Showing 11 - 20 of 54 results for Harriet Squier

Sudden Intimacies

Radetsky, Michael

Last Updated: Nov-24-1998
Annotated by:
Squier, Harriet

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction

Genre: Essay

Summary:

A physician recounts the experience of caring for a small child with an incurable disease. The father brings in a bright stuffed dinosaur for the child and despite all expectations, the child opens one eye and reaches for the toy, then lapses back into a coma. The family and physicians cry together. A week later the child dies. The narrator uses this example to argue that it is the intensity of a physician's experiences and the privilege of being a part of them, rather than whether or not the experience is happy, that gives medicine its meaning and satisfaction.

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Tears

Krauser, Paula

Last Updated: Nov-24-1998
Annotated by:
Squier, Harriet

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction

Genre: Essay

Summary:

A pediatric intern encounters her first dying child. Her initial response is to care for the child, hold him, and try to comfort him. She is told by her attending physician that this behavior is unprofessional. When she cries in response to her stress and grief, she is told she will never be an effective physician. The narrator then describes how she ultimately came to terms with her impulse to cry at stressful times, and how she interacts with patients in her current practice.

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Touching

Hellerstein, David

Last Updated: Mar-05-2002
Annotated by:
Squier, Harriet

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Short Story

Summary:

A third year medical student rotates through a gynecology clinic at the university. The attending Dr. Snarr, is supposed to treat his patients' chronic pelvic pain, but only seems to inflict pain himself. The student/narrator wants to comfort the patients, but lacks the knowledge, skills, and authority. The student also feels uncomfortable with issues of sexuality and intimacy with these female patients.

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Hunting Season

Greenberg, Joanne

Last Updated: Nov-24-1998
Annotated by:
Squier, Harriet

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Short Story

Summary:

A mother reflects on her life in the country and on her son who has a seizure disorder. She is nervous about allowing him outside to play because it is hunting season, and because she is worried he may have another seizure and get hurt. She seeks to balance her need to protect her son from harm with his need to grow up as normally as possible.

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By That I Mean Angina Pectoris

Burnham, Gregory

Last Updated: Aug-26-2005
Annotated by:
Squier, Harriet

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Short Story

Summary:

This very short story is told from the point of view of an adult child who has just learned that his (or her) father has been taken to the hospital for angina pectoris. The narrator recounts in a telegraphic form what it is like finding his (her) way through the hospital to the doctor and finding out the verdict about the father's condition.

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Cotton in My Ears, excerpt from

Warfield, Frances

Last Updated: Nov-17-1998
Annotated by:
Squier, Harriet

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction

Genre: Autobiography

Summary:

The author describes her experience of growing up with hearing loss. In this excerpt, she describes herself as a six year old orphan who is being raised by two aunts. Young Frances tries to hide her hearing loss from her aunts because she is afraid they will recognize that she is inferior or useless and get rid of her. She invents an invisible friend who chooses to hear what he wants to and who doesn't feel ashamed of this disability.

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One Last Time

Russell, Lori

Last Updated: Nov-24-1998
Annotated by:
Squier, Harriet

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Short Story

Summary:

The wife of a man dying of cancer takes him to Yosemite for one last visit before his death. During this trip she thinks about how her life has been changed, both by marriage and by her husband's illness. Yosemite represented a tradition for them where they vacationed with their children each year. As the narrator reflects on how her life will change after her husband's death, and on the needs she has suppressed over the years, Yosemite begins to represent a new kind of tradition for her which will give her nurturance in the future.

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Mercy

Solwitz, Sharon

Last Updated: Nov-23-1997
Annotated by:
Squier, Harriet

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Short Story

Summary:

A woman looks back on how a rape 15 years earlier still affects her life, her relationships with others, and the way she feels about herself. The event itself is recounted piecemeal throughout the story as the narrator describes the dissolution of her relationship with Lenny, whom she was seeing at the time of the rape, and compares her experience to the gang rape of an acquaintance. She compares Lenny with her husband, Dan, and the ways they dealt differently with the event; Lenny was helpless and passive, her husband, strong and protective. The narrator is caught between the desire to strike back and the need to submit to the mercy of others in order to stay alive.

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Last Things

Spark, Debra

Last Updated: Nov-23-1997
Annotated by:
Squier, Harriet

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction

Genre: Essay

Summary:

The author recounts the last months of her sister's life as she slowly died of breast cancer in her mid-20's. The narrator and her sister, Cyndy, renegotiate their relationship and family roles throughout the illness. The narrator addresses the issue of living despite the prospect of dying, and of trying not to die while in the midst of attempting to live one's life. The narrator also recognizes the centrality of desire (in its broadest sense) in our lives, and describes our guilt about satiating our desires, the sense of loss from not ever really satiating them, and the inability to satisfy the desires of another.

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Eighteenth-Century Medical Illustration: The Infant in Its Little Room

Townsend, Ann

Last Updated: Aug-17-2006
Annotated by:
Squier, Harriet

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

A pregnant woman describes the harmony she feels with the fetus inside her during her pregnancy. She thinks of this fetus as a child already separate from her but in sympathy with her. She compares her feelings with an eighteenth century illustration of a pregnant uterus with a little man inside. She finds many similarities with this depiction.

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