What is the physician’s role in the clinical encounter, and what is their responsibility to the patient? A physician reflects.
Read moreOn Witnessing Another’s Pain—Or Is It Our Own?
When one exists in close proximity to the pain of another, whose testimony is it? A scholar reflects on the shared experience that can result from suffering.
Read moreHands-On versus Hands-Off Medicine: Reflections of a Surgeon
Inspired by two pieces written by medical students, a surgeon reflects on his own experiences in medicine and the role that human touch plays in the clinical encounter.
Read moreWritten in the Stars: A Reflection on Youth Cancer by Will Moody
For every young adult diagnosed with cancer, a time comes when we ask ourselves a question.
Why?
Why did this happen to me? Why now? They are not questions we want an answer to, but as humans, we crave finding meaning in our lives. We do it because the alternative is accepting that cosmic randomness determines our very breath.
Why did this happen to me? Why now? They are not questions we want an answer to, but as humans, we crave finding meaning in our lives. We do it because the alternative is accepting that cosmic randomness determines our very breath.
Read moreBedside Mannerisms: Finding the time to care by pediatrics resident Vidya Viswanathan
In medical training, there is an increasing didactic focus on empathy and professionalism. In many of these sessions, I have learned certain skills: Sit down at the patient’s level. Ask them open-ended questions. Don’t interrupt. Use an in-person, video or phone interpreter. These skills are helpful. But often, they run up against the great limiting factor in many of our clinical encounters: time.
Read moreSirens and Hummingbirds: How Poetry Can Make Sense out of the Mundane by MS4 Anna Dovre
As a medical student, I've gotten into the habit of saving folded-up scrap paper from the hospital and stealing moments during rounds or lectures to jot down scattered words and phrases. They're things I can't get out of my head, like "white cheddar Cheez-its® and stale cigarettes" or "I'm not a bad Mom." Snippets that don't make sense on their own, but together they have a strange sort of alchemy. The distilled essence of a day's humanity. A tragicomic piece of found poetry. After my first year of clinical rotations, I decided to sit down and see what I could cobble together to find out whether meaning would come if I made space for it. What arrived was, if not meaningful, at least interesting, and it eventually became "Self Portrait of the Artist as Medical Student."
Read moreLauds: A solitary prayer at the scrub sink by pediatric surgeon Kristen A. Zeller
In the hospital, routines carry us through our days and lend a semblance of structure to the chaos of lives disrupted by illness. Some routines happen on a large scale—weekly gatherings of departments for Grand Rounds, hospital leadership meetings for safety huddles, the hustle of getting a cadre of operating rooms started nearly simultaneously in the predawn. Other routines are more intimate—the sequenced process of doing a sterile central line dressing change, the donning and doffing of PPE outside a patient’s room, the one-one-one nursing handoff at shift change.
Read moreWhen the “Clock of the Living” Runs Down: A Reflection by clinical social worker and chaplain Betty Morningstar
The fractured stories at the end of life often reflect an ineffable but powerful experience of creativity, insight or even revelation. These opportunities arise because the dying person doesn’t see time according to the clock of the living. Imagine how much one could conceive of were time not of the essence.
Read moreThe Shit Poems: A Reflection by Drea Burbank
I am interested in the juxtaposition between my use of poetry to shed traumatic experiences and memories from medicine, and the description of William Carlos Williams by Britta Gustavson (“Re-embodying Medicine: William Carlos Williams and the Ethics of Attention,” Spring 2020 Intima).
Read moreThe Limits of Love: A Reflection by Carmela McIntire about Anorexia, Overeating and Fulfillment
Disordered eating occupies a spectrum—anorexia nervosa at one end, morbid obesity at the other. Attempting rigid control of the body and its appetites, anorexics are unable to see themselves and their bodies accurately. Compulsive overeaters—often obese—similarly might not see themselves accurately. In both disorders, controlling food is the aim, a genuine addiction, a strategy through which addicts deal with the world and their own circumstances—a necessary coping skill, even though it is risky to health in both cases.
