My stethoscope is broken. The upper part where the ear pieces go into the tubing separated and I can’t find any way to fix it. Why don’t I just get a new one? Because my mother bought it for me when I graduated from medical school in 1994. I wore that stethoscope around my neck every single day I was in the clinic or in the hospital in Seattle. I listened to newborn babies with it. I listened to lungs by the thousands and I learned to identify the wheezing of airways tightening up in a young boy who couldn’t stop coughing when he played outside.
In the Spirit of Medicine features the essays of Dr. Arne Vainio, an enrolled member of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe and a family practice doctor on the Fond Du Lac reservation in Cloquet.
Ivy Vainio
