPR on my head, you might think it was a regular day in my pediatric office. But it’s not. It’s a day where we are still all trying to push through the thickness in the air that is COVID. We can keep pushing and learn how to focus on what we need to do. We’ve done …
A few weeks ago, while I was still seeing a full schedule of patients and the crisis was just beginning, I asked myself, “How can I reach this little person on the exam table in front of me?” It was our first meeting. He was deaf and partially blind, neither of those affecting his spirit or ability to draw me in. I’m hearing impaired, and so these littles always have …
“It is a happy talent to know how to play.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Have you ever been to a trampoline park and watched the faces of the parents there? It’s quite interesting as we regress almost instantly after the first jump. Faces of joy, sweat and smiles ear to ear. You can’t help but smile as you jump freely and repetitively while trying not to injure yourself. It’s this experience of …
It’s the high five I’m unable to give to that five-year-old patient after I check his red throat. It’s the song I can’t sing while I look into a toddler’s ears as they cling to their momma’s neck. It’s the hug I can’t give the mom who just lost her father to cancer two weeks ago. These are the things I’ve missed over the last few weeks. This is the …
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