“I have found that [breast and colorectal cancer patients] share the same labyrinth and my new, uncertain life is not quite as frightening. The blue of a colon cancer ribbon is lovely. So is pink.”
Read more"Who knew that time was the biggest factor in compassion?" A reflection about effective clinical care by writer Lisa Simone Kingstone
“The center was my rest stop in my trek through cancer. It shimmers through my own understanding of how to care for people…But over a decade later, what I remember most is a feeling of restoration. … Being a patient makes you feel like a baby in a basket floating down a river with rapids.”
Read moreListening to Ordinary Things Can Get You Through the Day by cancer advocate and writer Robert McEachern
“Godfrey’s piece … reminds me how stories get told and re-told in many ways, in many layers. Like medicine in a glass bottle, sometimes our stories stay inside us, waiting to be opened, waiting for the words.”
Read moreThe Scars of Our Silence: Medicine’s Discomfort with Dying by palliative care physician Lindsey Ulin
“Years later, I still wonder what story the family of my patient carries of that death. The one thing they most needed to hear—that their loved one was dying—remained unsaid.”
Read moreRemembering in the Rain: A reflection on anxiety and OCD by Cynthia Miller, MD, MPH
“Psychologist and writer Faith Galliano Desai provides a solution, but it isn’t an easy one. She instructs us to remember that anxiety is energy that must move. If we let it pass through us, it will lose its power.”
Read moreThe Language of Endurance by educator and patient advocate Mark E. Paull
“For fifty-eight years, I've lived with Type 1 Diabetes. My body speaks in tremors, in metallic tastes, in sudden collapses that look like laziness to people who don't know better…I've spent decades translating myself for others—apologizing for leaving early, for needing to sit, for being tired when I looked fine.”
Read moreOn the Emotional Geography of Care by artist Annunziata Tricarico
“When facing illness or pain in any form, we often find ourselves alone. Not because the world is insensitive, but because even those who love us sometimes do not know how to help, how to interact, or cannot find the right words.”
Read moreWhat is Grief-Sight? Writer and researcher Valk Fisher reflects on what prompts it.
I began to see grief everywhere.
A diagnosis started it, though I didn’t know, exactly, what I was seeing. I had no words for the gnawing inside my gut, the tightness beneath my sternum, the exhales that were just that much heavier. Grief was everywhere, but nameless. It became larger and louder until I could sense it, name it, be with it, speak about it. Only then did I begin to smile – really smile – again.
Grief will require it be Seen.
Read moreOn Letting Go: A reflection about a writer dealing with the experience of living with sarcoidosis by Michigan doctor Janet Greenhut
In her essay, “Giving Up the Fight” (Nonfiction, Intima, Spring 2023), Rebecca Stanfel tells the story of her experience living with sarcoidosis. She was the mother of a young child when the disease arose and was frequently incapacitated by pain, vertigo, and fatigue, as well as by lengthy hospitalizations. One doctor told her she might “drop dead at any moment.”
Read moreHow Big Moments Hide in the Mundane Ones: A reflection by Intima editor Priya Amin
“Leaving my homeland means carrying these uncertainties with the knowledge that a phone call, an email, a single test result can change the shape of a life we thought we knew. But like sea glass, we are shaped by what we endure, softened by time, and held together by the stories we share across miles and years.”
Read moreThe Discordant Note of the Estranged Daughter from California. A reflection about medically-assisted death by Amanda Le Rougetel
The “estranged daughter from California” is an expression used by MAiD practitioners to describe that relative who shows up to rail against the dying person’s wishes to end their life.
Read moreThe Power of Stories to Change Attitudes: A reflection by fiction editor Daly Walker
“How can people in our country be convinced it is right to share our bounty with the world’s less fortunate?”
Read moreDesperate to be Well: A reflection about the level of comfort (or discomfort) about what we wear when we're ill by Liddy Grantland
“We don't control what happens to our bodies, but we do control how we respond. How we adorn. And how we move through the world.”
Read moreGetting to Say Goodbye: A reflection by patient advocate Holly Cantley
“There is bravery in enduring. There is bravery in leaving.”
Read moreThe Practice of Uncertainty: Understanding the suffering and mercies witnessed in our everyday work by nurse practitioner Meg Sniderman
“As I move through my clinic days now, the challenge is not so much in knowing what to do; it is in managing the moments of not knowing.”
Read moreThe Search for Omens Amid Infertility. A Reflection by Melissa Cummins
“In all instances, there are two words that encapsulate what good and bad omens share: Why not? Why not be cautious when my gut makes my hair stand at attention, and why not hope when there is nothing but hoping to do?”
Read moreReasons for Running Late: A reflection and response about documentation and no-time to dally days by pediatric OT Fiona Dunbar
“I am well practiced at stuffing feelings aside until later—or until never—in favor of being less late for the next child and family.”
Read moreGoing through airport security and other awkward life moments with an ‘invisible’ disease: A reflection by breast cancer advocate Jenny Burkholder
“Living with metastatic breast cancer…I dance, practice yoga, walk, parent my children, show up at school events, go on dates with my husband, and enjoy a glass of wine. So when I tell people that I will be in treatment for the rest of my life…they are incredulous.”
Read morePoetry’s Use of Metaphor for What Happens Inside and Outside the Body. A reflection by writer R. A. Pavoldi
Though just in my late 30’s at the time, my doctor referred me to a cardiologist because of a family history of heart disease
Visiting the family cemeteries often, the stones then looked back with deeper meaning. Men dying in their 30’s and 40’s. Heart disease, death certificates read. Still, no big deal, I got a heads-up, and had options they never had the luxury of.
My poem “LDL” was written during an old house renovation and preparing for an anatomy and physiology exam (I was also patching together a non-traditional Bachelor’s degree). I found it peculiar that I had no real fear of death, only of being somewhere without my wife.
Read moreHow Art Inspires: Looking at “The Wish” by primary care physician Megan Gerber. A reflection by Colleen Cavanaugh
© The Wish. Megan Gerber. Mixed-Media: Acrylic, ink and tissue paper on canvas. Spring 2025 Intima
Although many of my non-fiction stories dwell on loss, there is always a lesson to be learned or an inspiration which somehow has evolved into compassion. In “The Lingerie Shop” (Spring 2025 Intima), I recall my adolescent years when I learned about my mother’s breast cancer. I was haunted by her embarrassment and loneliness. The emotions were part of my upbringing and I lived side by side with them. It must have changed me. I attended medical school and became a gynecologist, caring for many women with breast cancer. My loss had metamorphosed into strength and compassion. My loss made me a better doctor.
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