A Reflection on Fathers and Daughters by Dixie L. King

In the essay “My Father’s Doctor” (Spring 2016 Intima), Pennsylvania pediatrician Jennifer Chianese purports to write about her father’s relationship with his female doctor and the ways in which that relationship is both rooted in and transcends the traditional roles for women that is his cultural heritage. Her father sees future opportunity for his own daughters in this doctor who would later make headlines by killing her elderly parents. But the secondary story is that of Chianese’s relationship with her father, who became terminally ill when she was just 10 years old, and how she processed through his impending loss. The doctor tells her, “This is a difficult time for your parents. You need to be on your best behavior.”

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Voices That Remain: A dialogue about mentors, memory and what matters

Some voices outlast the people who spoke them. In his Crossroads blog, “The Voice that Lingers,” (June 19, 2026 Intima) Kenneth Iserson, a professor emeritus of emergency medicine, tells it as a physician: the dead mentor keeps speaking in a student's stethoscope, in a resident's patience at two in the morning, even in the margin of a machine's report that has learned to wait before it concludes. The voice refuses to be deleted — not because anyone saved it, but because it had gone in too deep, beneath the skin, beneath the name, where not even death goes looking.

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The Body Holds It All: Love, Labor, and the Weight of Care  by Mildred Galvez

With the same hands that now hold and annotate my textbooks, I once read and reread my mother’s biopsy results. With those same hands, I helped her rise from her chair when the chemotherapy was too strong, and with those same hands, I now care for my patients. 

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The Evolution of Anecdote to Story and Beyond by Angus Woodward

My father was a raconteur, and as his dementia advanced, he often got caught in anecdotal loops. In the middle of a familiar story, he would forget that he had told the beginning, repeat it, then charge through the middle before backtracking again, cycling through the tale until some kind of interruption saved him and his listeners.

Reading Samantha Stewart’s poem “Stingray” (Spring 2022 Intima) made me think about how experiences can become anecdotes, which may turn into stories, which may evolve into legends. And I saw how personal legends connect the dying to the living.

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Where Fear About Living and Dying is Held: A reflection by UC San Diego internal medicine resident Tulsi Patel

When I read the Field Notes essay “Letter to My Oncologist” (Fall 2025 Intima), I was struck by how the writer, psychologist Julia Dobner-Pereira, watches her physician for the smallest fracture of a moment in composure—and how the physician watches her for the same. Their exchanges sit on a narrow ledge—two people trying to hold each other’s fear without admitting how much weight they’re carrying. I recognized that terrain immediately. As a clinician, I’ve felt patients monitor my breathing, my pauses, my half-smiles.

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The 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.

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Giving Up Metaphors: A reflection about how we talk about illness by poet physician Ronald Lands

In both the literary world and in the clinical world, metaphors take hold of our relationship to illness and health.

“Giving Up the Fight,” by Rebeca Stanfel (Spring 2023 Intima) is a first-person account of her struggle with sarcoidosis and the metaphors that complicated her ability to deal with it. Well-meaning friends and family assailed her with encouragement that depicted chronic illness as a battle to be won or lost.

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The Unexpected Labor of Caregiving by Ann E. Green

The 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.

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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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Caring and the Challenges of Social Convention, by Jeffrey Millstein, MD

An 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.

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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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Leaning Close: "No more interventions. No more transfusions." A reflection on mortality and morbidity rounds by pediatrician-writer Laura Johnsrude

When I read “All Tuned Up” by Albert Howard Carter III (Spring 2021 Intima), I remembered a pediatric intensive care unit patient from my own 1980’s residency experience. In Carter’s poem, a medical resident presents a case during mortality and morbidity rounds. The resident is moved to tears as he tells the gathered audience about the death of a patient he knew well. A senior doctor “gently” offers context and says, “Maybe he was just tired.”

Mercifully, I’ve muffled memories from some of the deaths during my residency training in the pediatric intensive care unit. But I remember a slight girl of about sixteen with silky, wavy hair, lying in a metal-frame bed parallel to the wall against the window, in silhouette.

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The Healing Power of Empathy: Does it Exist? Can it be Acquired?

In this reflection, a retired surgeon examines the research findings of evidence-based medicine to uncover whether empathy, in addition to the principles and practice of narrative medicine, can facilitate deeper healing.

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