Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Spring 2011

  • Balloons

    John VanekSt. Petersburg, Florida, USA Poet’s statement Poetry provides a vehicle that takes me to places that logic won’t go, a way of understanding the incomprehensible, both in life and in medicine. I now prescribe poetry PRN (“as needed”), but warn that it may hurt a little. My poems are peopled with my family, friends, and…

  • Always, autumn leaves

    John VanekSt. Petersburg, Florida, United States Poet’s statement Poetry provides a vehicle that takes me to places that logic won’t go, a way of understanding the incomprehensible, both in life and in medicine. I now prescribe poetry PRN (“as needed”), but warn that it may hurt a little. My poems are peopled with my family, friends,…

  • The homemaker

    Jessica HarderBoston, Massachusetts, USA Poet’s statement My poems explore moments of intense emotive experience, particularly themes of overwhelming awe and wonder, sensual delight, and excruciating empathy with those in pain or suffering. They also ponder the limits of human understanding, especially of science and the natural world, and the larger questions of meaning-making that can…

  • Blind faith

    Susan Woldenberg ButlerCanberra, Australia This fictional short story was published in Secrets from the Black Bag (Royal College of General Practitioners Publications; London, December, 2005). Some patients will do anything we tell them. Others obey their spouses blindly. Ambrose O’Sullivan did as his wife directed. It killed her. “Divina won’t be needing that toe massage…

  • There is a time

    Joel L. ChinitzPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States When the doors flew open, the noisy hoard—many in dirty, white jackets and floppy, bloodstained, green pants—circled the nurses’ station and overran the medical Intensive Care Unit. Wednesday renal rounds had begun. As two aides jumped back and fell into a linen cart, the unrelenting column spilled down the…

  • “The lament of the Old Woman of Beare”—Contrasting the passage of life

    Basil BrookeJohannesburg, South Africa It is well for an island of the great sea: flood comes to it after its ebb; as for me, I expectno flood after ebb to come to me. Today there is scarcelya dwelling-place I could recognize;what was in floodis all ebbing. From “The Lament of the Old Woman of Beare”,c.…

  • Ending one’s life on the stage

    Angela BelliNew York City, New York, United States Writers and physicians often share the same sensibilities and skills required to describe the disease process and its wider effects. But while the literary artist, unlike the physician, relies on his imagination to realize the experience of his fictional characters, he can also engage the imagination and…

  • My mom’s death

    Kristen EricksonUrbana-Champaign, Illinois, United States My mom, Tracey, died just over nine years ago at the age of 39. I had just turned 16. Diagnosed with glioblastoma in July 2001, my mother’s last six months were filled with surgeries, infections, and radiation treatments. She rapidly declined in strength, followed by confusion and death. Since then,…

  • Streptococcus and me

    Andrea MeyerhoffBaltimore, Maryland, United States I respect the streptococcus. It is a bacterium—a whole genus of them—that excels at making people sick. It may shape a childhood understanding of illness, rupture ties that bind a family, or drive an appreciation for a great moment of human achievement. More recently, however, the memory of a particular…

  • The US hospice movement: Redressing modern medicine

    Emily BetheaChicago, Illinois, USA Unlike its modern concept, hospice began as “a house of rest and entertainment” not only “for pilgrims, travelers, or strangers” but also “for the destitute or sick.”1 Like the images conjured by these words, the first hospices are believed to have originated in the 11th century when the Crusaders permitted the…