Tell Me a Real Story

by Staci Mandrola Charlotte is three and a half years old. She loves stories. I tell real stories. John tells made up stories. The first words we hear when Charlotte walks in the house are “Tell me a story, PaPa!” Stories put me on a path more than 40 years ago. The path to being a doctor and then a hospice and palliative medicine doctor. I listened to my grandmother tell stories about her physician father leaving the house to check on a woman in labor or a dying patient. He might not return for days. His payment ranged from a chicken to a milk cow to a beat up John Deere. I listened to my dermatologist father tell the story of a woman who wiped herself with poison ivy leaves after peeing in the woods. He told my three siblings and me that it’s always best to drip dry when camping if you can’t verify the exact nature of your toilet tissue. I listened to my teachers in medical school, physicians with years of experience, tell patients’ stories to ensure we would not repeat their mistakes. One of my favorite came from an internist who taught me during my second year. A patient nearly bled to death from an AVM in his bowel which had almost certainly been bleeding for days. The internist asked the patient why he didn’t seek help when he saw the blood in his stool. The patient replied that he never looked at his stool, that was disgusting. I can still see the internist shaking his head, admonishing us to never flush before we inspected our own stool. I am reading Inter...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - Category: Palliative Care Tags: mandrola narrative physician The profession Source Type: blogs