Cell 2 Soul: The Humane Health Care Blog

Success Against the Odds

When Victoria Ford was a little girl growing up in Memphis, her family was so widely known, strangers would see her at the grocery store, notice a resemblance and ask, “Are you a Ford?”

But in 2005, when Victoria was still in elementary school, the family cracked apart. Her father was arrested and later convicted of taking a $55,000 bribe. An F.B.I. undercover video posted online shows him stuffing money into his suit coat and pants.

Shortly thereafter her mother, an alcoholic, was convicted of drunken driving three times and imprisoned. In an essay titled “To a Restless Little Brother Calling for Mama in His Sleep,” Victoria wrote:

You may not understand this now, but she isn’t coming back. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Day after that. And no, she hasn’t left anything behind — a sticky note on the refrigerator door or a quick message for the answering machine, her voice a distant echo calling your name and mine. Nothing. I’m sorry because I know you get scared when the wind blows hard like this at night, when the shadows on your ceiling shuffle as if they’ve been alive all this time. But I’m right here. And the sun will not rise for another few hours and the birds outside are still sleeping —remember Johnjohn, your favorite cardinals nestled in the Sweet Gum tree down by the mailbox? The babies wrapped in small, ruby feathers. That’s how you should be right now. Dreaming and resting and not worrying.

Read this amazing story, Finding Voice in the Pain of a Family and It's Fall, in the NY Times, Monday, May 30, 2011.

The Hospice Flute

by Elaine Whitman

"The sign in the Salt Lake City Public Library read "Make Your Own Native American Flute: One-Week Class by Master Flute-Maker Bill Hughes." I was intrigued. I had been playing the NAF for six years, and loved the easy free-form improvisation of the instrument; so different from the classical silver flute I had studied so seriously when I was in my teens. I registered for the class"... Read on: Download NAF

You can contact Ms. Whitman at EW Email.

Listen to Ms. Whitman's NAF: Download DecemberSnow

Author Bio:  Elaine Whitman started to play the classical flute when she was nine years old and studied with virtuoso Julius Baker when she was in high school. When she got to Boston University, Elaine took a new direction in life that led to becoming a professional educator –– first as an elementary school teacher and then as a consultant to business and industry. This was followed by using her talents as as writer and speaker in the field of domestic violence awareness. She began playing the Native American Flute in 1998. In her so-called retirement years, she expresses herself creatively with music and photography. She brings her music into hospice and poetry recitals with her husband, Neal, who took up poetry in his retirement. Together they create haiga – her photographs combined with his haiku poems. Elaine and Neal met getting their Doctor of Education degrees at Columbia University's Teachers College and, on May 20, 2011, celebrated their 33rd wedding anniversary.

An Introduction to Chronic Pain (TED)

This is a valuable introduction to the subject of chronic pain. 8 minutes TED talk. Elliot Krane: The Mystery of Chronic Pain

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Marginal Notes: Literary medical weblogs

 

The Doctor by Sir Luke Fildes, 1887

There is much more to the art of healing than just closing a surgical incision, dressing a wound or writing a prescription.  Medical practice is after all the stuff of life; and because literature historically has been an attempt to capture the essence of what it means to be alive, it is small wonder that the two complement each other so beautifully.

None of us can be all things to all men; but we can certainly make some fumbling attempts to alleviate suffering in the world and bear one another’s burdens as best we can.  As Rilke so aptly put it, perhaps if we learn to love the questions themselves, we can one day live on into the answers. more»

 

Brian T. Maurer has practiced pediatrics as a Physician Assistant for thirty years.  His "Marginal Notes" column appears periodically in the Cell2Soul Blog. The title "Marginal Notes" is taken from a quote by Henry David Thoreau: "I love a broad margin to my life."

Marginal Notes: Blue Collar, Blue Scrubs

It’s a fine spring day, the last of April. I’ve been sitting outside in the back yard all afternoon, plowing through Michael Collins’ memoir Blue Collar, Blue Scrubs: The Making of a Surgeon.

Throughout his medical training, while immersed in the seemingly overwhelming tedious task of rote memorization, Collins lapses into philosophical thought. “What, then, makes us human? A beating heart? A cogitating brain? Or is there something more, something, for want of a better word, we call a soul?”  more»

 

Brian T. Maurer has practiced pediatrics as a Physician Assistant for thirty years.  His "Marginal Notes" column appears periodically in the Cell2Soul Blog. The title "Marginal Notes" is taken from a quote by Henry David Thoreau: "I love a broad margin to my life."

An Unconquerable Soul

In 2006, the legendary film critic, RogerEber, began treatment for thyroid cancer.  Enduring procedure after procedure, and spoending over a year in hospital, he eventually lost the lower part of his jaw -- and with it the ability to eat and speak.

This TED video is a tribute to the human spirit.  It's better than Prozac.  When you have time, spend a few mintutes with Ebert and his team.  Can link to TED or watch it here.

Marginal Notes: Cloud Illusions

 The Beach at Sainte Adresse by Claude Monet

We waited on the tarmac in the mid-morning rain. Droplets beaded up and slid down the thick window panes. Outside, men in slickers stowed the last of the baggage into the belly of the plane. As they drove away I watched the air brakes and aileron panels move along the surface of the wing.

Soon we were racing down the runway, picking up speed as the jet engines screamed in our ears. Raindrops morphed into tiny rivulets, streaking back horizontally across the glass. We lifted off and climbed into a thick bolt of white cotton. more»

 

Brian T. Maurer has practiced pediatrics as a Physician Assistant for thirty years.  His "Marginal Notes" column appears periodically in the Cell2Soul Blog. The title "Marginal Notes" is taken from a quote by Henry David Thoreau: "I love a broad margin to my life."

Concierge Medicine

There is an old Yiddish saying:  "If the rich could pay the poor to die for them, the poor would make a very good living."  Well, it is coming to pass.

Concierge medicine is a relationship between a patient and a physician in which the patient pays an annual fee or retainer. In exchange for the retainer, doctors provide enhanced care. Other terms in use include boutique medicine, retainer-based medicine, and innovative medical practice design.

The NY Times had an eye-opening article on this topic on April 30, 2011:  Putting Your Doctor, or a Whole Team of Them, on Retainer.  It is worth reading to see where this trend is going.  The rich are, in this case, co-opting physicians' time that might better be spent with poor suffering humanity. 

Osler wrote:  "The practice of medicine is a calling not a business."  Clearly, some arrogant, greedy physicians do not adhere to his sentiment.

 

Marginal Notes: Tender Bowels

 
Hippocrates

Splanchnon, the Greek word for the intestinal organs, was frequently used by the ancients to indicate affections, tender mercies, and compassion.  While the Greeks regarded the bowels as the seat of the more violent passions, the Hebrews thought them to be the source of our tender affections.

We still carry the vestiges of this idea in modern English idioms when we refer to “gut feelings,” “going with your gut,” “gutting it out,” or having “butterflies in the stomach.”  Somehow the gut and our feelings seem to be intricately bound together. more»

 

Brian T. Maurer has practiced pediatrics as a Physician Assistant for thirty years.  His "Marginal Notes" column appears periodically in the Cell2Soul Blog. The title "Marginal Notes" is taken from a quote by Henry David Thoreau: "I love a broad margin to my life."