Contributing Writer Emeritus
Georgetown University School of Medicine
Lindsay Boyers is a medical student at Georgetown University School of Medicine with an interest in dermatology. She graduated magna cum laude from University of California Santa Barbara in 2009 with a degree in Communications and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She enjoys both clinical medicine and research, having taken a year to conduct research at the University of Colorado in the department of dermatology. She enjoys the arts, especially painting and writing, and spending time with her family in Colorado.
She had not been home in at least three days. She sat motionless, shoulders slumped, arms draped limply over her lap. I couldn’t tell if she had nodded off. The wrinkles of her clothes seemed to blend into the lines of her face, stuck in a soft, yet permanent frown. The red of her blouse appeared faint against her pallid skin, as if exhaustion had sapped everything it could from her being, and had moved …
The wonderfully cheery 66-year-old woman sitting in the conference room with her family listened to us explain her diagnosis – ovarian cancer – the first occurrence. We explained that ovarian cancer tends to appear suddenly with non-specific symptoms preceding it. Its prognosis can be quite good if treated aggressively with surgery and chemotherapy, but recurrence rates are very high. We told her to be positive because her 5-year survival looked quite good. “Oh, I’m a …
It’s easy to see how the hospital can be an intimidating place for a patient. Being alone, in an unknown environment, covered only a flimsy cloth gown, and surrounded by strangers can make anyone anxious. Now, imagine not knowing what these strangers are saying to you, about you. Imagine these strangers cannot understand a single word you say. I had just finished up a previous case in the OR with the orthopedics team when the …
“Dr. Aggarwal, should we divert the plane towards Salt Lake City? Dr. AGGARWAL, Dr. Aggarwal, do you want to land in Salt Lake City?” Until this point, it was always “Manik,” and it was a basic question. If I was right, my intern or resident would be enthused with my knowledge; if I was wrong, they would teach and likely talk me up to regain my confidence. Well, that was last month. This month, it’s …
Dear freshly-crowned MS3s, Congratulations on making it to the best part of medical school! I hope that it has finally sunk in that classes and labs are over, and most importantly, you are on the other side of Step 1. It is finally time to take all of the facts that you learned from a textbook and apply them to a real-life person. It is the moment we all wait for and the reason we …
The patient is a 45-year-old man. When I enter the room with the resident, he is sitting on the edge of the exam table, wearing a poorly-constructed hospital gown. When I introduce myself, he struggles to keep on the paper garment while extending his hand towards mine. He is a pleasant man, overall, except for a lot of physical discomfort evident in his facial expressions. The resident asks the patient about his symptoms. She asks …
The usual morning solitude of the small rural Kansas hospital was shattered with the overhead announcement no one wants to hear. Code Blue. Stillness turned to ordered chaos. The room was quickly prepared for the impending arrival of the ambulance. We gathered as much information about the patient as possible. Nineteen years old. Overdose. Found unresponsive. Before we had time to assemble these disordered pieces of the puzzle, he had arrived. The entire staff responded …
I was recently granted one of those rare, quiet Sunday afternoons we experience in medical school, and decided to spend it reading short stories. The story I picked up was “I Want to Live!” by Thom Jones. The story focuses on a cancer-ridden woman, Mrs. Wilson, reaching a meaningful place in her life amidst the throes of death. As I read the journey of Mrs. Wilson, my eyes flooded as my emotions finally caught up with me. The story …
Room One With one eyebrow arched and his thin lips pressed together in a smirk, Vic Davis’ face was in a perpetual state of bemusement. The twinkle in his eyes belied his own protracted health struggles. A diagnosis of prostate cancer had truncated a successful business career, and signs of wear were beginning to show. His hair had fallen out and his eyes were sunken in. His speech was encumbered by a slight stutter and …
Pursuing a career in health care has created opportunities I could have never imagined possible, welcomed or not. The bond a physician has with his patient is not something that can be recreated in any other field. Prior to medical school, I knew I would be exposed to situations and learn the intricate privacies that most people do not have the blessing to learn. But of course I could have never predicted how deep the …
One eye is open as they velcro her legs into the stirrups. I ask the anesthesiologist why that is. He says he thinks it’s because she’s exophthalmic, the medical way of saying she has bulging eyes. Her hips writhe as they insert the long, slender, metal dilators to force open her cervix. They are reflex movements, they say, she won’t remember it, she isn’t in pain. She lifts her pelvis up and off the table …
Room One Wendy Smith had thinning hair, penciled-in eyebrows, and a frame so thin that you could see, in painstaking detail, bluish-grey veins emanating from beneath her pale skin. Cancer had taken so much from her that she almost didn’t look human. But the feeling in the room was extremely human. Fear — palpable fear. Fear made all the more palpable because this was an aggressive, rare form of cancer. Fear made all the more …
Columnist and in-Training Staff Member
Morsani College of Medicine at the University of South Florida
Ajay is a pediatric resident and a Class of 2017 graduate of the SELECT MD program at the University of South Florida. He is passionate about delivering primary care to underserved populations—specifically, low-income and homeless patients in urban centers. Ajay will be specializing in pediatrics, with a particular interest in child maltreatment.
M.D. or Bust
Numerous studies have documented that medical students lose empathy during clinical years, becoming jaded and pessimistic. This has been linked not only to diminished enjoyment of our work, but also to worse patient outcomes. My goal is to sustain the humanistic values that drive so many of us to medicine, so that, instead of being quelled by cynicism, our idealism can be refined by wisdom.
