Skip to content

Medical Memoirs

Monday at the gym

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

An act of kindness

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

Turkish Delight rolls

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

A Christmas ghost story

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

New year, old stories

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

Things that could fall apart

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

Medical Student Disease changes with age, but doesn’t disappear

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