On June 26, I put a “Wednesday Cake” in the oven. Every few weeks I bring homemade cake or muffins to the teaching room. I try to do it often enough so that it becomes a tradition but not so often that it becomes an expectation. For the past 40 odd years on July 1, I have welcomed new family… Read More »Five survival tips for a career in family medicine
My very first clinical clerkship was in surgery at the Royal Victoria Hospital. It was two months filled with learning, new experiences and colourful characters. Perhaps I learned so much because I never left the hospital. We worked under conditions which are now unthinkable. The surgical team was, for some reason, very short handed that month. We were only a chief resident,… Read More »The red shoes
I am feeling even more scattered than usual this lately! My ADHD brain is being tested with multiple demands and my attempts to work part-time seem to be thwarted again and again. What is part-time for a family doctor these days? My three half days in the clinic seeing patients and doing clinical supervision, becomes almost three full days when… Read More »Scatterbrained
I was on call at the Montreal Children’s Hospital one spring night in 1979, when I was a student. The Children’s was just across the square from that temple of hockey, the Montreal Forum. The day had been normal. I was busy with several admissions to the sixth-floor ward where I was the clinical clerk. My resident was a good… Read More »The good old hockey game – in the emergency department
A few weeks ago, I was working out at the Cummings Centre gym. I have a great fondness for the Cummings Centre, the Golden Age, as my parents called it, or “Mineh Cloob” as my Bubby called it. As I walk into the building, I can see the bright red sculpture my great aunt created, still dancing while dusted with… Read More »Monday at the gym
I honestly wish that I could write this story in French, the language in which most of the action happened. My French language skills, while certainly functional in a medical setting, were eroded by my eight years in Toronto. My written French, never particularly strong, is not up to the task of being grammatical at the same time as being… Read More »A visit from the Office de la langue française
I pressed on the woman’s belly and the pads beneath her filled up with blood and clots, again. The uterus hardened briefly and then slowly rose and softened under my hand. I had gone through the protocol. The nurse, resident and obstetrician and I worked efficiently together, using drugs and fluids. I was hesitating to do what I needed to… Read More »An act of kindness
My Auntie Doris is my father’s sister and one of the great Jewish cooks of our time. Now at 96-years-old she no longer uses the stove, but when I was a child in the early 1960s and a teenager in the ’70s, my aunt was famous for her holiday cooking and baking. We would arrive at Auntie Doris and Uncle… Read More »Turkish Delight rolls
At age nineteen I volunteered at the Montreal Youth Clinic on Ste Famille St. in Montreal. I did screening and counseling for young people who came to the clinic for healthcare. I would discuss contraception, STIs, and other issues. Sometimes I would translate, often I would chaperone the moonlighting residents who made up the majority of our medical staff during… Read More »A Christmas ghost story
Three and a half year-old Emma is climbing up the hill at the park. In her rainbow striped shirt and white hat, she marches to the wading pool. It is a hot day in May and we find that the pool is empty. She looks at me with deep disappointment, then her face takes on its bulldog expression. “Where is… Read More »Passing the family medicine torch from mother to daughter