Envelope Stories — 1000 word short stores – available in RI
Stories by Therese Zink M.D.
Warwick Wonder Dog
Treasure Hunt
Over the past thirty years, rural health care in the United States has changed dramatically. The stereotypical white-haired doctor with his black bag of instruments and his predominantly white, small-town clientele has imploded: the global age has reached rural America. Independently owned clinics have given way to a massive system of hospitals; new technology now brings specialists right to the patient’s bedside; and an increasingly diverse clientele has sparked the need for doctors and nurses with an equally diverse assortment of skills.
The Country Doctor Revisited is a fascinating collection of essays, poems, and short stories written by rural health care professionals on the experiences of doctors and nurses practicing medicine in rural environments, such as farms, reservations, and migrant camps. The pieces explore the benefits and burdens of new technology, the dilemmas in making ethically sound decisions, and the trials of caring for patients in a broken system. Alternately compelling, thought provoking, and moving, they speak of the diversity of rural health care providers, the range of patients served in rural communities, the variety of settings that comprise the rural United States, and the resources and challenges health care providers and patients face today.
“In this collection we hear the voices of men and women who provide care and facilitate healing in modern rural settings. . . . These storytellers, essayists, and poets live in small towns across the rural United States. They marvel, grumble, cry, grapple and meditate on the beauty and challenges they encounter in their healing practices.” —from the Introduction.
Confessions of a Sin Eater –
by Therese Zink M.D.
As a family physician, the act of listening and holding a patient’s story is a vital part of healing for both the patient and the healer. The telling of a story gives the storyteller the ability to shape his/her experience and to gain some control over the events. The generous listening and receiving of the story heals both the storyteller and the doctor/healer. In this collection, Dr. Zink explores the burden, mystery and privilege of doctoring. She shares stories gathered during her twenty plus years of practice in a variety of venues–while caring for patients in a domestic violence shelter, on the Navajo reservation, during a high-risk volunteer stint in Nazran, Ingushetia (Russia), on mission trips in Latin America and in her clinic in rural Minnesota.
Confessions of a Sin Eater lays bare the human heart of the author and reveals the best and worst of our journeys as humans. She examines the burdens of bearing witness and the challenge of seeing the impact of the darkest act–where one human intentionally harms someone they love. She explores the limits of her treatments and medications for healing, the uncertainties of her craft, the reality that some of her actions cause pain and that her mistakes can harm and ultimately kill her patients. Unbeknownst to her patients, she recognizes the unexpected gifts they have given her. She reflects on her own woundedness and how ministering to the wounds of her patients has in turn healed her. Reflection is important to avoid burn out and makes better physicians.
Discussion questions are included.
Also available on Bookshare: An Accessible Online Library for people with print disabilities
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Becoming a Doctor: Reflections by Minnesota Medical Students – Edited by Therese Zink M.D.
Caring for patients is a privilege. During medical school, students glimpse “the wonder, terror and exaltation of being on the edge of being” (Anatole Broyard, Intoxicated by My Illness) and come to terms with the responsibility of this privileged position. Watching and assisting patients as they grapple with the challenges and joys life dishes out provides insight into our own struggles, if we are paying attention.
The poets and writers in this collection are listening. While attending lectures or dissecting cadavers in the anatomy lab, rounding on the hospital wards, scrubbing-in in the operating room or seeing patients alongside physicians in outpatient clinics in the metropolitan area or small towns of the US or in the hospitals of distant countries, these students reflect on their experiences.
Future doctor Hammer examines what professionalism is and is not. Krohn and Endrud share insights about healing from their own experiences as patients. Spampianto and Cook reflect on caring for patients in other countries and how this gives them insight into their interactions with patients here at home. Others examine being and ministering to patients different from themselves, a reality in today’s global world. Each writer and poet grapples with the new role—the privilege and responsibility of observing the events that make up a human life. Such reflection is an important skill in medicine.
My thanks to the many students who submitted poems and stories; there was not enough room to include all of them. Appreciation to those who helped to edit, design and layout the print collection and to Dennis Kelly and the Minnesota Medical Association Foundation for recognizing the importance of creative reflection in medicine and agreeing to fund this effort. Special thanks to Carmen Peota for her advice at many junctures along the way. May this collection inspire future medical students to remember the wise words of Sir William Osler:
“The student begins with the patient, continues with the patient, and ends his/her studies with the patient, using books and lectures as tools, as means to an end.”
—Aequanimitas, 1905