Tag: Personal Narratives
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Body matters
Grace LucasCambridge, UK I had this friend once. She was around for a long time – years. I do not remember the first time I met her, but suddenly she was there, omnipresent. She was thrilling and intoxicating to be with, and made me feel high, light, and free. I was on a journey with…
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Fifty years on an Englishman recalls Cook County Hospital
Simon CohenLondon In 1968 I was a senior registrar at a London teaching hospital. My ambition was to become a staff member at a major London institution and at that time one of the requirements was a qualification known as the BTA (Been to America). My chief, probably correctly, recognized that I was not much…
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Metaphor, memory, and my grandmother’s hands
Gregory O’GaraNew Jersey, United States Sometimes when it rains, the droplets are barely perceptible. There is no fog or mist, no thunder, no presage. I sat outside looking upward. There was nothing discernable in the darkness of the sky except the absence of stars. If memories were like stars, they should last forever; but even…
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In translation
Michelle PonderPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States In my first year of clinical rotation in medical school there was no service as diverse as Psychosomatic Psychiatry. As a third year student I would run between consults; from a schizophrenic patient who believed he worked for Homeland Security, to a patient with several gunshot wounds and now likely…
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Death and the diaspora
Amitha KalaichandranOttawa, Ontario, Canada Even though my grandfather, or “Tata” in Tamil, became deaf five years ago, I still felt he could hear me. I believed that the oceans that stood between our homes – mine in Toronto, Canada, and his in Colombo, Sri Lanka – could carry a symphony of both concerns and excitement,…
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Phantom pains
Daly WalkerBoca Grande, Florida and Quechee, Vermont, United States Most memories pass on to oblivion without changing anything. But some are so powerful they transform who you are. They never leave you. Without my memories of a girl named Jane, I would never have become the doctor I am. On a clear December morning fifty-six…
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Life of a blanket in the medical center
Fredna DeCarloMissouri City, Texas, United States I am fresh and new, without the scent of laundry detergent yet, waiting on the shelf to begin my life as a blanket in the Medical Center. Here we go! I feel hands that are smooth, their owner is in a hurry, but suddenly she slows, her mannerisms change,…
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The girl on the gurney
Diana PiWestlake, Ohio, United States A month before my gig as senior medical resident at Bellevue Hospital was up, I spent a morning in the New York City morgue. Why? I lost a patient. A young man with end-stage AIDS, a prisoner from Rikers Island. The morgue, a stone’s throw from Bellevue Hospital, was what…
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Night shift
Andrew SchroederDes Moines, Iowa, United States My first overnight shift as a third-year medical student in the Emergency Department: the nervous anticipation had been building all afternoon. Of course nothing really tangible separates a day-shift from a night-shift, except perhaps a feeling of well-restedness by the end of a long series of night-shifts. The anticipation,…