This Week in The Clinic

This Week in the Clinic: Pasta, Touch, and the Quiet Power of Connection

Not everything I learn comes from medical journals or patient charts.

Sometimes, the most profound insights arrive in a laugh over pasta — or in a single sentence spoken after years of emotional distance.

In this week’s Clinic Notes, I share two moments that stayed with me:

• One, from a patient rediscovering the healing power of touch with his wife — a simple hug that said more than any therapy ever could.
• The other, from a charming Italian gentleman who thanked us not with words, but with a steaming tray of Pasta Puttanesca — “the prostitute’s pasta,” he explained with a grin.

These stories aren’t about medicine in the traditional sense.
They’re about something just as vital: human connection, shared meals, and the strange, beautiful ways we care for one another in hard times.

This is what I carry home from the clinic. And I hope it stays with you, too.

📖 Read the full piece on Medium: https://medium.com/beingwell/clinic-notes-what-my-patients-said-this-week-b9d3dfe68d3b?sk=8f2dce65e83b56c7f06dd342dd8ae262

👨‍⚕️ Michael Hunter, MD
Radiation oncologist | Essayist | Author of Extending Life and Healthspan

I hope you enjoy the latest chapter of “This Week in The Clinic.”