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Healthcare
The Laughter Club
It’s not surprising that trauma is the number-one killer of people under forty, but it had never been so obvious to me before I worked at a hospital.
June 2015
Too Much Of A Good Thing
Daniel E. Lieberman On How Civilization Makes Us Sick
There’s growing attention to the importance of nutrition and physical activity, which is a cause for hope, but my concern is that these trends are very much class driven. Wealthy people tend to be able to afford to be physically active and to eat healthy foods and to reduce stress and to get enough sleep and to stop smoking. There have always been disparities in health between classes, but I worry they are going to widen. Just as we have income inequality, we’re heading toward a world in which we see an increased burden of noninfectious chronic diseases in the lower classes.
March 2015
In Transit
My husband stands at the front of the bus, one hand clutching a rail, the other gripping a strap, his hospital gown floating below a puffy blue winter jacket.
January 2013
Little Bird, Little Bird
There are four types of brick. I remember two of them: pavior and stock. Our row house was all brick with ledges near the roof, four stories up. Pigeons liked to make nests there, but it was stupid; the ledges were too shallow, and with the first strong gust of wind their nests blew down. Still, year after year, they did it. Optimists, those pigeons.
January 2013
Oh Baby
Ina May Gaskin On The Medicalization Of Birth
There is an energy associated with labor and birth. Birth is holy and sacred. But you have to be respectful of mother and baby, or you’ll miss it. If we come to it with a sense of awe and treat the mother with kindness and respect, birth can be a truly spiritual, empowering experience.
January 2012
Sunbeams
November 2009My doctor is nice; every time I see him, I’m ashamed of what I think of doctors in general.
The Curtain
The color of the hospital curtain dividing the room changes with the light. If our neighbor by the window keeps the blinds open, the cloth that divides the room is a sea green riddled with purple. If the neighbor likes it dim, the curtain becomes the mottled color of a bruise just before it heals. When we have no neighbor, we push the curtain back so we can see the view of the black-papered roof.
November 2009
Who Will Heal The Healers?
Pamela Wible On What’s Missing From Healthcare Reform
I was extremely disheartened, because I felt I was destined to be a doctor, but I couldn’t sustain my enthusiasm on the assembly line; it was such a dehumanizing experience. I was tired of interrupting crying people to say, “Sorry, we’re out of time.” I wanted to be kind to patients, even if it meant a huge cut in my salary. Many doctors feel this way. I’ve met several female physicians who are ready to quit medicine and find other work.
November 2009
Future Zarahs
The Peace Corps doesn’t send volunteers to the countries where we work, those anarchic Fourth World places where the globalization beast barely pauses to wipe its lips — places like Sierra Leone in 2004.
September 2008
Room 3206
Mr. K. was forty-two and almost dead, kept alive by machines, tubes, and liquids that would at best give him two or three days more. His wife had brought him to the emergency room, probably because he was confused or vomiting or had chest pain. It soon became clear that he had taken too much Vicodin or heroin or any one of a number of potentially lethal drugs, perhaps by accident, perhaps not.
May 2008
