I have been practicing medicine since completing my residency in June 2000. It baffles me that to this day I still hear comments from patients, families and loved ones that we physicians often cannot relate to their concerns, their health struggles and their ailments because we are doctors, because we harbor medical knowledge, because “we are not human.”

In Carol Scott-Conner’s piece “Sisters Under the Skin” (Spring 2024 Intima), Scott-Conner details, in poignant and personal fashion, how she was diagnosed with, dealt with and battled through the struggles of breast cancer. Throughout her piece, I the reader feel her apprehensions, her reservations and her raw emotions as she deals with a disease process in which she — a breast cancer surgeon — is an expert. Through her narrative, she conveys that although she is a physician, she too is a human who suffers the same ailments as her patients. The humanistic quality Scott-Conner portrays in her piece intrigued me and inspired me, both as a reader of her work and as a writer myself.

In my piece “Rekindling a Physician’s Soul” (Fall 2024 Intima), I detail a scene where I portray my own personal struggles with burnout and with the emotional and moral tolls the COVID-19 pandemic inflicted upon me and my colleagues. In doing so, I hope to convey to the reader that we physicians also battle with emotional, moral and spiritual destruction, much like our own patients. I also hope the reader acknowledges that we physicians are just like them — human.

I had the great honor and privilege of meeting Dr. Scott-Conner, first by telephone and many months later, in person. I vividly recall a phone conversation with her in March 2022 at the pinnacle of my burnout, at the tail end of the COVID-19 pandemic. She inspired me to pursue further career options and, especially, encouraged me to pursue my lifelong aspirations of creative writing. I later met Dr. Scott-Conner, along with my professor and MFA program director (Laura Hope-Gill) at The Examined Life Conference in Iowa City in October 2022. Together, they both persuaded me to enroll in the Creative Writing MFA program at Lenoir-Rhyne University.

Although we are polar opposites (she the academician and I the bedside clinician), I feel we both portray the human in humanity as we detail our own personal struggles. I never had the privilege or honor of working with Dr. Scott-Conner. However, in the two short years I have known her, she offers a wealth of knowledge, inspiration and most importantly, spiritual, ethical and mentoring support to a morally wounded physician and budding writer.—Zoran Naumovski

Zoran Naumovski is a hospitalist physician in Southern Ohio who has lived, worked and cared for his local community members for over twenty years. Naumovski graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English (Creative Writing) from Ohio State University in 1992 but only recently started writing, realizing the therapeutic effects of the written word. He is enrolled in MFA program at Lenoir-Rhyne University/Narrative Medicine track. His essay “Rekindling a Physician’s Soul” appears in the Fall 2024 Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine.