Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: plasma

  • They don’t teach us that

    Evelyn PotochnyHershey, Pennsylvania, United States You called in your own medevac. You’d even tourniqueted both legs, or what was left of them. And when the Chinook kicked up all that dust and finally landed, you looked so—calm. Someone read each name and the litany of injuries while we watched each stretcher pass by, yours included—a…

  • Blood under the moon: The role of astrology in surgery

    Margareta-Erminia CassaniMichigan, United States Imagine your doctor telling you that you need surgery. Then they follow that unsettling news with something, well, a little strange sounding. They tell you that the date picked for your surgery needs to occur during a waning moon to control bleeding. After you have stared blankly at them for a…

  • The history and significance of voluntary, non-remunerated blood donation

    Hans Erik HeierOslo, Norway “While we have now begun to understand the cost of everything, we are in danger of losing track of the value of anything”—Ann Oakley and John Ashton, 1993 Voluntary, non-remunerated blood donation in catastrophe September 11, 2001: Two passenger airplanes are crashed into the World Trade Towers in New York, and…

  • The time between our hands

    Samantha BelowMilwaukee, Wisconsin, United States Thread passes from the tools in your hands to be pulled by mine. You suture the vessels. I clear the path of knots. Our posture is separated by inches, our hearts by hand-breadths. Our hands are identical in the vibrations of our nervous systems; mine reflect a lack of experience,…

  • The color of organ markets

    Howsikan KugathasanToronto, Ontario, Canada Nawaraj Pariyar from Nepal is promised thirty thousand dollars for “a piece of meat” that will grow back. Only later does he find out that he was duped twice. He received less than 1% of his promised money and that piece of meat was not any ordinary flesh: it was his…