Showing 321 - 330 of 906 annotations tagged with the keyword "Doctor-Patient Relationship"

Fat Lady

Yalom, Irvin

Last Updated: Jan-05-2009
Annotated by:
Wear, Delese

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction

Genre: Case Study

Summary:

This is the story of Betty, a 250-pound, 5-foot-2-inch woman who comes to the psychiatrist-narrator's office to be treated for her eating disorder. What makes the story more than the sad tale of a depressed, obese woman is the immediate disclosure of the narrator that he is "repelled" and "disgusted" by fat women, that his "contempt surpasses all cultural norms."

Nevertheless, he decides to treat Betty, who successfully manages to shed huge amounts of weight and come to terms with many of the problems leading to her obesity. The narrator, too, confronts his own excessive biases so that readers are left with a sense that Betty "helped" him too.

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The Spirit of the Place

Shem, Samuel (Stephen Bergman)

Last Updated: Jan-01-2009
Annotated by:
Kohn, Martin

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Novel

Summary:

After his divorce and a year of traveling the world with Doctors Without Borders, Orville Rose returns to his home town of Columbia, New York upon learning of his mother's death. He discovers upon his return that in order to receive the benefits of his mother's will he must stay in this "Hudson River town plagued by breakage" for one year and 13 days. What transpires over that time is the heart of this novel which includes Orville's love story with a single mom (who has her own physical breakage), a renewed relationship with his mentor, Dr. Bill Starbuck (the inventor of the cure-all Starbusol who leaves Orville to travel the world with his wife Babette, before returning to town to receive Orville's care as he dies), and the often hilarious account of Orville trying to care for the citizens of Columbia. Thrown into this mix of new and old relationships is the floating presence of his dead mother as well as the in-his-face presence of Orville's boyhood arch-nemesis who now is riding high in Reagan's "Morning in America" as Columbia's candidate for congress.

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Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain

Menger-Anderson, Kirsten

Last Updated: Dec-30-2008
Annotated by:
Miksanek, Tony

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Collection (Short Stories)

Summary:

New York is the setting for thirteen linked stories that profile a long line of curious and sometimes loony doctors who are passionate about medical science but often lack common sense and good judgment. Beginning with Dr. Olaf van Schuler in the seventeenth century and continuing over more than 300 years with generations of his descendants (the Steenwycks), missteps and madness loom large in this inquisitive and peculiar medical family.

Most of these doctors share common goals: They strive to eliminate pain. They attempt to expand the scope of medical knowledge. They seek the soul. In their quest for cures and enlightenment, many of these physician-scientists, their relatives, and patients embrace off-beat diagnostic techniques or unproven remedies: phrenology, magnetism, bloodletting, hypnosis, radium-emitting apparatus, electrical shocks, and lobotomy.

In "The Siblings," a doctor performs a lobotomy on his sister. She dies a few months after the operation. In "The Story of Her Breasts," a woman develops rheumatoid arthritis that may or may not be caused by her silicone breast implants. She also experiences guilt and worry after encouraging her 18-year-old daughter to undergo breast augmentation. In "The Baquet," hope is undeniable and a miracle cure is mesmerizing. In the book's final story, "The Doctors," two physicians - a father and his daughter - grapple with their strained relationship and the man's progressive deterioration that might be due to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

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Cracked Marbles: Life's Lessons for a Maine Surgeon

Palmer, Tom

Last Updated: Nov-21-2008
Annotated by:
Willms, Janice

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Collection (Short Stories)

Summary:

This collection of physician experiences, colored by the necessity of the writer to protect  his patients, gives a glimpse into a medical practice of a time past-remembered by some of us, not  known by our younger colleagues.  Dr. Palmer, aka Harry Byrd, takes the reader into a rural setting and  the practice of surgery bounded by the time and the place.  Dr. Byrd, trained in Boston as a surgeon,  chooses to practice in rural Maine and to work with the culture and needs of this environment.  He  treats the reader to a viewpoint of another era of medicine and, at some level, asks the readers to  consider the lost or fading qualities of the pre-tech doctor/patient relationship.

