Archives

Hoax

In the hoax tent across from me sat Dr. Patel I think. Hard to tell with that mask, but her eyes were familiar, from other days when we wore no masks and huddled together for rounds and codes and could read each others’ lips, not eyes teeming with terror. Like now. When we each caught […]

Read More

Nevertheless, She Persisted

Many years ago, there was a blonde nurse who was a member at the pool club in my town.  She used to arrive in the late summer mornings to relax by her cabana before work.  Around 2 p.m., she would change into her smart uniform in that cabana, like a superhero in a phone booth, […]

Read More

A Christmas Story

While Black Bart was getting his you were getting yours – sodium bicarb calcium gluconate D50 – not with a Red Ryder BB gun, but a triple lumen CVC, ‘as beautiful, as coolly deadly-looking a piece of weaponry as I’d ever laid eyes on.’ Bullets to save, not slay – Mannitol 3% sodium Zosyn. Your […]

Read More

A Nurse’s Introduction

There are telltale signs we will meet again – the crumbling dryness of your feet, the purplish opalescence of your shins, the belly – taut with distension, and the hint of yellow in your eyes, from which, even as you’re joking now, a few feet away from me in the grocery store, jovial crinkles surrounding […]

Read More

No Pity for Princesses

Synchronicity. Meaningful coincidences. There are no accidents. Everything happens for a reason. There is a bigger plan. We tell ourselves the events occurring in our lives are connected by meaning. Maybe they are; maybe they aren’t. As I’ve said before, I prefer to believe they are. Things make a bit more sense that way. Not […]

Read More

More Than a Paycheck

Once again, we find ourselves approaching National Nurses Day (Wednesday, May 6th), International Nurses Day (Tuesday, May 12th) and National Nurses Week (May 6th – May 12th), celebrated throughout our country with employer-sponsored stress-relieving massages, medical-themed tchotchkes, pens, totes, and – of course – bagels and coffee.  It’s probably no coincidence that Nurses Day happens […]

Read More

Hey, Nurses, Happy Special Needs Caregivers Day

The evolution of National Nurses Week (May 6, 2014 – May 12, 2014) and National Nurses Day, which will honor nurses this year on Tuesday, May 6, 2014, has been a well-deserved reward for the hard work and dedication of nurses in all areas of the profession. Doctors don’t need any recognition like this because […]

Read More

Metastasia

One day, when many summers yet remained for me, the cough and phlegm of the starved contemplated its many misspent summers – above the muted hum of an oxygen concentrator, and amid the useless drips of poison – the foggy prognosis hung, floating bland, no more meaning left to its name than, say, swirling summer […]

Read More