Another extract from my memoir – meeting my first child patient in my Finals I’ve distinguished myself through four medical school years by never setting foot inside Barts Children’s Unit. At twenty-six years old, the very notion of sick children sends shivers through me, chilled a few more degrees by Sister Kenton’s […]
Posts in the Children category:
children – in health and in illness – have been part of life forever, and loom large in almost all my writing
My memoir
I’m delighted to say my medical memoir has just been released by Wising Up Press http://universaltable.org/librarynonfiction/journeysthousandheroes.html Bookstore: http://universaltable.org/bookstore.html It is available from their bookstore (at a 25% discount) for $15 US, but after July 16 it will be on Amazon and other internet outlets at the standard price of $20 Journeys with a Thousand Heroes: A […]
Unheard stories
Art has been a healing force throughout human history. Shamans have always used it to evoke healing power for individuals and whole communities. Our forebears lived at the interface of visible and invisible, and used art to make sense of the universe that surrounded them. And art remains a vital human nutrient. Our world remains […]
Letters to Myself 10
Letters to Myself 10 216 Clydesdale Road Antigonish, Nova Scotia May 7th, 2016 Dear Johnny-Boy Your last letter is the fifth one I have had from you. So I’m beginning to think this miracle isn’t going to end for a good few years. We’ve still got a long way to go before we […]
First Blood, Hektoen, 2016
First Blood Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, London, 1970 I’m astounded I’ve landed one of the coveted G.O.S. senior resident jobs: the academic nature of the place immediately daunts me. Everyone bows down to its status as the foremost pediatric research hospital in Europe, perhaps the world, the faculty all confining their work to one or […]
Boarding School
Writing to myself as a young boy has me revisiting long-forgotten memories. So I’ve decided to borrow another bit from my memoir to recall the awful day I was shipped off to boarding school at aged twelve – a rite of passage for many middle-class English boys. I’ll leave you to judge what lasting effects […]
Journeys with a Thousand Heroes
Journeys with a Thousand Heroes Introduction to my Memoir It was my mother’s precipitate death from cancer that lit the spark for my life caring for children with cancer. They in turn became my mentors and companions on my journey to reclaim—as did Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz—my full intelligence, heart, and home. The […]
Letters to Myself 4
216 Clydesdale Road Antigonish Nova Scotia January 1st, 2018 Dearest Johnny-Boy Happy New Year! It was lovely to get another letter from you. This time I found it in a book of poems I just happened to feel like reading. I have my own study with hundreds of books in it, so it was […]
Letters to Myself 3
Ravenswood, 47 Bristol Road, Weston-super-Mare, Somerset. Saturday, October 31, 1948. Dear John, Thank you very much for your letter. It was lying under the bed in the middle of my train set when I got up yesterday. I don’t know how it got there, but I know it wasn’t there when I went to […]
Twins
My blog for today – April 22 – is a true story Marilyn Gerriets reminded me of after church today. It’s a tale of karma I hadn’t thought of in twenty years. As always, I’ll put a link on my facebook. Twins Thirteen-year-old Renee had to compose an essay about American health care for a […]