Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: abdomen

  • Saying goodbye

    Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece Her head is bald, her face pale. Only a couple of weeks have passed since her latest cycle of chemotherapy, which imposed its ravages but offered no benefit. The disease is marching relentlessly ahead, the survival horizon drawing closer each day. She is alive only with the help of strong medications that…

  • Our celiac boarder

    Charles HalstedDavis, California, United States I listened with care to her history of weight loss, grain aversion, abdominal cramps, and frequent diarrhea. Her great-grandfather was an early California settler who had experienced the same symptoms for many years before he died. My patient, now in the middle years of her life, appeared normal, except for…

  • Munchausen by Proxy

    Charles HalstedDavis, California, United States My last patient of the morning was a teenage girl, just turned eighteen. She walked in slowly, her face in agony, apprehensive. Her mother said the pain had begun at age twelve, about when she started to menstruate, yet it never let up, periods or not. Refusing food, she began…

  • Undignified

    Christopher SchayerNew Haven, Connecticut, United States In walks another set of new faces. More white lab coats, asking their questions, poking and prodding at me, lifting my Johnny coat as if I’m a mere object for their scientific minds to investigate. They come and they go, new faces all the time. None of them truly…