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Jen Baker-Porazinski's story “Dying at Home” (Spring 2024 Intima) drew a vivid picture of a patient and her family, and the rhythm of her last few weeks. The love and dedication of her husband was especially moving.
I was also struck by the narration of Baker-Porazinski’s journey, as a doctor. Reflexively, at each visit, she listened to her patient's heart and took her blood pressure. Baker-Porazinski felt this showed that she hadn’t given up on her patient .
Read moreThe poem titled, “To the Woman at My Mother’s Funeral Who Thought It Was So Lovely that My Mother Died at Home” by Kathryn Paul (Spring 2022 Intima, Poetry), circles around my mind days after reading it. Paul’s poem eloquently speaks back to the assumption that it is always good to die at home, that home deaths are always peaceful. The literal hands-on work of caregiving—the cleaning of blood, mucus, urine and feces — is unspoken and generally done by women, whether paid or unpaid, and the writer, who in her bio calls herself “a survivor of many things” captures this in her poem.
Read moreIt 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.
Read moreAn internist reflects on his short story as well as a fellow physician’s personal essay and explores the complex issue of crossing implicit social boundaries in the clinician-patient relationship.
Read moreA nurse examines a clinical encounter through her poetry and appreciates the individual nature of care.
Read moreA writer and poet honors the memory of her mother by finding the parallels between her own work and the story of another mother and daughter.
Read more“A medically assisted death, such as I recount in my essay “Mercies, Or, the Mostly True Tale of a Narratively Assisted Death” (Intima Spring 2023), is the antithesis of a traumatic ending in an ER. It is highly anticipated, fully orchestrated and well rehearsed – on everyone’s part but my own.”
Read moreA writer reflects on her own mother’s experience with death and dying and argues for the greater recognition of palliative care in the clinical encounter.
Read moreWriting against the backdrop of her husband’s stay in hospice care, a retired professor examines how the reduction of human life in the midst of suffering can be summarized in succinct narrative.
Read moreAn 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.
Read moreA medical student examines the desensitization that imbues the study and practice of medicine—and advocates against it.
Read moreAn end-of-life doula reflects on their experiences with dying patients and concludes by offering three life lessons.
Read moreA retired surgeon reflects on a short story published in this journal—and in doing so, also contemplates how a comfortable and humane death can be fulfilled at the end of life.
Read moreA physician assistant ruminates about the cycle of life, of sunrise and sunset—and how we can better appreciate each waking moment.
Read moreCan we decide where we should die? A writer and former caregiver reflects on offering comfort during one’s final moments.
Read moreIn his video “Inside Anxiety and Depression,” William Doan’s words “writing is drawing” were a reminder of my existence as a poet and artist, and how the latter is an identity I felt uncomfortable with for a long time. I squirmed at the creation of “art” out of another’s suffering, even though my father’s illness felt like the only thing worth writing about. Now I sit with a different question: whether anyone’s suffering is entirely separate. I think owning suffering defeats the very aim of why we move it to articulation—to release it, to divide the burden of it, and to comprehend it with others.
Read moreWhen my sonnet “All Tuned Up” appeared (Spring 2021 Intima), I was asked to write about another piece published in the journal. I chose “I Picture You Here, But You’re There” (Spring 2020 Intima) by Delilah Leibowitz. Her poem and mine both explore how we think and feel about death.
Read moreNancy Smith is a retired Registered Nurse. Though she moved through the many domains of hospital nursing, most of her work took place in an Intensive Care Unit. Her co-workers noticed that she would place small strips of paper with poems by various authors on her locker from time to time along with the pictures of her family.
Read more“Would we rather die too soon or too late?”
The taboo of talking about death combined with a faith in the insomnia of medical technology leads many to err far on the side of dying too late.
Read moreIn the short story “Good As New” by Andrew Taylor-Troutman in the Spring 2020 Intima, the site of a teenager’s accidental death becomes a healing destination. At the little white cross beneath an oak tree, cancer is cured and the wounded throw off their wheelchairs. But when a line of pilgrims stretches into the next county, the miracle dries up.
Some, but not all, are restored. The inequity mirrors the disparities of our very own bodies— our health, even the lengths of our lives, are doled out unequally. There’s no earthly justice in our bodies.
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