Tag: Cancer
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The free diaper delivery and chat service
Jean MathewsCanada It surprised me that she could laugh. How could a person who was constantly leaking urine laugh? All her sarees and her tiny room smelled of urine. The smell was stubborn and enduring, compelling us to inhale meekly as we would at a public urinal. The smell also compelled her to spend all…
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Uncertainty and clinical truths
Anjan BanerjeeCambridgeshire, United Kingdom “Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability” (William Osler) Monday 15:35 pm The ninety-eight year old patient with piercing blue eyes and a quizzical expression sat in her wheelchair in the colorectal clinic. We sat facing each other in a bare, windowless room, knees almost touching. She…
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Birthday party
Laura WhiteRochester, Minnesota, United States I scan the chemotherapy data into the computer system, noting the date of birth listed at the top right of the screen. Happy birthday, I say, hanging the bag of liquid on the IV pole. Thanks, he replies, and we share a contemptuous laugh. It feels like a sick joke,…
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Cheeseburgers and cursewords
Sara Gody Jackson BybeeSalt Lake City, Utah I hardly recognized him. The photograph in his hospital record taken two years prior boasts a thirty-seven-year-old man with a full face, short reddish hair and a twinkle in his eyes. Now he reclines passively in bed, his face sallow, cheek bones protruding like the pointy corners of…
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PEACH: Providing end of life care for the homeless
Lea MendesLisbon, Portugal Homeless people make up a Fourth World population in industrialized as well as developing countries. Homelessness creates a higher risk for disease and premature death. An innovative Canadian program provides care for those who are homeless at the end of life, especially for those who might otherwise die alone. PEACH (Palliative Education…
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Using bacteria in cancer therapy
Andy TayLos Angeles, California, United States Cancer is a complex disease whose various causes include bacterial infections such as Helicobacter pylori leading to gastric cancer.1 Bacteria, however, can also be used to treat cancer, a treatment so effective against high grade non-invasive bladder cancer that since 1990, it has remained the preferred therapy.2 The history…
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The $84.77 Hospital – St. Vincent
Terri SinnottChicago, Illinois, United States What in the United States could be purchased with $87.44 in 1881? In that year Bishop Francis Silas Marean Chatard and four Daughters of Charity1 took that sum and funded the first Catholic hospital in Indianapolis. Chatard had been born in 1834 in Baltimore and his initial calling was medicine. …
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Personal magic – creativity and Shamanic ways for wellbeing
Kate HawkesPortland, Oregon, United States The key to healing and wellness is, most agree, a combination of mind-body dynamics and, perhaps spirit. How the three interact and what happens when they do is the subject of studies and surmise, hard fact and anecdote. I have no doubt that when an individual is actively engaged in…
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An evolving journey: Writing as healing art
Amy WebbPawleys Island, South Carolina, United States It started simply enough. Soon after my diagnosis, a friend and fellow breast cancer survivor counseled me about protecting a space for healing. We discussed the need to create that delicate balance of keeping a network of friends and family informed along the way, while giving oneself the…
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One for science: nothing more, nothing less
Erin DuraldePalo Alto, California, USA On an ordinary day, just a routine checkup, Ruth’s left breast spoke up for the first time. Under the stiff press of the mammography machine, after 83 years of content silence, it cleared its throat and announced that today was the first day of its starring role in the drama…