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 …
Category: Critical Care
A patient who touches your heart in unexpected ways
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 …
Getting a terminal diagnosis for my baby
I knew things weren’t right when a nurse called me on my cell phone just a few minutes after she sent me to pump milk in a private room and said that the medical team wants to meet with my husband and me immediately in a conference room. My suspi…
A nurse won’t let this patient die
The sun sets a cascade of pink and yellow in the window of an ICU room. The slow hum of ventilation dampens the buzzes and beeps from machines. I stand in a room inundated by equipment. A machine to monitor vital signs with purple, green, blue, and red…
The brother I never knew. The mother I never had.
The brother I never knew. He was buried in an unmarked grave with other dead babies. 1960. I am now the age my mother died. She was 64 years old: colon cancer. She was a vacant, negligent mother. During one of my psychology classes in nursing school, w…
A doctor’s poem as an intensivist and obstetric anesthesiologist
The room is half-lit from the sunset. Crowding around the bed, in almost saint-like postures, is the family of our patient who is in her last moments of life. I do my best to console the family, a light touch on the shoulder, and honest stare. Then, th…
What’s the X-factor in life or death medical situations?
I was a brand-new intern in the intensive care unit, and Cassandra was the very first patient I saw there. A petite, slender woman, she was rolled in on a stretcher, accompanied by her tall, athletic husband, Jack. Cassandra was in her 20s, like me — b…
Our healers need healing
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 i…
At the end of his career, a physician reflects on the House of God
I read Samuel Shem’s House of God twice — once in my late college/early med school years and another sometime during my pulmonary/critical care fellowship. The first time, I recall thinking it was drop-dead hilarious. I eagerly shared it with fri…
If a doctor has a bad day, someone dies. Remember that.
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…
