Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Cancer

  • Piano lessons

    James StemmleWest Virginia, United States The piano teacher was angry, irritable, incontinent, and in pain. Dying of cancer, she eventually went home with hospice care. The hospice lady asked, “What would a good day look like?” They rigged things in her home to live at least one good day: a bed on the first floor…

  • Hieroglyphics

    Gail GhaiSarasota, Florida, United States The room shuffles nervously as the oncologist takes the microphone. He’s the first speaker at the breast cancer lecture and he does not hesitate. Opens with a memorable phrase: Cancer comes to the warm parts of the body. I’ve read that ancient Egyptians noted how malignancy loved those cozy corners…

  • Drama in brief

    Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece Four years earlier I had had the sad duty to announce her debut as a protagonist on the stage of cancer. Now I was witnessing the last act. She came to the first visit with her elder sister, an old acquaintance from our student days and close friend of my sister’s. She…

  • The Queen’s quickening: The phantom pregnancies of Mary I

    Eve ElliotDublin, Ireland In November 1554, the people of England believed a miracle had taken place. Resplendent on her new throne, Queen Mary I, daughter of Henry VIII, proudly revealed that she was with child. She was thirty-seven (past the usual childbearing age in the Tudor era) and had only been married to her much…

  • Two words in the patient portal

    Paul RousseauMount Pleasant, South Carolina, United States He lost twenty pounds from January to June. Not purposely. Still, he was pleased; at seventy-nine, he looked svelte, and younger. He lost another twelve pounds from July to December. His lips grimaced. He was a stick figure, his bones rising like periscopes amidst clumps of sallow skin.…

  • Metastases

    Paul RousseauCharleston, South Carolina, United States The fact Isthey are there,gathered like aclutter of popcorn,some kernels,others fluffy white swirls,but they are there,bound to a globof shambolic cellscurled in the cornerof the right lungbeneath seamsof tar and tobacco. PAUL ROUSSEAU is a semi-retired physician and writer published in The Healing Muse, Blood and Thunder, Hektoen International,…

  • Dr. Susan LaFlesche Picotte: Tradition, assimilation, and healing

    Mariel TishmaChicago, Illinois, United States “My office hours are any and all hours of the day and night.”—Susan LaFlesche Picotte1 It was August of 1889 and Dr. Susan LaFlesche Picotte was suffering a sleepless night. She had just treated her first patient and she doubted her diagnosis. She was a new doctor after all, and…

  • The good, the bad, and the regrettable

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Man . . . cannot learn to forget, but hangs on the past: however far or fast he runs, that chain runs with him.”— Frederick Nietzsche What follows is a description of different aspects of studying medicine at an old, highly regarded Catholic university in Europe a half-century ago. The Good For…

  • Modern day obstinacy: the persistence of pangalintaw

    Halima AbdulmaguidNorth Cotabato, Philippines In the first week of June, my mother was rushed to the hospital because her cough was getting worse and her shoulder pain no longer bearable. On her x-ray film we saw that half of her lungs were not visible; there was fluid inside causing the obscurity, and there was also…

  • Dr. Joycelyn Elders: An unwelcome prophet

    Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden “No prophet is welcome in his hometown.”— The Gospel of Saint Luke, 4:24. New American Standard Bible Joycelyn Elders, MD (b. 1933) was Surgeon General of the United States of America from 1993 to 1994. She was the second woman and the first Black person to have that position. Her life story…