Originally posted on February 19, 2012 When I visited a patient in my caseload that lived in an “unsafe” part of the city, I went in the morning. Right after the pimps and drug dealers had called it a night and before the shop keepers pulled up the bars over the store windows and the…… Continue reading The Murder Building
Tag: nurse practitioner
A Broken Man Who is Hard to Forget
Richey rolled himself in a manual wheelchair into the exam room of the spinal cord clinic for the first time on a warm spring day in April. He managed to lift his quivering right arm to shake my hand. I was the new nurse practitioner in charge of his care. He had some ability to…… Continue reading A Broken Man Who is Hard to Forget
Letting Go of the Life We Plan
“We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” ― Joseph Campbell I didn’t plan to write a book but that’s what happened. I had always wanted to be a writer and, even as I worked as a Nurse Practitioner, I took…… Continue reading Letting Go of the Life We Plan
Excerpts From My Book
My book will be published on November 6, 2018 by She Writes Press. I have changed the title over the course of writing the book so many times that I can’t give you a count. The latest one, and I do hope the final one, is Stories from the Tenth-Floor Clinic: A Nurse Practitioner…… Continue reading Excerpts From My Book
My Book Comes to Life
This past weekend I traveled to Chicago to attend the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the clinic where I worked 30 years ago. The clinic sets the stage for my memoir: Playing Sheriff: A Nurse Practitioner’s Story. The formal function on Friday had 500 in attendance but it was to the intimate and informal…… Continue reading My Book Comes to Life
Don’t Question the Doctor Part 2
I posted last week about my friend Lois’ run in with a nasty doctor soon after she graduated nursing school in the 60s. Here is my story about working with a difficult physician that took place in the mid 80s. The medical director, Doctor X, sat me down in her office on my first day…… Continue reading Don’t Question the Doctor Part 2
Hearing Zebras
Zebra is the American medical slang for arriving at an exotic medical diagnosis when a more commonplace explanation is more likely.[1] It is shorthand for the aphorism coined in the late 1940s by Dr. Theodore Woodward, professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, who instructed his medical interns: “When you hear hoofbeats, think…… Continue reading Hearing Zebras
My Mother’s Boyfriend
Happy Mother’s Day. My mother died the day before Mother’s Day sixteen years ago. Each year at this time my memories of Mom revolve around both her life and death. Her last few years weren’t what I would have predicted. When Ernie and I moved from the Midwest to Maryland in 1993, Mom came with…… Continue reading My Mother’s Boyfriend
The Things I Treasure
Tomorrow we are having the rooms on the second floor of our new townhouse painted. Before we moved furniture to the center of the rooms, I stored in a large cardboard box, out of harms way, the treasures I kept on the shelves of my desk. Among the various memorabilia I packed away were the…… Continue reading The Things I Treasure
Just a Nurse
This is from Suzanne Gordon’s Blog. Ms Gordon is a journalist and stanch supporter and promoter of all things nursing. Recently she asked nurses to respond with their version of “Just a Nurse.” I am delighted to see their feedback. May nurses continue to tell the public what they do and how important their job…… Continue reading Just a Nurse
Getting Older: Charting the Uncharted 