Everyone loved Mrs. Maria. She was everyone’s mom, grandma, teacher.
Maria grew up in poverty. Though her family was poor, she knew her parents and siblings loved her and loved each other. But the one thing she knew her passion was at was school. Every morning she couldn’t wait to go to school and learn more. And she knew one day she would be a teacher.
Throughout the years, Maria excelled in …
“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”
– George Orwell
The “difficult” family
At 2 a.m., on my first night shift as a pediatric resident, a patient, Casey, transferred from another hospital. She had a rare, progressive chronic illness, was medically complex, and was currently receiving treatment for an acute systemic infection. Shortly after she arrived, she became difficult to arouse. When I asked her mother questions, I was …
I enter the hospital to work again. I must work as I have three small children and a husband presently out of work because of COVID. He is “non-essential.”
A violinist is playing at the employee entrance. I know they do this to lift our spirits. But it’s a slow, sad string that reminds me of the titanic. And yes, every day I clock in, I feel as if it’s a …
I am a critical care and emergency medicine physician, I have had COVID-19 infection twice, and I’m tired.
My first infection was early on in the pandemic. I had to place a Blakemore tube in a young man who was going to die from his massive bleeding from cirrhosis. I didn’t know then that the patient was positive for COVID, as he didn’t have any “typical” symptoms. I placed the tube …
Late one evening, an ICU physician calls a family to say Dad’s breathing rate had slowed to such an extent that he did not believe Dad would survive the night without life support. This seasoned doctor added that he had never seen patients come back from this condition on their own. Although Dad had do not resuscitate orders and his children had agreed with his wishes to forego extraordinary measures …
I am an ICU nurse. I love what I do; It’s not just a career: It’s who I am. No other job could offer me the intimate opportunity to support and guide a total stranger through the worst (and occasionally best) days of their life. Nowhere else would I leave feeling humbled by what I do every day. Nothing compares to that. Simply put: You don’t find that sense of …
We worked tirelessly attempting to resuscitate this mother of five for almost an hour. Her husband was called, and he notified us that he would be there shortly. In the end, our heroic measures were simply not enough. It is fearful to imagine being told your wife and mother to your five children is no longer alive on Mother’s Day. The uncertainty of what killed her is a tough pill …
The coronavirus pandemic has turned the world, and all of its citizens, around, never to be the same again. As an ICU and ventilator survivor, I focus on the drama of the patient’s room, and the reality of what is truly a tragic experience. Nineteen-ninety-eight seems like yesterday, and while it was 22 years ago, it is fresh in my mind.
The vacation abroad that fall was a sunny respite from …
You always knew they didn’t care about you. The administration, I mean. But you knew that going into it. It’s just four years that you have to endure until you can be respected, until you make the big bucks, until you’re treated like a human being. Four years is not that long.
But you knew this going into it. That they didn’t care. You’re just a resident. Now more than ever, …
The image of patients dying in the intensive care unit is changing. Over the phone, family members cry on the other end as I tell them that we are not allowing visitors due to “the coronavirus” at this time. They tell me, “but I help make his decisions for him.” These decisions now have to be made over the phone.
This is just what we have to do to keep society …
The best teacher of medicine I ever had was during my medical residency. He was a tough, old-school physician, trained at one of the premier institutions in the country, and specialized in pulmonology and intensive care. Before I had even rotated through the ICU, I had seen him around on the medical floors—and must admit I didn’t like him very much at first. He seemed extremely serious, not particularly friendly to any …
Let’s talk about the doctor who is excessively defensive.
I divide this kind of communication blocker into two varieties: physician personality and physician mode of practice. The physician with a defensive personality is one who interprets questions from parents as questioning of her medical judgment. Unlike the supremely egotistical doctor, who is often sufficiently secure in her image of herself that she is magnanimous toward parents who ask questions, the overly …
I’m a pediatric hospitalist, and I know that most days in the hospital are routine. But every once in a while, a patient pierces through your armor, and touches your heart in totally unexpected ways. Willow did that to me.
Willow was five days old and had been admitted because her breathing was not quite right. I first met her in her hospital room, with her dad hovering over her bassinet, …
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I woke up to him, pacing the bedroom.
Within an hour, I was pacing the ER at his bedside.
Our experience at one of the country’s best-ranked hospitals lasted only three days before we were discharged home. What led us there will last a lifetime in our minds. When faced with your own mortality (or that of your husband’s), you are forever changed. We are grateful for his continued recovery from myopericarditis. …
For what seemed like an hour, I stood staring at the flat lines scrolling endlessly across my monitor in the OR. The once pulsatile waves, rendered useless and flat due to the absence of a beating heart. After a frenzied six hours of pouring blood into the patient while it poured back out of her just as fast, the surgeons drowning in blood in their attempt to sew the new …
“I just don’t know what to do, how to help.” My patient’s wife was slumped in the plastic chair by her husband’s side, fatigued and beleaguered. She had been there for hours, days, as we waited for antibiotics to start fighting back against the infection that had overwhelmed his body.
“What sort of music does he like to listen to?”
“Depends on what he’s doing. Zeppelin to work on the car. Jazz …
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These events happened over 18 years ago. Some content has been changed to protect the innocent and the guilty. Searching for positive changes in the health care industry. We are not a number, and the patients are not a number.
I’m not good at lying. My eyes go to the left or look downward, and I start to stutter and pause. There is no eye contact, and I fall deep into …
Matt was 40, my sister’s age. He was training for a marathon and trying to talk his many friends into joining. He lay in bed with his three-year-old son every night to help him fall asleep. It’s hard to sleep train a toddler with a newborn to nurture at the same time, but he loved spending this time with his two kids and being the dad everyone counted on.
Matt’s best …
Florence Nightingale was among the first nurses who started wearing a nurse’s cap.
The cap was derived by nuns and represented those caring for the sick. Hair was neatly tightened into a bun and covered by the cap.
Back then becoming a nurse was typically seen as a female profession, but men were allowed to become nurses too. In 1930, only one percent of RNs nationwide were male.
Growing up in the 1950s …
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How can you work for 24 hours in a row? My friends outside of medicine ask me that often. What is it like? I wondered the same thing the night before my first 24-hour shift or “24.” I lay awake worrying, ironically, that I should have gone to bed earlier to rest up for the ordeal.
When I get to work, full of nervous energy, I am relieved to find out …
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