christmas memories

No one wants to work on a holiday, but working in the emergency department on Christmas made me more human. Because misfortune on Christmas just seems worse than misfortune on a run-of-the-mill day, and it's just worse enough that it stirs up empathy.

I've just spoken to the the daughter of a critically ill patient about doing an invasive, but important procedure to support her father's life. Tears well up in her eyes as she asks, "If this were your dad, would you want him to have this procedure done?" And for a split moment, I think of my dad, and I nearly tear up. If it were my dad, I would never ever want him to be so sick that he would need this procedure. But I would say yes if he needed it.

There's an elderly mother of the household who came in with belly pain in the morning and is wondering if there's any chance she'll be discharged home by 4 PM, which is when all of her guests are coming over for dinner. For a moment, I think about all those people coming over and how fretful she is about the gathering, and I really do wish I could get her home in time.

There's a patient who's been admitted to the hospital countless times, but she's avoided it for the last few years. She's also a momma of the household and spent the entire day cooking Christmas dinner before coming in. When I tell her that her condition is serious enough that we need to admit her, she becomes disinhibited for a brief moment and drops an F bomb. And then she turns to her daughter, at bedside, and says, "What I want you to do is go home, and bring me some of that food. First, you sit down and have a nice meal. And then bring me back some of that food."

And there's a momma who's not from around here, but just walked over from the Children's Hospital where her baby is in the ICU. They were both hit by a car while walking yesterday. She's basically unscathed and her baby is not. I almost cry in the room taking her history.

Christmas is about families. Christmas made me take a step back and think about those relationships, and see my own loved ones in these patients. Everyone's just hoping to spend some time with their families today. I won't be doing that this year, but today it's something to be reminded of my own family members as my patients imagine and try to make it towards their own.

radiohead

oh my head's like a cloud of smoke
and not the good kind with flavors and sounds
but these whiffs of thoughts that just don't
evaporate.

rupi kaur

reading her is like sharing a secret
that can't be spoken out loud.
words so simple, metaphors so apt
and between those lines are whispers
of pain and smallness and a seed of feminism
growing against the odds and because of them
into a sapling
that always belonged to the sun

how does she knowme
so well

and between those lines are whispers
that love and guilt can be the same
that a brown girl's daily bread
is worth poetry

homecoming

i been starved of home
the goldenrod cobs under vast expanses of silence
cicadas and quiet air humming around sidewalk greetings

the rhythm of the predictable bounty of backyard tomatoes
and hungry rabbits

the honor system at the vegetable stand down the street
with an intact paint-peeled wooden money box
whose padlock would be long since desecrated in my new city

home hasn't aged the same way my skin, my soul, my eyes have this last decade away

the salt on my lip, that flavor from childhood
just ain't the same anywhere else

I'm your fucking doctor

I knew medicine was a sexist field going into medical school. But I wasn't prepared for the relentless onslaught of sexism I encounter on a daily basis as a doctor in training.

One of the common complaints female emergency physicians have lodged against them by patients is: "I spent hours waiting and never saw a doctor."

Actually, you saw two doctors. Both of them were women. Both of them introduced themselves as a doctor. Because you were in distress, because you've been enculturated to visualize a tall white man in a white coat, and because society has not taught you everything that women can be--powerful, accomplished, professional--you overwrote their introductions. You assumed, incorrectly, that they were not doctors, and you assumed, incorrectly, that you hadn't been seen by a doctor.

Actually, a doctor saw you as soon as you got into a room.

Today, I had a patient complain to their nurse that they'd been waiting for hours and hadn't seen a doctor. And I decided enough is enough. I'm not going to keep swallowing my pride every time a patient makes this sexist mistake. So I went back into the room, and after delivering an update, I said calmly, respectfully, "I just wanted to clarify that I'm a doctor. I heard from our nurses that you thought you hadn't been seen by a doctor. I'm your doctor."

Thus commences my experiment. Let's see how they react. Because I'm not staying silent about this any longer.

Cause I'm your fucking doctor.

style

the cheerleader tells me i have style

it's because i finally embraced womanness
the breasts, the hips, the jello arms andres black named in eighth grade
that jello i once wished would go away
but oprah said that underarm fat stays for life
and indeed it does

irreversible womanness
it's the only way to dance

i am who i am
this body is what it is
here to stay
for a while anyway
until it withers

i am who i am
a woman
and a healer

a stifled healer

patient after patient and the spark in my hands never ignites
words upon words travel through me like my ears don't work
is this what healing is?

i am who i am

a stifled healer
with style

intubation number six

As soon as I saw her I knew she had hours to days, not days to weeks,
not weeks to months,
but hours to days.

When her lungs were too tired to keep staving off death,
her withered, white-haired balding husband burst into the room
and burst into choked tears:
"Oh, God bless you, I love you"

he planted a kiss on her forehead

his trembling lips tortured, his cry agonal

around the room all the women's eyes were wet

some of us no doubt wondering if our love
in our dying breaths
is destined to be like that.