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Description
Your Heart Is the Size of Your Fist draws readers into the complicated, poignant, and often-overlooked daily happenings of a busy urban medical clinic for refugees.
An Iraqi journalist whose son has been been murdered develops post-traumatic stress disorder and mourns his loss of vocation. A Congolese woman refuses antiretroviral treatment for her new HIV diagnosis, and instead places her trust in Jesus. Two conservative Muslim Iraqi women are inadvertently exposed to pornography when a doctor uses Google Images to supplement a medical discussion. By turns humorous, distressing, and moving, these stories offer insight into the people seeking a new life while navigating poverty, language barriers, and neighbours who aren’t always friendly.
This riveting collection of true stories from Dr. Martina Scholtens is filled with hope and humour, and together make up a deeply moving portrait of how one doctor attempts to provide quality care and advocacy for patients while remaining culturally sensitive, even as she wrestles with guilt, awareness of her own privilege, the faith she was raised with, and vicarious trauma after hearing countless stories of brutality and suffering.
In the spirit of Louise Aronson and Atul Gawande, Scholtens’ writing is based on her personal experiences and explores the transformative moments in which a clinical doctor-patient relationship becomes a profound human-human connection.
Contributor Notes
Martina Scholtens, MD, MPH, CCFP worked for ten years as a family physician at Bridge Refugee Clinic in Vancouver, Canada. Her book about this work, Your Heart Is the Size of Your Fist, was published in 2017. She is a clinical instructor with the Faculty of Medicine at UBC. In addition to clinical work, she has lectured on mixing art and medicine, done extensive advocacy work around federal health insurance for refugees, and acted as a consultant when BC settled 3,000 Syrian refugees in 2016. She is a recipient of the Mimi Divinsky Award for History and Narrative in Family Medicine. She is now doing a psychiatry residency in Victoria, BC, where she lives with her husband and four kids. For more information, visit www.martinascholtens.com.
Editorial Review
“Both an eye-opening account for Canadians wanting to understand the challenges facing refugees and a strong argument for refugee health, including mental health, to receive dedicated treatment and funding .… Your Heart Is the Size of Your Fist is also about the person in the white coat: a mother trying to find balance between the personal and professional, an a doctor whose patients expand her notions of what a doctor should be.” —Jade Colbert, Globe and Mail
“Your Heart Is the Size of Your Fist is a pleasure from start to finish: timely and timeless, intimate and wise, compelling and informative. Scholtens offers an insider's view of doctoring, powerful stories of refugees creating new lives in North America, and a personal account of balancing motherhood, medicine, and self.” —Louise Aronson, founding co-director, University of California San Francisco Medical Humanities and award-winning author of A History of the Present Illness
“Scholtens’ memoir is a transformative exploration of a brave, young doctor from a stable, nurtured environment coming of age in a healthcare system unprepared for this growing and struggling underprivileged group who arrive on Canada’s doorstep with so little in the way of material assets yet so rich in experiences. Skillfully through story, she portrays challenges refugees face when adapting to life in BC and her own frustration with how little she believes she helps them. The reader witnesses her discovery and reaction to stories of wounded survivors, from worlds she can barely conceive. Her loving family she portrays as saving her from delving too far into the trauma that she witnesses. Yet she struggles with the competing demands of motherhood and medicine as the two threaten to merge into one, as mother to mother she celebrates with them.” —Dr. Maureen Mayhew, clinical professor, University of British Columbia School of Population and Public Health
“Impressive—a wonderful read but also a deft exploration of multiple current concerns, from how we care for refugees to how doctors balance their professional and personal obligations and care for themselves.” —Marcia Day Childress, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Medical Education, University of Virginia School of Medicine
“Captivating … Several stories highlight what being a physician entails, including being a healer, advocate, and educator, and often going above and beyond for your patients.… I urge anyone interested in primary care or refugee health, along with anyone who would like an honest view about providing culturally sensitive health care, to give this book a read.” —Yvonne Sin, MD, British Columbia Medical Journal
