Interesting
I pull up a test result for my patient, and the senior resident standing behind me lets out an excited squeal. “I’ve never seen the imaging come back positive for this,” she says. Our two-week-old...
View ArticlePain Control
She had only been in the hospital twice in her life: once when she was nine and now, 60 years later. She had gotten tonsils out then. She was getting tumors out now. Her abdomen hurt when she was...
View ArticleWaking Up
An elderly man startles awake after a man in a white coat touches his shoulder. He looks around and sees three other white-coated people standing around his bed. “Sir? Good afternoon, sir. How are...
View ArticleOasis
“By the way,” my chief resident told me on the first day of my inpatient psychiatry rotation, “don’t lick your lips in front of him.” “Wait, what happens if–” I fell silent as the patient walked into...
View ArticleBeing Sorry
“You’re not sorry.” Within two days two different patients said this to me, each with hatred in his voice. Each time I was alone, each time I had known the patient for only a few minutes, and each...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Witness borne
“I need you.” The resident looked at me. It was a rare permutation of words for a third year medical student to hear. After glancing behind me to make sure she wasn’t addressing someone else, I waited...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Time of death
I really hoped she was dead. It wasn’t personal. It was as far from personal as possible. I had never met the patient while she was alive. Every four days, my team and I are on call at the hospital....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Information Withheld
“452 passed,” the ICU nurse told me. I couldn’t remember who she was. I looked for her name on the list among the several dozens of patients I was cross-covering. “452 passed,” the attending said to me...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Family at Bedside
68 year old male with past medical history as below. 68 year old male dies in emergency room for 20 minutes. Found unresponsive by wife. Wife still screaming. 68 year old male status post cardiac...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Trees
“She’s a 66-year-old with a history of whatever, who came in for whatever,” the medical admitting resident told our ICU team as we approached her room in the emergency department. What he meant was,...
View Article