Read moreGrowth is Not Linear: A Reflection on Recovery and Healing by Sujal Manohar
I skimmed through “Eight Months after a Suicide Attempt” (Spring 2015 Intima) once as I perused articles in past issues of Intima. But I came back to it, read it again, and again. Andrea Rosenhaft’s non-fictional and personal narrative speaks to the nonlinear recovery process after mental illness. It is also a deeply vulnerable account of the realities of suicidal depression.
Read more"Who is Black excellence for exactly?" A poem reflects on that question by medical student Michael Arnold
Michael Arnold is a medical student at Ohio State University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine. His poem “Chronic Black Excellence” appeared in the Fall 2019 Intima.
Chronic Black Excellence by Michael Arnold
A hundred years ago, Abraham Flexner
Eulogized Black medicine.
The ink in his pen tattooed
A sleeve on the arm of systemic racism.
The idea that screamed off his report
And echoed the loudest throughout history
Was the notion that Black medicine
Was fundamentally inadequate.
For the last century, Black medicine
Has been self-medicating with Black excellence.
A treatment plan that may be just as bad
As the prevailing social illness.
Black excellence is a poisoned apple,
Being eaten by a Trojan Horse.
Side effects may include:
Elitist attitudes, reactionary logic
Burnout, brunch addiction
And respectability politics
The siren song of Black excellence
Has veered us completely off course.
It’s a self-appointed pedestal that
Makes us look down on the
People that we dreamed of healing.
It makes us want to walk away
From the neighborhoods that
Raised us and never look back.
Black excellence is a blade on
The tongue of Horatio Alger’s descendants;
White people who will cut and paste
Your story into anecdotal evidence
That absolves them of their privilege.
Black excellence is a weight that actively
Compresses our humanity,
Erasing the mere possibility
Of us being normal, regular or average.
It erases the relief of mediocrity
That many of our white colleagues
Comfortably enjoy during their careers.
Who is Black excellence for exactly?
What’s the message we are trying to send?
Who are we sending it to?
Are we trying to claim that we are better
Than the Black people who lifted us up
High enough to access the white-dominated
Space called Western medicine?
Are we trying to signal that we
Are one of the “good ones”?
Is it an attempt to exorcise the demons
Of ever-haunting stereotypes?
Or is it just our insecurities
Crying out, wanting desperately
For white people to finally believe
That we are adequate?
Michael Arnold is a medical student at Ohio State University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine. His poem “Chronic Black Excellence” appeared in the Fall 2019 Intima.
Caught between Floating and Drowning, a reflection about poetry, memory and adapting to chaos by Mikayla Brockmeyer
A state of flux. The COVID-19 pandemic has induced a state of “How will I react to _____?” Listlessness and emotional exhaustion bring about feelings of isolation and longing to be somewhere we are not. Yet, in learning to modify behaviors, collaborations have emerged.
In the opening couplet to Sheila Kelly’s poem entitled “Breathe” (Fall 2017 Intima). she sets the stage and introduces a poignant metaphor, depicting calmness, yet incertitude.
You are floating in the swimming pool again.
Your childhood best friend rises like prayer.
“Breathe” was penned well before the current pandemic, yet the feelings of serenity and safety one day, and panic the next, expressed are relevant today. Using a second-person narrative, she paints a vivid picture of a disjointed home life, sifting through old, painful memories. In the poem, the main character is catapulting between chaos and “floating in the swimming pool.” At the end, I interpret a sense of adaptation from the character that leaves a residue of hope.
In my essay “Turbulent Undertow” (Fall 2020 Intima), parallel feelings are grappled with, as I describe a surfing attempt, and later, my experience as a hospitalist scribe. Woven together, I write about two near-drowning experiences: on surfing and on caring for patients with COVID-19. The best friend in Sheila Kelly’s poem encourages the main character to put on her old swimsuit when distressed. After a long series of days working with the hospitalist, I, too, wanted to offer solace. But instead, all I could offer was “Glad you’re okay,” a phrase that has reverberated through my brain ever since I first heard it myself.
