“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.
Read moreTwo Doctors, Two Cancer Diagnoses by Susan Schuerman Murphy
I met my husband, Kim, on a bone marrow transplant unit in a cosmic display of foreshadowing ten years before the happenings in my piece “Suffer the Little Beagles.” I was First Lieutenant Schuerman serving as a bone marrow transplant nurse. He was a Captain who had ventured up four floors to place his pathology report in a patient’s chart. Over the next decade we married, I became an attorney, we became civilians, I gave birth to our daughter, and we bought a big house. He told me about his deep bruises and enlarged spleen the night we lay exhausted on our bed after having received our household goods.
Read moreReflecting on the courageous who have left imprints on our soul by Miki Simic
We carry them in our thoughts and in our prayers. It is the unspoken in the medical field. The hesitation you feel, to show at times, you hurt for them, with them, through them. The patient unaware that emotion is viable and present when treating, caring, or guiding steps to an end, no matter what that may be. Their physical bodies are present at the appointments, but their souls are searching elsewhere for meaning. The “why” of illness.
Read moreFear of Loss: A reflection by medical student and Intima editor, Grace Yi
In “Mathematical Fix | ation” (Fall 2023 Intima), Laura Pinto describes the slow decline of her father’s ability to communicate. She tries her best to accompany him along his inward spiral of dementia, in which he has become completely fixated on arithmetic and logic, to the point that she calls him “Professor” rather than father. I am struck by the small joys she discovers in his lucid moments at the end of his life, such as when he calls her by name, only once, in the way he did when she was young. Putting myself in her shoes, I wonder if I would have the grace and openness of heart to delight in similar moments, as untethered as I imagine I might be in the face of impending loss.
Read moreMarking the Firsts and Reflecting on "What Now?" by OB/GYN Physician, Dr. I. Cori Baill
Writing Late reminded me how impactful are the firsts of medical education; the first time one works with a cadaver, is coached through the delivery of a baby, or finds oneself running the code. Late draws from my internship on the GYN oncology service, entrusted to manage patients at the end of their lives.
At the other end of those decades, I now find myself thinking about the impact I have as an attending.
Read moreHospital Hallways: Physician-Poet Jennifer Li Reflects on Grief
We see death so often as healthcare providers. I think often about the cognitive dissonance it brings to our lives: coming in such intimate proximity with it, discussing it in depth with people about themselves or their loved ones, and then returning and retreating to our own spaces and people and homes as if we can be safely tucked away from its harsh reality.
Read moreA Poem of Thanks: A Reflection by Poet/Physician Dianne Silvestri
I wanted my note to sound grateful, but the words couldn’t mask my sorrow over my alienation from any familiar or valuable path. I had lived through transplantation of a stranger’s stem cells into me. The mandatory one year of donor anonymity had passed. Surely I must send thanks to the donor whose cells were keeping me alive. But three years swept me back and forth from the hospital, trying to survive infections and graft-vs-host attacks. I saw my husband’s head shake “no” to each next draft I attempted.
Read moreMoments of Humanity During a Clinician’s Day: A Reflection by Joanne Wilkinson
For many physicians, a clinical day is a river of tasks to be navigated….These moments come to us randomly, often without any advance warning.
Read moreArt, Dance, and Grief: A Reflection by Tessa Palisoc and Andrew Murdock
Medical students Tessa Palisoc and Andrew Murdock comment on how the arts—in this instance painting and dance—allow the artist and the observer to “process death and find a nuanced perspective of loss.”
Read moreThose Who Came Before: A Promise and a Reflection by medical student-artist Angela Tang-Tan
Medical student Angela Tang-Tan, creator of the cartoon, “White Coat Ceremony,” worked as an EMT transporter during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this blog post, she reflects on a poem from that difficult time by by geriatrician Terry E. Hill, MD entitled, “Points of Historical Interest.”
Read morePrayers: A Reflection by Angela Tang-Tan
I hesitated to write “Top Surgery,” and I hesitated even more to submit it. In it, I wrote that “I stand with my back to the wall, drawing silence around me like armor.”
Read moreMy Illness, My Story: Graphic Medicine and Narratives by Maja Milkowska-Shibata
Maja Milkowska-Shibata, creator of “Beyond Broken: The Science of Bone Lengthening
and My Ilizarov Story” in the Fall 2024 issue of Intima expresses her appreciation for fellow graphic artist, Gianna Paniagua, whose comic, “Human Experience,” appeared in the Fall 2022 issue.
The Strange Experience of Learning the Art of Medicine by chaplain Elizabeth Ryder
Essayist and chaplain Elizabeth Ryder, author of “String of Pearls” in the Fall 2024 issue of Intima, reflects on an essay by Anna Dovre entitled “Body of Work,” written by family medicine resident Dr. Dovre.
Read moreThe Art of Being Here: A Reflection on the Hidden Moments of Care by medical student Tiffany Chen
Medical student Tiffany Chen, author of “Coffee and Crosswords” in the Fall 2024 issue of Intima, shares an appreciation of Kirilee West’s Studio Art pieces in, “The Art of Being Here,” from the Spring 2022 issue. West beautifully depicts “hidden” moments of care, and her artwork shows different providers attending to patients and ensuring they are comfortable even when they are not fully conscious.
Read moreRemember, Everything Changed Five Years Ago Today by public health physician Emily Groot
When I read the first reports of atypical pneumonia out of China, I wasn’t worried. Now, in hindsight, this is embarrassing to admit. But every few months, there’s something new. MERS-CoV, Zika, enterovirus D68. We watch, we wait, sometimes we prepare. Usually, the impact is small. Or, at least, the impact is far away: cruelly and unfairly, caring is the inverse of distance. So, forgive me if, at first, I did not care about SARS-CoV-2.
Read moreUn/Burdened: A reflection by physician/poet Ryan Boyland about empathy, self-care and shared joy
I leave the hospital, but the hospital doesn’t always leave me. I carry my stress in a thin band across my upper back. On the good days, I think about a patient I sent to a recovery center. I think I did a good job. On the bad days, I find myself scrolling for far too long, when another shift is coming in entirely too few hours, because, as I wrote in my poem “Omens,” “while I am awake, he is still alive.”
Read moreHow to Have Empathy for Others As Well as Ourselves: A Reflection by clinician Jennifer Anderson
As I read Sarah Gundle’s essay “I Can’t Remember His Name” (Intima, Spring 2023), I recognized a young and eager clinician who felt both moved by someone’s story and inept at affecting change, a dissonance that can reverberate throughout decades of practice. I, too, remembered my earliest encounters, when my own therapeutic skin was most supple and soft, vulnerable to the bruising weights of trauma, addiction and injustice. I recognized the writer’s spontaneous tears – and the impulse to minimize and dismiss them in accordance with the guidelines of rational detachment and therapeutic rapport.
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