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Before the Operation

Gervex, Henri

Last Updated: Nov-14-2008
Annotated by:
Aull, Felice

Primary Category: Visual Arts / Painting/Drawing

Genre: Oil on canvas

Summary:

Also called "Dr Péan Teaching His Discovery of the Compression of Blood Vessels at St Louis Hospital," the scene takes place in a room in which the walls are interrupted by tall windows.  Daylight shines through the windows, illuminating an attractive naked young woman in the right foreground who lies seemingly anesthetized -- her eyes are closed although there is no sign of anesthesia -- on a bed of some kind that is draped loosely with sheets.  Her body is pointing away from the viewer, her head facing away from us, her long hair falling casually over the near edge of the bed.  Her breasts are fully visible, especially her right breast, while her lower body is covered.  A seated man grasps the wrist of her bent right arm, perhaps taking her pulse. His hand and arm rest directly on the woman's body -- on her abdomen and groin area.  He appears to be reading from a paper.

In the left foreground is the edge of a table that holds some surgical instruments and a glass jar containing what may be anatomic specimens.  An imposing sideburned man stands to the left, above the head of the bed and the woman.  Holding a surgical instrument in his right hand, he gesticulates with his left-hand, his mouth partly open: he is lecturing to the people in the room, some of whom are looking directly at him while others talk to each other.  Two in the audience are women -- a nun barely visible in the far background, and a nurse standing behind two men who are near the bed.  The men are all dressed in street clothes.

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The Light Within: The Extraordinary Friendship of a Doctor and Patient Brought Together by Cancer

Ramondetta, Lois; Sills, Deborah

Last Updated: Nov-13-2008
Annotated by:
Coulehan, Jack

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction

Genre: Memoir

Summary:

Dr. Lois Ramondetta was a fellow in gynecologic oncology at M. D. Anderson Hospital in 1998 when she met Deborah Rose Sills, a professor of comparative religion, who had undergone surgery for ovarian cancer the year before and was re-admitted for small bowel obstruction. Ramondetta and Sills "clicked," and their relationship developed over several years from doctor-and-patient to close friendship and eventually co-authorship of this memoir. The women tell separate stories (Sills's are in italics), which interact more and more as the relationship progresses. Ramondetta writes about marriage to a medical classmate, its rapid unraveling under the stresses of residency, her infant daughter, and the complexities of her life as a single mother. Sills' sections tell of a highly regarded professor accepting a life with cancer, but struggling against reinterpreting herself as sick. Some of their interactions take place at MD Anderson Hospital, as Sills returns for a bone marrow transplant and later for management of recurrences and complications.

Their friendship also blossoms at their respective homes in Houston and Santa Barbara. Among the stories they share is that of Ramondetta's courtship and marriage to a local disk jockey, and the rock-solid support of Sills's family.  In addition, they begin to collaborate, first on a lecture and then on an academic paper about spirituality and ovarian cancer. This dialogue eventually leads to the book itself, completed only after Sills's death in 2006.

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A Better Angel

Adrian, Chris

Last Updated: Oct-03-2008
Annotated by:
Miksanek, Tony

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Short Story

Summary:

A drug-addicted doctor, a dying father, and a cantankerous angel constitute a less than holy trinity. Carl is an impaired physician who is hooked on drugs. He happens to have a guiding angel following him around, but she is no guardian. Instead, she is moody and provides no protection. She offers warnings and advice. Carl met his angel when he was six years old. After being stung by wasps and experiencing an allergic reaction, she didn't lift a finger (or wing) to help him.

The angel is prescient. She can foretell who will grow up naughty or beneficent. She knows when a person will die. She tells Carl that not everyone has an angel. Only those individuals destined for greatness get an angel, but some people choose not to heed the suggestions of their spiritual attendants.

Carl is a pediatrician. He cheated in medical school and on his certifying examination but is pleased with his choice of careers: "I make my living praising the beauty of well children. I love babies and I love ketamine" (p121). His father is dying from metastatic lung cancer. Their relationship is terrible. To make matters worse, Carl cannot stomach sick adults.

