How does a Jewish doctor prepare for the holidays? By decorating her house with festive medical specimens, of course! All have been retrieved from human bodies, many during autopsies. I’m a hoarder with a medical art fetish. It started with my turquoise and heart valve necklace. Now my IUD Christmas tree. What should I make next?
Photo credit: Spark Boemi
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On birthdays and holidays, many girls get chocolates or flowers from their fathers, but my dad is a little different.
One day I receive a package of Godiva gallstones. Wow! I imagine glistening gallbladder sacs sliced open, oozing with coconut cream, cherry chunks, or nutty nougat, and then I lift the cover off the gorgeous gold box to discover seventeen clear containers with tight-fitting lids. Arranged artfully inside—like specialty chocolates—each tiny jar a surprise: from purple-pigmented pebbles to tan tapioca pearls, tricolor treasures to jaundice-yellow gems. One has a solitary three-centimeter rock. Ouch!
An inflamed gallbladder is painful. But who gets gallstones? In medical school, they taught us a simple way to identify the typical patient. Just remember the four Fs: Fat, Fertile, Females, in their Forties. Now I’m excited every time I see heavy middle-aged women walk into the clinic.
I smile as a big lady named Belinda walks in. She says, “I got shooting pains in my belly going to my right shoulder blade, Doc.”
On her exam I note pain in the right upper quadrant of her abdomen. I try to hide my excitement. “I bet you have gallstones. Let’s get an ultrasound to confirm the diagnosis.”
“Really? Gallstones?” she asks.
“Wait, wait, wait. I have to show you something.” I open my gold box. “Look Belinda! Aren’t they beautiful?”
“I got gemstones in my belly?”
“Yep!”
(Excerpt from: Pet Goats & Pap Smears)
***
I often wonder: why am I a doctor?
The truth is, I want to live in the real world, a world without pretense, a world where people can’t hide behind money or status.
Illness uncovers our authenticity. Doctoring satiates my need to be witnessed and to witness the raw, uncensored human experience. I crave intensity.
Like an emotional bungee jumper, I live to inhale the last words of a dying man, to hear the first cry of a newborn baby, to feel the slippery soft skin in my hands, to cut the cord and watch a drop of blood fall on my shoe, to wipe a new mother’s tears, to introduce a father to his son, to hold a daughter’s hand as she kisses her father good-bye one last time.
I am a doctor because I refuse to be numb. I want to live on the precipice of the underworld, the afterworld, to look into patients’ eyes, to free-fall into an abyss of love, despair, death and then wake up tomorrow and do it all again.
Maybe doctoring fills a hole, a void. I doctor for connection, to be needed—to be loved.
(Excerpt from Pet Goats & Pap Smears)
***
People stare. They gather around. “You can touch it, but guess what it’s made out of,” I say.
One woman whispers, “It’s not part of an egg carton, is it?” Then a man behind her shouts, “It’s a condom, blown out and rolled up, ya know,” just as another lady interrupts, “Wait! It’s the flower-pod thingies from an opium poppy.”
No. It’s not dried foreskin, goat or antelope horn, eye sockets, calamari, human colon slices, spinal column things, or the penis bone from a sea lion.
It’s ten heart valves from ten human hearts. Three strands of turquoise. And me.
As I open the small Ziplock bag, ten prosthetic heart valves tumble onto my bed. Six disc valves, two ball valves, and two porcine valves. I wrap strands of turquoise around, through, under, and over them until I find a way to string them all together.
Raised in a morgue, I worked alongside my father, the city medical examiner. Dad keeps mailing me stuff he finds inside people. It’s December 2012 and I’m digging through a cardboard box filled with pacemakers and heart valves, when I decide to make a necklace for my birthday.
I’m Sagittarius. My birthstone is turquoise–a stone of wisdom and spiritual growth. Turquoise strengthens the throat chakra and opens communication between the heart and spoken word.
In medicine, technological advances have surpassed our spiritual wisdom. We know heart disease is caused by hardening of the arteries, but it is rare that a doctor will discuss the spiritual impact of a hardened heart. We implant heart valves to correct restricted blood flow, but it is rare that a doctor will allow love to flow freely to a patient. Health care requires a balance of heart and head.
My turquoise and heart vale necklace reminds me to get out of my head a bit and speak from my heart.
***
Want a starched, white coat or a faded pair of Levis?
Want a serious face or a warm, welcoming smile?
Want a quick visit or a long discussion?
Guess what? You CAN have exactly what you want from your doctor IF you tell your doctor what you want! Before opening my clinic, I invited people in my community to design their ideal clinic with an ideal doctor. I collected 100 pages of submitted testimony, adopted 90% of feedback, and I opened their clinic one month later!
My patients want to walk into a warm, cozy office with overstuffed chairs and pillows. They want to feel like they are visiting a friend who happens to be their doctor. They want warm, muted colors, sacred symbols, flowers, and faeries. They want laughter and love. No mention of white coats.
So now I’m a friend who happens to be a doctor. I wear faded Levis and greet patients with a smile and sometimes balloons and a party hat. Patients often leave with a hug coupon to share. I wear glitter on my face. Some days, on my forehead I have a bindi dot. It’s a third eye, a sacred symbol, that allows one to see beyond the visual cortex and into the soul.
Now it’s your turn. Design your own doctor.
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Doctor revived after suicide. Here's what he says.