Riding metaphorical surfboards together and finding ways to float in metaphorical swimming pools may not be the best solution to curb the emotional toll of the pandemic. However, validation and shared human connection serve as two ways to avoid possible drowning amidst the pandemic waves.
Mikayla Brockmeyer
Mikayla Brockmeyer is a first year osteopathic medical student at Des Moines University in Des Moines, Iowa. She began working as a hospitalist scribe in 2018, while she was enrolled in the Master of Science in Biomedical Sciences program at Des Moines University. She successfully defended her thesis in 2019 and spent her gap year scribing full time. This is her first time showcasing her storytelling abilities in a public arena. Her non-fiction essay “Turbulent Undertow” appears in the Fall 2020 Intima.
‘Differential Diagnosis’ Can Be A Lifesaver, a Reflection by Colleen Corcoran
© Differential Diagnosis by Yan Emily Yuan Spring 2020 Intima A Journal of Narrative Medicine
Accurate differential diagnosis can save a life. By being able to determine clearly how one outlying factor or the combination of a group of signs and symptoms tips the scale to the correct pattern confirmation and treatment, our lives can be shaped, saved and lost in this qualifying lens of time. It’s integral to the practice of medicine, but also in many ways to how we make decisions in life. A positive or negative result, a clustering of symptoms, the ticked boxes and specimen samples that can reveal so much as to how we define our experiences of life and are able to move forward.
Read more‘New Normal. Precious Normal.’ A Reflection about Loss and Love in the Wake of COVID-19 by poet Sophia Wilson
In her poem “Oxygen” (Fall 2018 Intima), Hollis Kurman captures how poignantly the proximity of illness or death can alter the way we view others and the world:
‘…he lies
wordless, feet stilled and arms bound.
His glasses have been removed,
His pockets emptied. A life fills
those pockets, the tokens and coins,
Addresses and appointments. Cash, still.
Hints of barter expired.’
Currently, here in New Zealand, the combination of a small population (total five million), and nationwide lockdown has flattened the initial COVID-19 curve. There have been no new cases for most days over the past two weeks. The country has re-opened schools and businesses. Domestic tourism is being aggressively encouraged. There’s been a rush on fast food. Traffic is back on the roads in force.
Simultaneously, there is a risk of complacency and resurgence of infection.
It’s almost hard to recall, how we felt at the beginning of lockdown. As circumstances brought about by the pandemic change rapidly, so too, do our emotions and responses.
While the focus in New Zealand is on a return to ‘normal,’ there is also a sense of the importance of moving forward differently, in particularly with regards to the environment and each another. Today, as it happens, is not only the release date of the Spring 2020 Intima, in which my poem “Don’t Leave” appears, but the day my husband (an essential worker and subject of the poem), moves back into our home—a cause for celebration. It’s also the day I receive news that a close relative is intubated in intensive care in a Sydney hospital, with suspected COVID-19 infection. He’s forty-five years old with no comorbidity. Our loved one was well when we spoke to him last week. It’s an acute reminder the nightmare is not over.
What wouldn’t we do to keep those we love safe and close? As Hollis Kurman so movingly writes:
‘Wait, we’ve not yet
spoken today; wait, take my oxygen;
wait, the policeman called you “sir” in the
middle of the night, carrying you back to bed.
Wait.’
Both our poems express an acute appreciation for the preciousness of other people, those so familiar to us we have come to take them for granted. In my case, as for so many of us right now, this heightened appreciation has been catalysed forcefully by COVID-19. I hope that, like the quiet, paused moments of lockdown, it does not slip away amid the hustle and bustle of a return to ‘normality.’
Thank you, Hollis. Your poem will stay with me. And thank you, Intima, for all the brave and inspiring work you support and share.
