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Dreams of a Doctor's Wife

Massad, Stewart

Last Updated: Jan-28-1997
Annotated by:
Moore, Pamela
Coulehan, Jack

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Short Story

Summary:

The story is told from the perspective of an obstetrician's wife. She encourages her husband as he finishes school and gets his first job. Then she becomes pregnant. She tells of the changes in her body and in her perspective. Her husband is busy treating other women, while she goes to childbirth classes alone. He arrives just at the end of the birth. She wants him to be with her more often, but understands his need to be with his patients.

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Raising the Dead

Selzer, Richard

Last Updated: Jan-28-1997
Annotated by:
Coulehan, Jack

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction

Genre: Essay

Summary:

Selzer developed Legionnaire's disease and was comatose for 23 days in 1991. In this short book, he describes his illness and prolonged convalescence. The time of his stay in the ICU is lost to him, so he invents the story of what (might have) happened when he was comatose and delirious. In fact, he invents his own death and resurrection.

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Healers

Massad, Stewart

Last Updated: Jan-28-1997
Annotated by:
Moore, Pamela

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Short Story

Summary:

The male narrator works in an abortion clinic. On a daily basis he faces taunts from protesters and the bloody fragments of fetuses. His only consolations are his loving dog and a female lover. He says that he sticks with the job because he loves women and can't turn them down when they ask for his help. One day, he comes home from work to find that a protester has killed his dog. His lover comes and comforts him.

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Casualties

Massad, Stewart

Last Updated: Jan-28-1997
Annotated by:
Moore, Pamela
Coulehan, Jack

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Short Story

Summary:

An intern is on duty in a cancer ward. He especially deals with leukemia. He tells one of his patients that he understands how she feels as she cries, facing death. She turns on him, telling him that he can't possibly understand. A short time later, the intern grows weak and ill. He is diagnosed as having leukemia. He spends months in the hospital, feeling helpless as his old classmates treat him. He makes them promise to let him die peacefully when his time comes. He dies when an intern accidentally pierces his spleen while trying to tap his lung.

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Old Doc Rivers

Williams, William Carlos

Last Updated: Jan-28-1997
Annotated by:
Moore, Pamela
Coulehan, Jack

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Short Story

Summary:

Old Doc Rivers is an old-time doctor who believes in prompt decisions and quick action. Although he is recognized as an alcoholic and drug abuser, the people in the community still hold him in high esteem and often turn to him for help when all else has failed. His story is told from the perspective of several people in his home town after his death.

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A Night in June

Williams, William Carlos

Last Updated: Jan-28-1997
Annotated by:
Moore, Pamela
Coulehan, Jack

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Short Story

Summary:

The doctor-narrator has been present at the birth of seven of Angelina's eight children. She is now in labor with the ninth. The mother is an Italian immigrant. The labor is prolonged, but without complications. The doctor spends much of the evening peacefully asleep in the kitchen.

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Jean Beicke

Williams, William Carlos

Last Updated: Jan-28-1997
Annotated by:
Moore, Pamela
Coulehan, Jack

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction — Secondary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Short Story

Summary:

The doctor-narrator is working in a hospital during the Great Depression. The pediatric ward cares for many children left there by families unable to feed or care for them. The doctor sometimes thinks the children should just be allowed to die. One particular child captures his interest. She has a high fever and he cannot figure out why. Her condition becomes progressively worse and she dies. It turns out that she had meningitis. Perhaps he could have saved her if he had made the correct diagnosis. Yet, he doesn't feel guilty.

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Outpatient

Warren, Rosalind

Last Updated: Jan-28-1997
Annotated by:
Squier, Harriet

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Short Story

Summary:

This is a light-hearted short story about an attractive, middle-aged female hypnotist who has a minor respiratory infection and visits the doctor. At first she hypnotizes the nurses so that they will put her in the examining room without a wait, and convinces them that her vital signs are different from what they had originally measured.

After this initial, good-natured experiment, the narrator waits a full 45 minutes for the doctor. He is abrupt and impersonal. Out of frustration, she hypnotizes him, and learns that he is afraid to be warm with patients, and is afraid to take time with them, because he needs to maintain control. She has him undress, put on a gown, and then leaves him to shiver in the exam room. She tells him that he will never forget what this humiliating experience feels like.

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Disappearing

Wood, Monica

Last Updated: Jan-28-1997
Annotated by:
Donley, Carol

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Short Story

Summary:

The narrator starts out at 300 plus pounds (disgusted with herself and remote from her husband). She takes swimming lessons and gradually acquires confidence in herself as she loses weight and inches. She sometimes refuses sex with her husband, starts to stand up for herself. But her swimming and diet become obsessive; she continues to lose weight and wants to disappear.

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Doctors and Other Casualties

Massad, Stewart

Last Updated: Jan-28-1997
Annotated by:
Wear, Delese

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Collection (Short Stories)

Summary:

This is a collection of short stories by a young physician, Stewart Massad, who completed a residency in obstetrics and gynecology and a fellowship in gynecologic cancer. The stories are all written in the first person, all physicians. The subjects include the physical/emotional demands of residency ("Fatigue"), especially as they strain a marriage; the motivations of a doctor who runs an abortion clinic ("Healers"); and a young doctor facing his own fatal illness and his experience as a patient ("Casualties"). While the stories do portray the difficulties (and often angst) of training, they do so without the despair/cynicism often found in other accounts of the same experience.

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