Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Paul Rousseau

  • The grieving one: On the death of a spouse

    Paul RousseauCharleston, South Carolina, United States “A real experience of death isolates one absolutely. The bereaved cannot communicate with the unbereaved.”– Iris Murdoch, An Accidental Man, 1971 “Alone” holds the word “one.” After the death of a spouse, we are al(one). ____ One pillow on the bed. One imprint on the sheet. One towel in…

  • Dream on

    Paul RousseauCharleston, South Carolina, United States ChartThis is a 32-year-old female with widely metastatic breast cancer admitted to the hospital for control of shortness of breath and pain. ____ Melissa sits slumped, mouth open, snoring. I pull a chair bedside and gently touch her shoulder. Her head jerks, startled. She wipes drool from her chin…

  • Miscarriage: A medical student in a rural clinic, Central America, 1977

    Paul RousseauCharleston, South Carolina, United States Elena sits perched on a gurney with claret-stained thighs. She has just miscarried in the clinic’s lavatory. She inquires of the gender of the fetus, and hands twitching and heart flapping, I blurt, unexpectedly and duplicitously (for I could not know), “Una bebita.” A little girl. A guttural sob…

  • It could be bad

    Paul RousseauCharleston, South Carolina, United States The doctor poked and probed and prodded and pinched and rubbed his chin and clicked his pen and rose from his stool and breathed a groan, “Something is wrong, and it could be bad, is plausibly bad, is certainly bad, but not cancer bad, but bad heart bad, and…

  • Wedding anniversary

    Paul RousseauCharleston, South Carolina, United States Things fall apart; the center cannot hold…and everywhereThe ceremony of innocence is drowned…— W. B. Yeats, The Second Coming It is their tenth wedding anniversary. They are traveling to a restaurant on a black, moonless night. They round a curve as a semi-trailer truck veers across the center line.…

  • Flesh on flesh

    Paul RousseauCharleston, South Carolina, United States There is a solace to flesh on flesh, a laying on of the hands, a ritual of caring,  but now, in our distant worlds,  we hide in pixeled foxholes,  tap, tap, tapping on computers, tablets, and cell phones,  the patient unseen and untouched. PAUL ROUSSEAU (he/his/him) is a semi-retired…

  • “It would be like I never existed”: two minutes with manic psychosis, 1978

    Paul RousseauCharleston, South Carolina, United States Foreword Mental illness is often marginalized by non-psychiatric clinicians, yet it causes as much suffering, if not more, than physical illness. I was a medical student completing a rotation in psychiatry when I observed the encounter described here. The patient had visited several community clinics and received little treatment…

  • 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,…

  • Rural home visit 1973

    Paul RousseauCharleston, South Carolina, United States The road frozen and snowflakes fluttering, I travel to a distant farmhouse—the sick in bed on her side, hair in sweat-wet crescents and vomitus on the sheets, the husband wailing, “She’s dying, she’s dying,” and a dog and three toddlers lapping milk from the linoleum—and as I stoop to…