Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Category: Personal Narratives

  • Whose name is writ in water: Life, serendipity, and fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva

    Carol Zapata-WhelanFresno, California, United States “… I guess [the grass] is the handkerchief of the Lord,A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose?”—Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass I sank down in a padded chair to wait for my routine bone…

  • A doctor in his own mind

    Harvey LiebermanRockville Centre, New York, United States Over the past two centuries, medicine has evolved from a practice steeped in mysticism to a discipline grounded in science. Yet, even today, many people yearn for healers who combine scientific expertise with a touch of the mystical—who not only treat the body but also soothe the spirit.…

  • Finding our way back to healing

    Frances MilatMelbourne, Australia “Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.” —Mary Oliver  Early in 2020, as my family flew home to Australia from a medical sabbatical in the United States, we started to hear reports of serious illness and death among our colleagues. Soon, the medical institutions and communities that had…

  • Tobacco in my time

    Hugh Tunstall-PedoeDundee, Scotland Doll and Hill’s 1956 publication1 linking smoking with lung cancer had one quick result—others were delayed by years. My school biology class displayed a cigarette butt among the specimens in our classroom, labelled “Fagendia cancercausia”. A year later when being interviewed for a place at Guy’s Hospital Medical School, most of my…

  • Shaggy dog licks patient

    As a very young doctor, a very long time ago, I had to support myself by making house calls as a locum or for an agency. The calls often came at night, often from a worried-well patient. Finding the right house was frequently challenging, especially in the suburbs, where people used fancy, elegant names instead…

  • Morris Blechstein steps away

    Eli Daniel EhrenpreisSkokie, Illinois, United States Of course, it was always assumed Morris Blechstein would take his final breaths sitting in his office, surrounded by scientific papers, studying his favorite medical literature to the end. But Morris made a surprise announcement. He was leaving because he always wanted to become a “good soccer dad” for…

  • Laughter is not the best medicine

    David FosterNew York, New York, United States Even as I spent hours every week sitting in lectures, plus hundreds of thousands of dollars on my Chinese medicine education, I still never figured that I would become an actual acupuncturist. I was a comedian, first and foremost. I had a decade of New York performances under…

  • A belated reunion

    A yellowing page of uncertain date from a Chicago newspaper tells the story of an eleven-year-old girl who had her legs crushed and her pelvis broken in an automobile accident. At the hospital, all experienced surgeons said the case was hopeless. But a young surgical intern undertook her care, visited her every day, and dressed…

  • My second birthday—or date to die?

    Laura ClaridgeSaugerties, New York, United States I was relieved when the date arrived, and my husband, Dennis, moved me into my next month’s home on the eighth floor of Memorial Sloan Kettering, where we both marveled at the difference between this unit and neuro-oncology, one floor below. No noise, no voices reverberated off the walls;…

  • Marshmallows

    John Graham-PoleClydesdale, Nova Scotia, Canada The writer E.B. White accused our society of being suspicious of anything non-serious. Thank the stars, then, for humour. I had a teenage patient with advanced cancer tell me after I had given him some none too hopeful news: “Lighten up, doc, I don’t need solemn doctors around me.” A…