WRITER * ARTIST * DOCTOR * PATIENT * MOTHER
In the emergency department, patients often wonder why they aren’t seen fast enough, or why their problems aren’t completely solved, or why the tests they want cannot be run. Doctors and nurses in the ED also grumble and ask each other, “Why did the patient come here for that? Don’t they know this isn’t the…
“Hey doc, do you have kids?” the father asked as I peered at his squirming son’s eardrum. Though this question has always irked me, I grew accustomed to it. My patients’ parents asked it often. “No, not yet,” I replied, suppressing my irritation while moving on to examine the child’s throat. What I wanted to…
Her face was not one meant for poker. Her pursed lips emitted “pfffs” and “hmmphs” and her eyes rolled as I spoke. Her hips shifted and squirmed in the vinyl chair while her son stacked otoscope tips in towers on the linoleum below. The emergency department can inure one to such displays of frustration. My…
I’m excited to share I will be writing monthly articles for the medical social networking site Doximity. Here is my first – a reflection on the ritual of hospital rounds.
“With a child, time is fluid. It can surge with a springy quickness – a new word each day, pants abruptly too short, crawling that becomes standing, walking, running all within weeks. Or it can meander with a syrupy slowness, the world captured in a day.” From my latest piece has been published by Narratively….