Author: colleen arnold

Colleen Arnold is a family physician, widow, mom and freelance writer living in Lexington, Va.

The Christmas Pizza: Filling up on Joy

/ colleen arnold / 12 Comments

Between over-decorating, over-eating and over-spending, the Christmas season can be overwhelming. Add the stress of creating a perfect Christmas dinner and its easy to feel cheerless and exhausted. It doesn’t have to be that way, as I learned the Christmas Neil was in the hospital.

It was only three months after his diagnosis, but deep down we all knew it was his last Christmas. Things weren’t going well with his chemo, his appetite and energy were fading, and the team of doctors on his case bounced him back and forth because no one wanted to face the Christmas elephant in the room. In typical Neil fashion, he was excited about the holiday even in his hospital bed. I had no intention of leaving him alone, so there were no decorations at home other than the few I set up before he went into the hospital. There was no opportunity for shopping except for the gifts I managed to purchase on-line. Wrapping and Christmas cards? Nope. Not even Christmas dinner. Continue reading →

Me and the Miracle of the Pink Bear

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“Why didn’t you quit?” a young medical student recently asked me. Her eyes suggested she could relate to the med school challenges I had just shared with her. “I knew being a doctor was what I wanted to do, and that made the difficulties just bumps in the road,” I explained. Later, as I thought about it more, I realized it was also because there were people along the way who made it worth all the struggles.

One was an 8-year-old boy whose cancer was advanced by the time I met him. Hospitalized for a bone marrow transplant at the university where I was an intern, his body had rejected the treatment, and he was dying. I was the one assigned to draw his blood every morning, and I was terrible at it. My only saving grace was that he was so sick he didn’t always wake up as I stuck and re-stuck every morning. Continue reading →

Big Jim and the Great Bahama Adventure

/ colleen arnold / 6 Comments

I am a naturally cautious person and not typically enthusiastic about adventures, but one of the best days I ever had was one worthy of a reality TV show. It was winter at home, and while my sister watched our daughters, Neil and I went on our first cruise.

Although I would have been content soaking up the sun from the lido deck and watching the shows in the grand ballroom, Neil wanted to explore Nassau once we docked. The cruise ship offered several tours, and I pointed out the ones I thought would be fun. “No,” he said. “They’re for tourists. I want to see the real place, the real people.”

We piled out of the ship with everyone else, but while they headed off to ask about tour buses, Neil walked down the road to a giant Bahamian man who stood outside a long, white, limousine. “How much for a tour of the real island?” Neil asked him. “The real island? You sure, man?” They haggled over a price for a day that included a traditional show, food and a scenic drive, then shook hands, and Big Jim (yes, that was really his name) ushered us into the back of the limo.

“Isn’t this nice?” Neil asked as we turned on the air conditioning and settled in.
It was nice, for a while. Then we drove off a main road into a poor neighborhood where skinny dogs wandered around sniffing trash, and people watched us from their front porch rockers. When we stopped in front of a run-down, empty appearing grocery store, the limo looked incredibly out of place. Big Jim got out, and Neil rolled down his tinted window. “Where are you going?” Continue reading →