Sophia Wilson is a New Zealand-based writer and mother of three with a background in arts, medicine and psychiatry. Her work has appeared in StylusLit, Not Very Quiet, Ars Medica, Hektoen International, Intima, Distāntia off topic poetics, NZ Poetry Shelf, Poems in the Waiting Room, Corpus, The Otago Daily Times and elsewhere. In 2019 the manuscript for her first children’s novel, “The Guardian of Whale Mountain” was selected in the top ten for the Green Stories Competition (UK). She was shortlisted for the Takahē Monica Taylor Prize and a finalist in the Robert Burns Poetry Competition. She was winner of the 2020 International Writers Workshop Flash Fiction Competition and is the recipient of a 2020 Creative New Zealand grant.
The Caregiver’s Invisibility Cloak: A Reflection on Albert Howard Carter’s story “The Cookie Intervention” by Rossana Di Renzo
Rossana Di Renzo, author of the academic paper, "Embraced By Words" (Fall 2019 Intima) with Marilena Vimercati, lives and works in Bologna, Italy. Her interest has always been narrative and applied narrative medicine which she uses in different fields: in training courses for health professionals, in the degree course in Nursing at the University of Bologna and in research.
“Oh, there’s the PT’s car pulling up. Is it 11:00 already? Must be; Laura’s always on time. Actually I would love to go upstairs and have an hour of peace, but I do like her. She’s always so upbeat and just full of energy. Besides, she always sees progress in my husband Tom, seeing him just once a week. I see him 15 hours every day, and his recovery from the stroke is so slow that sometimes I see no progress at all. None. I’m so worn down, I just feel numb.”
This narrative from the story “The Cookie Intervention” by Albert Howard Carter brings to our minds the many women we interviewed for our paper “Embraced by Words” (Fall 2019 Intima). They told us how they looked after and cared for their husbands, sisters, brothers, children, and parents.
When dealing with the theme of disability, as in Carter’s story, people need to reassemble stories of care that mainly take place within the family, because it is often that both the place of private life and the place of care overlap.
Usually there is one person who devotes oneself to a sick person and that person is the caregiver.
Our research shows that in 50 percent of cases care work is carried out by women, who continue to define themselves not as caregivers but as wives, mothers, and partners. They consider their duty of care natural; their lives are designed only in function of the sick person.
The women we met told of their loneliness and fragility and the thousands of obstacles they have to face in everyday life without knowing how long that routine will last.
A wife said “I’m feeling so alone. I have too much to think about. I do everything. I have a huge weight on my shoulders, everything falls on me.”
When the wishes of the caregivers cannot be fulfilled, as we read in Carter’s story (“I want my husband back”), what will help them to accept disability and their work of care and to ask for help?
Positive and powerful energies are needed in addition to personal resources. It is important to be listened to and give voice to the pain in body and in soul. The support throughout the care process, the family and social networks, the community, the closeness and authentic solidarity of others, ensure that there is a process of rewriting, of evolutionary readjustment that allows them to tolerate, manage suffering and allow themselves to be open to hope.
Rossana Di Renzo, author of the academic paper, "Embraced By Words" (Fall 2019 Intima) with Marilena Vimercati, lives and works in Bologna, Italy. Her interest has always been narrative and applied narrative medicine which she uses in different fields: in training courses for health professionals, in the degree course in Nursing at the University of Bologna and in research.
A Reflection on Philip Berry’s “Semantics in the Elevator” and the Word “Sorry” by V Karri
Karri explores the multiple meaning of the word “sorry” in her daily practice.
Read moreThe Power of Trust in the Clinical Encounter by Amanda Swain
The link between touch and trust is explored by the author.
Read moreListening, Conversation and the Power of Touch in Healthcare, a reflection by Howard Carter
How do we provide compassionate care in the face of many new impediments? The author found one thing that may help.
Read moreThe Flip Side of Mammography Screening by Charlotte Crowder
Do I need a mammogram? The author takes on this complex topic.
Read more