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Standards of Care

Rolonda Donelson on Bias and Anti-Science Attitudes in Medicine

The reason Black women were used to develop the field of gynecology was because they were no more than property. They weren’t seen as people; they were just seen as things. The controlling of Black women’s bodies started with chattel slavery, but it continues today.

The Empty Room Inside Each of Us

Crumb is always right, always the one telling the story, always the one who turns the drab, lonesome plains they call home into a world that’s dramatic and necessary.

Formed Otherwise

There’s a presumption that to raise a child with disabilities makes you brave. I wasn’t brave. I wasn’t always a stellar mother, either. But I studied my daughter as if she were an ancient text to see what was beneath the chatter and the rage

The Feeding

Some leeches have two jaws. Others have three. Some have teeth on their tongues. There are protective leeches who hover over their eggs, and leeches who carry their newborns in pouches like tiny kangaroos.

Our Fraying Hearts

I have a sense of the drama people want to hear about, but most days our ER is filled with abdominal pain and vomiting—nothing like what you’re accustomed to seeing on TV.

Rise

I wasn’t about to tell Simon what happened. Buddy Sikes was one of the popular kids. Simon wouldn’t understand. Not because of his differences, but because he was still at the age where a clear line separated right from wrong.

Home Invasions

Still, I hadn’t counted on real, live rats. “I’m surprised you hadn’t heard them before,” said Rat Guy #1, as he came to be known. “From the looks of it they’ve been here a while.”

The Children's Wing

Other parents see our little girl running up and down the hall, or performing a dance in the playroom, or climbing onto a stool to get the Funny Bunny game from the closet, and they ask why we are here. I have told the story so many times to so many different doctors that I’m beginning to wonder if I’m keeping the details straight. Was it four in the morning or six? What woke us—the trembling and shaking, or the lack of breathing, or the choking sounds?

Wild Animals

Swimming with whale sharks, hearing a mountain lion, refusing to eat a snake

Getting Dressed

Sleeping in uniform, layering against the cold, wearing your spouse’s jeans