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The Patient Who Taught Me to Care Twice
It was an ordinary day on duty in our dialysis centre. One of my regular patients had arrived for his usual hemodialysis session. I was quite close to him — I often joked with my patients, tried to make them smile. Dialysis can feel endless, and a little laughter lightens the hours. He usually came in with high blood pressure, so I always checked his BP before starting. But that day, the machine was not working. I told myself I would keep an eye on him instead, checking in frequently to see if he looked uncomfortable or showed any signs of hypertension. The session went smoothly at first. Everything seemed…
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The Whiskey Scent
It was three o’clock on a Saturday morning in the autumn of 2006 when the phone rang.I had unexpectedly taken over the night shift from a colleague who had “thrown his back out” fixing something on his farmhouse that evening. We’d gone out for dinner to celebrate something — I can’t recall what exactly. Only that the wine had been excellent, and that I might have had a glass or two more than usual. That happens to me once or twice a year — though only when I’m not on call. In those days, Dutch newspapers were full of stories about “coma drinking” — young teenagers ending up in hospital…
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A Very Humbling Night
I was in the final stages of preparing for my MRCEM exam in Emergency Medicine, while also working as a Medical Officer in the Accident and Emergency Department of a tertiary-care hospital.Our hospital stood a little outside the city, so the late-night hours were usually quiet. Cardiac patients were rare; if one did arrive, we gave first aid and referred them to a nearby cardiac centre.One morning, around 5:30 a.m., a 35-year-old woman was rushed in, a known hypertensive with heart disease, gasping for breath. On assessment, she was pulseless, with no cardiac activity. I started CPR immediately and asked one of the staff, more experienced with intubation, to pass…
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The Wonder Doctor
It was morning handover in the doctors’ room, a space that during weekends doubled as overflow from the men’s ward. An empty, but still unmade, bed had just been pushed out.We were three Dutch doctors working here in Serowe, Botswana: Eric, Willem, and me. All three of us were young, at the start of our careers, with our families in tow. Eric had been on call over the weekend, and after finishing his formal handover he added:“That bed was for János Kovács. Maybe you’ve seen him in the private clinic? He owned the Hard Liquor Store.” Neither Willem nor I had treated him, though we both knew the name.János was…
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When Smoking Saved a Life
My first posting with Médecins Sans Frontières was in northern Uganda, not long after Idi Amin had been driven from power. For those who don’t know him: Amin was a brutal dictator whose eight-year rule left the country scarred by violence, fear, and neglect. His shadow still loomed large, and the hospital where I was sent — in Moyo, on the Sudanese border — was little more than a crumbling shell. We worked with what we had: simple operations, endless deliveries, and rows of sick children. There was no electricity, and my predecessor had left before I arrived, so I learned my patients by reading the thin paper charts clipped…