author of literary fiction with a southern drawl
I met a ten year old boy who has cologne but he says he keeps it in his drawer now. I took the bait. "Why do you keep it in your drawer?" Him "Well I was dating the prettiest girl in third grade until she gave me a list of books she wanted me to [...]
She'd taught everything they needed to know. She'd taught them compassion and trust.
I met a man who I'll never forget. He stopped me in the hallway to tell me how scared he was. He hated coming in, hated the word cardiology, hated the word echo. Hated my scrubs. He was over six feet of raw emotions carrying his new baby. I explained the test in the hallway [...]
He was stressed because of some new things going on that I wasn't aware of. For some reason I told him about Curly having seizures. I have no idea why that popped up but, it did.
Thanks to sixteen years in pediatrics and all of the great kids I met- I have hope that they are more aware, more considerate, and way smarter than we give them credit for.
I met a boy. Another underage kid with some detailed, well done tattoos. He was sixteen, but big for his age. With his height and his tattoos he could easily pass for eighteen - or twenty, but when he smiled at me he looked like a little boy. A kid. He was nervous so I [...]
He was broke and broken down, he said. "I didn't even have money to stay at a cheap motel, I was going to sleep in my truck. I was banking on winning enough money to get back home on."
How many times have you seen a teenage kid with tattoos and black circles under their eyes and jump to the conclusion that they are little trouble makers in the making?
This is another memory from my time in pediatric cardiology, and another favorite. You never know who is going to stand up when you go to the waiting room and call a patient’s name. In pediatrics, it’s not only the patient you get to meet, but also their families. This time, when I called the [...]
Okay, here goes. This is one of my all-time favorite stories from my job at Monroe Carrell Jr. Children's Hospital - aka Vandy Children's. About three years ago I called a patient back for her echo. She was around fourteen and adorable. She had gone a little heavy on the eyeliner, but her Carhart jacket [...]
