Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: COVID

  • An emergency nurse in the time of Covid

    Kimberly TranchitaChicago, Illinois, United States April 2020 I hug my family and leave for work in the ED. No cars on the road. I stop at McDonald’s to get my free “frontline worker” cup of coffee. I no longer bring my own coffee or anything else to work in an attempt to limit the germs…

  • From Sophocles to the frontline

    Alexandra PliakopanouIoannina, Greece In the deserted misty land of Lemnos, a wailing voice echoes, emanating from a wounded warrior abandoned by his comrades nine years ago. Philoctetes, the titular character of Sophocles’ 409 BC play and once a great hero of the Greeks, now lies in misery with a festering wound that oozes pus and…

  • A series of messages

    Fung Kam YanHong Kong It was a Sunday. I sat outside the ward in my white coat, my eye protection fogging up, trying to catch my breath through the KF94 mask. My grandmother was inside, also struggling to breathe. The nurse said that only two visitors were allowed because of COVID-19 restrictions. It did not…

  • Book review: How the NHS Coped with COVID-19

    Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom This work is a timely and important contribution to the literature on the COVID-19 pandemic, which has wreaked havoc worldwide. Following the cluster of pneumonia cases of unknown cause in Wuhan, China at the end of 2019, things would never be the same again. In this book, the author has…

  • Rapid testing for the masses

    Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece Ten young girls are queueing outside the makeshift surgery. They are between eleven and fifteen, they wear face masks, they giggle and tease each other and try to encourage the timid ones before the coming ordeal. What is this going to be? Their first visit to a gynecologist? Nothing so memorable. They…

  • Gain of function

    Jayant RadhakrishnanDarien, Illinois, United States “It is no good to try to stop knowledge from going forward. Ignorance is never better than knowledge.”– Enrico Fermi (1901–1954) “Gain of Function” (GoF) burst into the general lexicon in 2021 during two shouting matches in the US Senate between the Junior Senator from Kentucky and the Director of…

  • Dr. Oriol Mitjà: seeking to understand old and new infectious diseases

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Research needs to give answers to real problems.”– Dr. Oriol Mitjà Dr. Oriol Mitjà (b. 1980) earned his M.D. degree from the University of Barcelona. He then completed an internal medicine residency, followed by a fellowship in infectious disease. He earned a Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene from the London School…

  • The flower lady

    Jonathan B. FerriniLa Jolla, California, United States Photos by author. The Flores Family Flower Shop was founded by my grandfather as a roadside stand. It has now been a favorite flower shop in San Diego for the past fifty years. Six days a week at 4:30 in the morning, I drive the truck to the…

  • Revising my bargain with the deity

    Barry PerlmanNew York, New York, United States My parents lived into their nineties. Before they died, they endured years of dementia. Aware of my potential genetic inheritance, I have long harbored a deep dread of what my future might hold. If my curved pinky fingers were inherited from my mother and my flat feet and…

  • Battle of six feet

    Mark MosleyWichita, Kansas, United States They die alone now;jet pilots soaring solo upwardmuffled voices sucked into machinesspeaking a language we recognizebut too distant to quite understanduntil their plastic faces hardenand eyes glaze over like cloudsbreathing in rhythm into the beyond. We watch them curiously like fishin an aquarium fluorescent behind glass;heads inside our own bubbles,yellow…