Despite the recent hurricane, Boston is a city with many charms. If I had forgotten, a walk through Beacon Hill on Halloween was a great reminder—little ghosts and goblins everywhere and old brownstones decorated to the hilt. As I looked up at something protruding from a large bay window on Mt. Vernon Street, I realized… Continue reading A Boston Story
Author: miranda
All the Pretty Horses are Gone
Somewhere in times own space There must be some Sweet pastured place Where creeks sing on And tall trees grow Some paradise where horses go, For by the love that guides my pen I know great horses live again. ~Stanley Harrison It was a tough week for the ponies, this one. Earlier this week, Sandy… Continue reading All the Pretty Horses are Gone
The Things His Father Taught Him
If you had asked me before today, I would have told you that I was beyond being inspired by cancer stories. There are so many of them, and I have tried to share the ones that have been most meaningful to me with you. But today was different. Today, Teddy Kennedy Jr. gave the keynote… Continue reading The Things His Father Taught Him
When I Was Young
I am in Boston, on the twenty sixth floor of the Copley Marriott Hotel, waiting out the storm. I have not been to ASTRO, my professional society meeting in three years. I passed when the meeting was in San Diego two years ago, and Miami last year so that I could come to Boston, because… Continue reading When I Was Young
Six Pounds of Hamburger
Six pounds of lean hamburger, two roasted chickens stripped to the bone, two pounds of green beans, a large steamed pot of brown rice, a couple of pounds of hard grated cheddar cheese and I am ready to go. You might think that I am laying in provisions for a trip to the wilds of… Continue reading Six Pounds of Hamburger
Table for One
We’ve been very busy lately, and so it was 6:30 this evening before the last patient was escorted to the linear accelerator to be treated. She had had a compression fracture of a lumbar vertebra last week due to metastatic breast cancer, and had been in excruciating pain despite a procedure called a vertebroplasty, where… Continue reading Table for One
For Lu
I am good at many things, but I have never been particularly good at training dogs. Never saw much point in it really, since I love the laid back nature of hounds, deerhounds in particular. Apart from occasionally eating all of the seatbelts and the bumpers off my Suburban, and removing saplings from the yard… Continue reading For Lu
Perspective
When I was young and foolish, or very smart depending on your perspective, I married a man who is five and a half years older than me. When my husband was my age (and never trust a woman who will tell you her age, but between you and me I am 58), he started to… Continue reading Perspective
You Can’t Tell a Book
Apparently I am not the only one who has learned a few things from my patients. My husband surprised me and wrote this over the weekend, and I thought you might like to read it. “ I was a pulmonary physician at a Boston hospital when I first met Martin, a patient with advanced… Continue reading You Can’t Tell a Book
A Room With a View
Space is always at a premium in any bustling medical office, and my department is no exception. In the four years that we’ve been open, the patient volume has nearly doubled. We’ve added a second physician, a second nurse and several additional radiation therapists. My office manager does financial counseling in her tiny office that… Continue reading A Room With a View