After a snowboarding accident left me with a shattered leg, the ensuing three months of confinement and immobility finally came to an end. My knee had healed remarkably well. What a thrill it was to simply walk around my house, up the stairs and down the stairs and through the door to the outside world! When I started hiking again in the mountains, I assumed that this challenging chapter in my life had ended and that I would resume the life I had known before the accident. I had no idea that a time bomb ticked away inside my knee. … Continue reading
Category Archives: Memoir
If I close my eyes, I can still feel the exhilarating sensations. With hands open wide and arms outspread like wings, I am an eagle soaring down the powdery slopes of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains above Santa Fe. Both of my feet are strapped into my son’s outgrown sleek white snowboard. I surf the moguls as cold, invigorating air rushes past my face and stings my bare cheeks. My body leans to the left and then to the right, making a string of graceful turns down the side of the mountain. At 58, I was probably one of the … Continue reading
“I can’t believe what just happened,” she said breathlessly, as she repeatedly raised and lowered her arm, free of all pain and limitations. A few weeks ago, Sydney Coates, a 67 year-old advocate for the elderly and the dying, called me to ask if she could be seen right away, saying that she had torn her left rotator cuff tendons. While squatting on the floor to remove a stain, Sydney reached her left arm around to pick up a large bowl of water. As she brought her arm back, she felt a sharp pain in her shoulder. After standing up, … Continue reading
Although I felt immersed in an unrelenting state of siege much of the time, helping women deliver their babies gave me a joy-filled reprieve and remained one of the highlights of my Cuba experience. Over the course of two years, I delivered approximately 200 babies. Even in my chronically sleep-deprived state, the time of birth filled me with a kind of primal ecstasy. With some of the births, other emotions—fear and anxiety—preceded the joy. When I lifted the drapes covering the laboring mother, I dreaded that, instead of seeing the crown of the baby’s head, I would see a foot … Continue reading
I walked out of the clinic into the sunlit morning after what seemed like an interminable night shift taking care of a steady stream of emergencies. The rain had finally stopped. The air smelled clean and invigorating. I headed straight to the convenience store across the street and drugged myself with something sugary, washing it down with caffeine so I could keep going after working all night. When I returned, patients were already filling the waiting room for their appointments. Bill, the temporary doctor, arrived at eight o’clock, looking fresh and chipper. He’d obviously had a good night’s sleep. “You … Continue reading
It was early summer—monsoon season—when I began my first job as a family practice doctor in Cuba, New Mexico, in 1986. Thunder and lightning and a dark sky greeted me on the day of my arrival. A sudden cloud burst released a dark curtain of rain that poured down at an angle, driven by gusts of wind. Within minutes, the red clay road turned into slick mud. My two-wheel drive Honda slid from one side of the road to another as I struggled up the long incline to my new home in the foothills. A four-wheel drive pickup truck sailed … Continue reading
In the spring of 1983, after completing two months of medical work at a Christian mission hospital in northern India, I headed to the mountains in Nepal. The train from Delhi took me to a town near the border. From there I hitched a ride in an open jeep to the Nepalese frontier. I walked across the border on foot, then caught a bus for the long ride to Kathmandu where I met up with John B., someone I barely knew. John was the partner of a close friend from the Peace Corps in South America. Recently graduated from residency training … Continue reading
What would you do if someone told you that you had to perform an emergency abdominal surgery on a stranger—even though you were not a doctor—and if you refused, the sick person would surely die? In my fourth year of medical school, the students had the option of doing an elective semester anywhere they wanted. I chose to do a surgical rotation at a charity hospital located in a picturesque area about 150 miles north of Delhi, high in the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains between two great rivers, the Ganges and the Yamuna. I hoped to spend two months … Continue reading
Who would have imagined that a simple outpatient procedure would result in a potentially life-threatening experience? At twelve years old, my son’s wisdom teeth had grown in sideways. The impacted teeth needed to be removed surgically to give more space in Barrett’s mouth and prevent crowding of his other teeth. The oral surgeon I chose for Barrett’s difficult dental extractions, Dr. Andrews (not his real name), had an excellent reputation. He had done consistently good work on the patients I had referred to him in the past for dental surgery. After filling out all the paperwork on the clipboard, Barrett … Continue reading
Martha was in her mid forties. Her face appeared pale and distraught, with disheveled hair. The red and swollen eyelids suggested she had been crying. Before she sat down, she opened her fist and handed me three crumpled fifty-dollar bills. “Three of my friends got together and each donated fifty dollars for this hour with you. I lost my job as a therapist at the Counseling Center after a car accident. I have no savings and no place to live. My friends are helping me survive.” It was 1996. I had been practicing environmental medicine in my little in-home clinic … Continue reading