Volume 3, Issue 1 – Winter 2011

Of starlit huts and Sahelian sand

Sara Buck, RN

Chicago, Illinois

Landing in Dakar airport, the Air Afrique flight from New York hummed into the humid night air. More…

What God gives: prayers from Africa

Marcia Whitney-Schenck

Chicago, Illinois

Rev. David Ambola from Cameroon has remarked that Africans are incurably religious. For many, religion permeates every aspect of their lives… More…

Found in translation?

Danielle Ofri, MD, PhD
New York, New York

“Je m’a…,” I stuttered to Aristede Mezondes, the serious young man in a grey wool overcoat, standing before me with ramrod posture. More…

The god that I know

Rae Brown, MD

Lexington, Kentucky

Our days are filled with difficult decisions in which our desires to treat and cure are thwarted by forces outside the sphere of physiology and anatomy. More…

Equanimity

Larry Zaroff, MD, PhD

Palo Alto, California

David Michener is a psychiatrist. He is also the father of three children, each of whom has a progressive, incurable neurological disease… More…

Those eyes

Susan Woldenberg Butler
Canberra, Australia

My intuition once saved a farmer’s wife but let me down as the life of her neighbor slipped away. I should have known. All the signs were there. I hate guns. More…

Hooked

Dr. Emily Gregory-Roberts

Sydney, Australia

The list on the ER computer screen displayed that the first patient was Gavin Hunt with an anal abscess. The second was Holly Bester with a vaginal abscess. More…

Nursing diagnoses

Mat Matteson, LPN &

Geraldine Gorman, RN, PhD

Chicago, Illinois

Ah, the end of the semester. In the best of times it hauls with it taunting deadlines… More…

Morning note

Jeanne Bryner, RN
Warren, Ohio

In a few moments I’ll let you read the note my husband wrote this morning
while I was sleeping, dreaming maybe of what I’d fix for supper,
More…

Portrait of nursing

Lynda Slimmer, PhD, RN

Chicago, Illinois

Using your mind’s eye, imagine a painting that my husband and I bought several years ago in the Smokey Mountains. More…

Blind date

Anthony Papagiannis, MD
Thessaloniki, Greece

Working as a private consulting pulmonologist in a healthcare system where referral letters are virtually nonexistent, I always ask new patients to tell me who sent them… More…

A fortunate man

Martin Duke, MD
Mystic, Connecticut

Earlier in the week the last patients were seen, their records given to them or sent to their new physicians, and the final farewells were said. More…

Research subject

Eric P. Cohen, MD

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Much has been written on clinical research and its societal benefit. But research can also confer unexpected individual benefits, as shown in Mrs. G, the recipient of a kidney transplant. More…

Poetry

Jeanne Bryner

That we may all live to see
where God drives His hot pink go cart,
some piece of land facing both hills,
an ocean sunset, banana muffins cooling
on a sill.

More…

Aubrie Lee

The pulse of breath and electricity,
The luminous reflex of a colored shutter,
The heat exuded through their scrubs and gloves
Proves the intricacy of a species of machinery
That I once was.

More…

Helen Montague Foster

5 AM: I’ve coffee-stained my intern
whites. Remember OR shadow
movies behind sheets? Can a girl
walk point? The Viet Cong
nightmares don’t belong to me.

More…

Down a rabbit hole

Eli Cannon, MD
Escondido, California

The voice is barely audible. Is that because Iris is upstairs in her room and I’m downstairs reading in the living room? Or is it because…? I drop my book and run upstairs. More…

Doctors like eponymity

Dr. Denis Gill
Dublin, Ireland

I must confess to liking medical eponyms. As a medical student in 1960s Dublin, we were taught the names of famous Irish physicians of the Georgian period (1780-1840), a time when Dublin was famed for its bedside teaching. More…