Art as a Body’s Blessing: A Reflection by physician-poet Sarah Piper

Even with the astonishing knowledge of medicine, the anatomy of an illness cannot fully be known from the outside. It takes an act of tender and careful acquaintance. And the only one who can truly map the illness of a living being is the occupant of an ill body. The geography of sickness is mysterious: its borders begin vague, its peaks conceal its valleys, its oceans rove and deepen and rearrange patterns of flood and firm ground.

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Learning to be Present for an Act of Dying by UCSF Medical Center professor Krishna Chaganti

It is the great privilege of medicine that we are asked to show up, constantly, albeit in a different role than a family member would be. To not look away is in the fabric of what we do. It is partly why the practice of medicine can be exhausting, electronic charting and reimbursement quibbles aside. We are asked as caregivers not to dispense always but to receive, to hear questions that we don’t want to reflect upon. It is our privilege to be present.

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We’re Invisible, Too: Showing Respect for Healthcare Workers by Cheryl Bailey

A retired gynecologic oncologist reflects on her own career and realizes how watercolor artwork can allow for even healthcare providers to be seen.

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Before and After: In Response to “The Face as an Organ of Identity” by California community doctor Katie Taylor

I work at a community clinic with patients who are homeless–there is the stigma of homelessness, and then there is the stigma of looking homeless.

Some patients of mine do not–or do not yet– appear unhoused. It is usually those who still have family that support them, who live in a car, who hold a job—running food for Doordash, picking for Amazon, sitting security—or who have not been homeless for so very long. But many of my patients do appear frankly homeless: a shuffling gait, a blanket draped around their shoulders, belongings pushed in a stroller, blackened teeth, leg wounds.

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On Subtraction: Understanding What's Lost and Gained in Clinical Encounters by Abby Wheeler

I recognized right away a kinship with Bessie Liu’s “Variations on the Negative Space Before Healing” (Fall 2023) and its use of subtraction to create new meaning; The poem by Liu, a third-year medical student at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. very much feels like a sister to my poem, At the Doctor’s Office, I Check, Yes, I Have Experienced the Following: Sudden Weight Loss (Fall 2023).

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A Transplant Patient's Reflection on Living While Dying

An artist and organ transplant recipient considers the isolation of her own illness experience and further explores these issues in her graphic medicine comic, published in this very journal.

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Being More Than Just a White Coat

A visual artist explores the trusting relationship she shares with her psychiatrist—and how that fiduciary manifests itself through her photodrawings and studio art.

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Desensitization to the Face of Death: A reflection by poet and medical student Catherine Read

A medical student examines the desensitization that imbues the study and practice of medicine—and advocates against it.

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The Tyranny of "Normal" in healthcare and healing by Dr. Kate Otto Chebly

A physician grapples with the tyranny of “normalcy” and how its unbending dictates can stifle the clinical encounter as well as patient care.

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On Imagined Boundaries: A reflection on "the body as a narrative instrument" by Tony Errichetti

A medical educator reflects on studio art recently published in the Intima and examines the boundaries—real or imagined?—often constructed between mind and body.

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