Saved by Emily Silverman, MD
Baby Girl
We’re less interested in diagnoses that don’t run in families and may not even bother recording those that have afflicted people close to the patient but not related to him or her by blood: a spouse, stepparent, or adopted sibling.
Suzanne Koven • Letter to a Young Female Physician: Notes from a Medical Life
But if I didn’t work in the clinic I feared another kind of erasure: the denial of the doctor I had been for most of my adult life. Where did this feeling come from? Medical school. Part of the curriculum, no less essential than anatomy and physiology, is the teaching that physicians do not turn away from human suffering. Others may avoid the sickl
... See moreSuzanne Koven • Letter to a Young Female Physician: Notes from a Medical Life
As my parents aged, I found myself torn between being their child and being their caregiver, as so many people do when their parents decline.
Suzanne Koven • Letter to a Young Female Physician: Notes from a Medical Life
Martha’s not my child, I’d say, as if I was joking, as if my feelings weren’t hurt. I would say: She’s my roommate. Now I can say, she was not my child, but she was the first member of my family. Martha was my best friend and my witness. I had been on my own for so long, swimming upstream, and now I had a partner in it. There’s a bright line betwee... See more