Article: Battle Scars

Battle Scars

face=+Italic; Sometimes, our wounds draw us closer togetherface=-Italic;

By Roberta Israeloff

"Lie back," the surgeon says. My widowed mother, 78, stripped to her waist and wearing the boxy blue paper vest that opens in the front, obeys. The daughter of immigrants, she's never stopped needing to prove to doctors what a good patient she is, convinced that blind obedience just might stave off catastrophe.

"You can take a seat here," the nurse says to me, indicating the chair positioned between the door and the examining table: the caretaker's chair. All over the country, friends of mine are being ushered into similar chairs. Just as our parents once took us to doctors, filtered ...

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