I was on call at the Montreal Children’s Hospital one spring night in 1979, when I was a student. The Children’s was just across the square from that temple of hockey, the Montreal Forum. The day had been normal. I was busy with several admissions to the sixth-floor ward where I was the clinical clerk. My resident was a good… Read More »The good old hockey game – in the emergency department
A few weeks ago, I was working out at the Cummings Centre gym. I have a great fondness for the Cummings Centre, the Golden Age, as my parents called it, or “Mineh Cloob” as my Bubby called it. As I walk into the building, I can see the bright red sculpture my great aunt created, still dancing while dusted with… Read More »Monday at the gym
I honestly wish that I could write this story in French, the language in which most of the action happened. My French language skills, while certainly functional in a medical setting, were eroded by my eight years in Toronto. My written French, never particularly strong, is not up to the task of being grammatical at the same time as being… Read More »A visit from the Office de la langue française
I pressed on the woman’s belly and the pads beneath her filled up with blood and clots, again. The uterus hardened briefly and then slowly rose and softened under my hand. I had gone through the protocol. The nurse, resident and obstetrician and I worked efficiently together, using drugs and fluids. I was hesitating to do what I needed to… Read More »An act of kindness
My Auntie Doris is my father’s sister and one of the great Jewish cooks of our time. Now at 96-years-old she no longer uses the stove, but when I was a child in the early 1960s and a teenager in the ’70s, my aunt was famous for her holiday cooking and baking. We would arrive at Auntie Doris and Uncle… Read More »Turkish Delight rolls
At age nineteen I volunteered at the Montreal Youth Clinic on Ste Famille St. in Montreal. I did screening and counseling for young people who came to the clinic for healthcare. I would discuss contraception, STIs, and other issues. Sometimes I would translate, often I would chaperone the moonlighting residents who made up the majority of our medical staff during… Read More »A Christmas ghost story
Three and a half year-old Emma is climbing up the hill at the park. In her rainbow striped shirt and white hat, she marches to the wading pool. It is a hot day in May and we find that the pool is empty. She looks at me with deep disappointment, then her face takes on its bulldog expression. “Where is… Read More »Passing the family medicine torch from mother to daughter
These days I wake up early, often by 5:30 a.m. I am eating yogurt and berries at 6 a.m. when the phone rings. “Your patient came back. She’s fully dilated. Do you want to come in?” I think for a moment. It is Rosh Hashanah after all. I want to go to synagogue, but I have been waiting for this… Read More »New year, old stories
Watching the erosion of reproductive rights now happening in the United States makes me fear that all those rights we fought so hard for when I was young could just be whisked away and we could find ourselves back again where the rights of women and the freedoms of LGBTQ+ people are denied. When I was a medical student back… Read More »Things that could fall apart
In my long and winding journey as a physician there have been a few books and papers that have really informed or changed how I interact with patients. Patient Centered Medicine, by Stewart et al, is one such book. And the first chapter of Balint’s The Doctor the Patient and his Illness, when he speaks about how true healing can only happen when… Read More »Medical Student Disease changes with age, but doesn’t disappear