The River Styx with Jenny Tiskus
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What disclaimer does the show give about patient privacy and speaker opinions?
At the Nocturnous, we are careful to ensure that all stories comply with healthcare privacy laws. Details may have been changed to ensure patient confidentiality. All views expressed are those of the person speaking and not their employer.
As we move through our medical training, we change. We see things that we can't unsee, we learn things that we can't unlearn, and sometimes our sense of humor comes into play in ways that don't quite feel kosher. I'm Emily Silverman and this is The Nocturneus, stories from the world of medicine. In our final episode of the season, medical student Jenny Tiskis shares three stories of death that shaped her identity as a budding doctor. After the story, we talk about her rural upbringing and how she developed the confidence to apply to medical school. Here I give you Genny Tiscus.
I'm a first year medical student, which means that of all the people in this room, I might be the least qualified to help you in an emergency. Like If you were choking on a giant shrimp. I'm at the stage of my training where I'd probably stand back in a frenzy, diagnosing you with rare diseases, uh sweating heavily from my mustache area. I'm a beginner here and I don't have anything to teach you, but I do have some questions to ask. I'd like to talk to you about three deaths that mattered to me and about laughing in the face of them, about Gallo's humor. And I'd like to ask your expert advice about how to keep my soft acreage intact. I want to know a little bit about. What stands between the emotional land where I am now, where the deaths that I've witnessed have been deeply intimate and personal?
And where you are now. Where death is a part of your job. Which brings me to the first death. It was a stranger's fetal demise. I was shadowing a doctor emphatically, not at my home institution. Um categorically not someone that you know. And she called me up to a computer screen in her office and she said, Jenny, hey Jenny, come look at this. And I should mention here that immediately prior to this, she had politely ignored it when I turned green and wobbled during the first ever C section that I witnessed. Hey Jenny, come look at this. Um and on her computer screen there was an image from an ultrasound and it showed a severe fetal abnormality. I'm no expert, but even I could tell that what I saw was a sadness.
It's SpongeBob SquarePants, she chirped.
How does Jenny introduce herself and set up the theme of humor in medicine?
And that was a cruelly accurate description of the figure on the screen. But later. She was a consummate and kind professional when she comforted that grief stricken would be mom. She held her hand. She was a good doctor. She had let me Just a a whelp of a student shadow her. Um she smiled at every newborn. She called every squishy simian little neonate beautiful and she meant it. Um and so I didn't tell you the SpongeBob anecdote to vilify this doctor. In fact I'm worried that I might turn out to be her. And I think that maybe the joke she told was the sort of thing that Sharon might say, rowing across the river sticks, because some jobs just change you. Every dip of the oar and every death. And in fact, as a a medical greenhorn, uh most of the deaths that I've seen have been very intimate, familial, personal.
I took care of my badass cowgirl grandma Phyllis as she died in rural Wyoming. Um, there were no beds in the hospice, there were no beds in the nursing home, and it was a five-hour drive to her oncologist appointments in Billings. I moved in with her as a twenty something woman with no medical experience. And just tried to help as best I could. I slept on her couch and I crept into her room at night to see if she was breathing, which she really hated. Um I sweat through my blouse as I drove her giant dodge ram pickup truck to the emergency room once when she had a torrential nosebleed that we both worried that she'd die from. with a hastily assembled pincher made out of um popsicle sticks and a rubber band in order to stem the flow.
Grandma Phyllis was dying of leukemia. And sometimes in my worst moments when I was exhausted and terrified and she was in pain and I didn't know how to help and she was getting worse and there wasn't care.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What disclaimer does the show give about patient privacy and speaker opinions?
0:00–2:48
2
How does Jenny introduce herself and set up the theme of humor in medicine?
2:48–11:23
3
What was the first death Jenny witnessed and how did it affect her view of medical professionalism?
11:23–17:39
4
How did caring for Grandma Phyllis shape Jenny’s sense of purpose and expose caregiver burnout?
17:39–24:26
5
What impact did Jenny’s father’s death have on her personal life and medical career decisions?
24:26–30:53
6
How do the hosts explore the role of gallows humor and its limits in clinical settings?
30:53–35:18
7
What advice do listeners and experts give for maintaining humanity while training as a doctor?
35:18–37:05
8
How does the episode wrap up and what resources are recommended for medical students?
37:05–37:05