Kristen dies suddenly on a Sunday night. We hear about it on Monday when her younger sister Jeannie comes in for dialysis, but Kristen doesn’t. Kristen was eight-years-old, and shared a genetic defect with Jeannie. Both girls require dialysis and need kidney transplants. Transplants are costly, even with insurance, so their […]

      Gallows humor and a healthy level of dissociation when necessary have carried me far in my career. During my nights in the ICU a decade ago I learned these as helpful tools of the trade. Death was all around us and we did our best to strip it off with our scrubs […]

Sally Helmi, 2020, I Don’t Know How Much Longer We Can Do This. “a reflection break”, 2020 the experiences that i am a part of are so intense that i often don’t know how to navigate how much space they hold in me and how long they can live in me. despite how exhausting being […]

You think it won’t happen to you because you are too smart for that. Your life, your terms. You think? “Just put me on the iceberg when I can’t clean my own ass” you say, tossing back a Manhattan, thinking that’s a pretty funny joke that we are like Eskimos. <Are we sure they even […]

Like everyone else on the front lines during these bizarre times, we all go through daily scares and tensions, but it’s a bit of a different ballgame when you’re dealing with mental illness. Most of our patients are clinically paranoid, delusional, depressed, suicidal, hostile, etc. as it is, but COVID-19 has been heightening these for […]