Medicine was my path. I’d decided that early in life before I knew what a career in medicine really looked like. I believed as a doctor I could help people and have a positive impact in their lives. After all, what does a teenager know about being a do…
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…
I became a nurse at the age of 23. I was pregnant with my first son and dove into nursing headfirst, accepting a job in the pediatric ICU of the hospital where I worked. I still remember the call when I received the job offer. I hung up and jumped up a…
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 a…
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 typica…
Part 4 of a series. By the time my father’s metastatic prostate cancer was diagnosed, he was already experiencing symptoms of poor appetite and weight loss, which grew progressively worse following his first hospital admission. As his nutritional statu…
Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets and Sesame Street, died at the age of 53. His diagnosis was toxic shock syndrome/streptococcus pneumonia — a deadly bacterial infection. We were on vacation when we heard the news: The genius who opened the imaginatio…
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 earli…
It was another simmering-hot Texas day, and the AC was faltering in the family-practice clinic where I worked as a family nurse practitioner. Most of our clients were poor and spoke only Spanish. My nurse, Eliza, approached, wide-eyed. “ThereR…
I know what you’re thinking: She’s cold-hearted, cruel, and unkind. But am I? Or are you? Grandma Lilly is 87-years-old and in the ICU. She’s on a ventilator with her wrists restrained to the side of the bed. Grandma can barely see because her eyes are…
