I am pro-life and so are you. It is clear to me from the nuanced and conflicting poll data that nobody thinks these are easy questions with easy answers. Anybody who asks you to call yourself just pro-life or just pro-choice probably has a political agenda. We all know it’s more complicated than that. We all want to make the right choice for ourselves, our families, and our communities. We all know that choice is not the same thing for each person or for each circumstance.
Tag: reflection
Letting Go
Six months ago, I tried to write something about the Capitol Riot. The simmering fear that I’d been feeling, that I might have to walk away from my understaffed team in an act of civil disobedience if the election results weren’t certified, had boiled over into some concoction of anger, sadness, confusion, and worry about… Continue reading Letting Go
I should have been a lawyer
It is not a secret that my ambitions lie well beyond surgery. I chose to go into clinical medicine partly because I loved the job of being a physician, but mostly because I thought there was immense value in intimately understanding a system so broken. I also thought there was immense value in caring for… Continue reading I should have been a lawyer
Our Shot
It felt like staggering across a finish line. I looked around and saw hundreds of thousands of shadows. The martyrs, the victims of the virus, of our callousness, so many of them Black and Brown. The tens of thousands of study volunteers who offered to go first. I was carried to the finish line by… Continue reading Our Shot
A Time of Thanksgiving
I have sacrificed for you. My body. There is a persistent rash on my right chin, red and rubbed raw from 14 hour days in scratchy masks under fluorescent lights. My nose, and the noses of my colleagues, have been squished, pushed, bent, and infected by the augmented gas masks in which we sometimes fight… Continue reading A Time of Thanksgiving
A fight to the death
Ruth Bader Ginsburg reportedly died at her home, surrounded by family. But she very well could have died at her desk. She could have been alone, reading a brief, slumped over until a housekeeper found her. She may have died at home but she worked to the death. A very small part of me is… Continue reading A fight to the death
It has to be someone
“He was mortified. He couldn’t believe he had missed it.” We had a new patient in the clinic, a 6-week-old healthy baby girl who had been struggling with feeding and latching. Her mother was not a new mother and had insisted over and over again to her pediatrician that something wasn’t right. On one occasion,… Continue reading It has to be someone
Nobody taught me to be racist
No one taught me to be racist. They didn’t have to. There was only one Black family in my neighborhood. The patriarch used to walk around the block every evening, just before dark, never after. I don’t even know his name. We just called him “walking man.” He always waved back. I never wondered why… Continue reading Nobody taught me to be racist
A Common Oath
My thoughts are pulled to dark eyes. Narrowed ever so slightly. Thoughtful. Skeptical. Mistrustful. We are in an exam room. In a clinic. Nondescript. I’ve seen these eyes in many different rooms. Different people, different places. Same eyes. One time, the eyes belonged to the aunt of one of my patients. She asked rapid fire… Continue reading A Common Oath
Take a deep breath
Things suck right now. We have this scary new disease rampaging through the world. We don’t have a vaccine or treatment or any of the modern medical marvels on which we’ve all come to rely. We waited so long to respond to this threat that it has now overwhelmed us. And scared us. And inconvenienced… Continue reading Take a deep breath
Nobody asked me... 