Dream on
Paul Rousseau Charleston, South Carolina, United States Footsteps in the forest. Photo by Nicholas D. on Flickr. CC BY-NC 2.0. Chart This 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 […]
Miscarriage: a medical student in a rural clinic, Central America, 1977
Paul Rousseau Charleston, South Carolina, United States A small town in Honduras. Photo by kristin klein on Flickr. CC BY 2.0. 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, […]
Wedding anniversary
Paul Rousseau Charleston, South Carolina, United States Woman treating a patient in an intensive care unit. U.S. Government photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Ryan M. Breeden. U.S. Navy Medicine on Rawpixel. Public domain. Things fall apart; the center cannot hold…and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned… — W. B. Yeats, The […]
Two words in the patient portal
Paul Rousseau Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, United States Photo by Anna Tarazevich from Pexels 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 […]
Metastases
A CXR of a person with lung cancer causing superior vena cava syndrome. Photo by James Heilman, MD. Via Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 3.0. Paul Rousseau Charleston, South Carolina, United States The fact Is they are there, gathered like a clutter of popcorn, some kernels, others fluffy white swirls, but they are there, bound to […]
On beauty and medical ethics
John Brewer Eberly Jr. Anderson, South Carolina, United States Lydia S. Dugdale New York, United States Darian Goldin Stahl, “The Scan and the Mirror,” Stone lithography and silkscreen, 22″ x 28,” 2013. Private collection. www.dariangoldinstahl.com. Philosophers know that beauty is moving, arresting, enrapturing. It captures the attention and then calls the viewer to action—pursuing, […]
THEME
RUSSIAN LITERATURE Published in October, 2020 H E K T O R A M A . THE EDUCATION OF DOCTOR CHEKHOV Chekhov was neither an academic star, nor a social standout. There were, however, two areas in which he excelled. The first was his ability to listen to patients […]
Partial eclipse of the heart
Perry Dinardo Cleveland Heights, Ohio, United States “Crescent Sun + Lens Flare” by Phil Bruxvoort is licensed under CC PDM 1.0. In early August 2017, the nation was buzzing about an upcoming total solar eclipse. I had been immersed in news about the eclipse for weeks, and decided it would be absolutely necessary for me to […]
Bleeding science dry: the history of scientific racism and blood
Matthew Casas Kansas City, United States Help the Red Cross. U.S. Food Administration. Educational Division. Advertising Section. 1917 – 1919. National Archives Catalog, identifier 512661. One might be familiar with the expression “We All Bleed Red.” But what exactly does blood have to say about our “humanity”? Ripe with good intention, the aforementioned mantra […]