His three pregnant sisters implore Carl to care for their father after discharge from the hospital. Carl reluctantly leaves San Francisco and heads to Florida. He takes his father to chemotherapy sessions, but the oncologist thinks it's time to stop further treatment. Carl administers painkillers to his dad and frequently consumes some of the prescribed morphine and Percocet for his own pleasure. The two men hardly speak to each other.

Carl's angel repeatedly implores him to reach out to the dying man. She knows that emotional and physical connection will heal both men. Carl's father longs for a storm but the weather won't deliver his wish. One night, Carl stages rainfall with the aid of the garden hose. He rests his head against his dad's chest, and they fall asleep. When morning arrives, Carl awakens and discovers that his father died during the night. The angel is weeping in the room.

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Something for the Pain

Austin, Paul

Last Updated: Sep-29-2008
Annotated by:
McEntyre, Marilyn

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction

Genre: Memoir

Summary:

After several years as a firefighter, Paul Austin decided to return to school and become a doctor.  Both his training as firefighter and a somewhat late start at medical school gave him an unusual perspective on his selected specialty-emergency medicine.  The book chronicles a wide variety of surprises, learning moments, and challenges from his years in the emergency room.  These are interspersed with vignettes about the interrupted home life of an emergency physician rotating into night duty three to four times a month.  The pace is lively and the stories confessional in the best sense-rich with reflection on what he has learned, often at great cost to his resilient wife and three children, one with Down syndrome.  A strong theme in the book is the importance of developing strategies for sustaining humanity and compassion even under intense pressure to be quick, clinical, and detached. 

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Safe

Wigfall, Clare

Last Updated: Jul-30-2008
Annotated by:
Miksanek, Tony

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Short Story

Summary:

Babies in Great Britain are vanishing - from homes, the park, and even a moving car. There is no explanation for the disappearances. The count of missing babies reaches 83 and still not a single body has been found.

Lella follows the news closely and is quite worried about her own baby. The mother clings to her daughter. One day, Lella spots mouse droppings in the kitchen. She telephones an exterminator but they are too busy to come to the house for at least one month. She next sees a large rat in the living room. Then Lella finds a nest of rodents and flushes it down the toilet.

The distraught mother becomes a recluse. She cannot sleep and has no energy. The doctor evaluates her. He prescribes some blue pills. He notes that "her hormones are still unsettled and her body weak" (107). She only pretends to swallow the medicine. Lella's husband takes a leave from work to care for her.

A tired Lella puts her baby in a cradle and later notices a rat next to it. She picks up a butter knife on the bedside table and is poised to stab the rat. Her husband enters the room, grasps Lella's wrist, and tells his wife it is only her imagination. He is correct. There is neither a rat nor a baby in the cradle, only a folded blanket.

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The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Amalric, Mathieu; Schnabel, Julian; Croze, Marie-Josée; Seigner, Emmanuelle

Last Updated: Jul-08-2008
Annotated by:
Garden, Rebecca

Primary Category: Performing Arts / Film, TV, Video

Genre: Film

Summary:

Julian Schnabel’s film version of Jean-Dominque Bauby’s memoir, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (see annotation), is a re-imagining of the book that offers new approaches to teaching, even while it misses some of the aspects of the book that are so critical to educating medical and nursing students about the experiences of patients. Like Bauby’s book, Schnabel’s movie tells the story of a high-level editor at French Elle who has a stroke and is paralyzed except for the ability to blink one eye and to move his head slightly. Bauby (Mathieu Amalric) awakens from a coma to find himself in a hospital and unable to move or, at least at first, to communicate.

A speech therapist (Marie- Josée Croze) teaches him how to blink in response to letters as she reads through the alphabet, so that letter by letter Bauby can communicate. Friends and family learn this method, and eventually Bauby decides to write a memoir of his experiences using this technique. His publisher finds an amanuensis to transcribe the portions of the book that he first memorizes and then communicates to her painstakingly. The film portrays the process of writing the book, Bauby’s experiences in the hospital with health care professionals, family, and friends, and also some past experiences, such as caring for his aging father and taking a trip with a girlfriend to Lourdes.

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