Whatever the diagnosis or prognosis, being a patient often includes elements of fear.
Read moreHidden Trauma: A Reflection on Artist Inés Ixierda’s “Fasciotomy” by Karen Germain
In my non-fiction story “Weight,” I explore the complicated relationship that I had with my aunt, as I was her caretaker in the final years of her life. My aunt suffered from a shocking injury when her left femur bone snapped as she was getting her morning newspaper.
Read moreOur Mission to Give Voice: A Physician-Poet’s Reflection on Speech and Human Connection by Katrina Kostro
Speech is a crucial element in human connection. Even more so these days, during the COVID-19 pandemic, when physical touch has become largely forbidden. One can imagine, then, the tremendous loss associated with aphasia – the loss of ability to understand or express speech.
Read moreThe Body Politic: Fashioning our own earthly justice in a challenging time by Adam Lalley
In 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.
Read moreSeeing is Believing: Reflecting on Miracles by Andrew Taylor-Troutman
A reflection on “My Grandpa” by Meghan Wang (Poetry / Spring, 2013)
I see his body, but I do not see him
So begins Meghan Wang’s poem and her words cut to the core of the grief I have known in watching an aged loved one. I have lost people before their actual deaths. I know that sight is a metaphor for understanding. That is the double-meaning of the poem’s line:
It’s hard to see him like this
Holding Vigil: The privilege of putting death off for another day by Elizabeth Lanphier
Stella’s speaker is running from patient to patient, hoping to catch some sleep in the call room; for my speaker it is only the mind that is running, keeping her awake.
Read moreSurrendering Trust in One’s Life is Just Another Stickie Note in Our Outlook Calendars: A Clinician’s Reflection by Jordan Teitelbaum
Taking care of people in the Operating Room is more than ‘just a job’ for both surgeons and anesthesiologists.
Read moreSpeaking of Speech by James Wyshynski
Reflection on the Desert By Elisabeth Preston-Hsu
Ting Guo’s poem “Vanishing Point” published in Fall 2016 was one of the first works I read on Intima and I’ve re-read it every few months since then. She is a lovely writer. We move with the narrator trying to make the best of a hum-drum cruise with family, flowing into imagery of water and desert to small, prickly wellsprings of cacti.
Read moreBeing a Patient: Coping with the Loss of Control and Privacy in a Hospital by Rebecca Grossman-Kahn
Patients often feel unexpectedly confined in the hospital.
Read moreA Physician's Response in an Emergency: Humility Complements Competence by Rachel Fleishman
Watching a medical emergency as a physician who is not functioning as a leader or caretaker unearths discomfort, a mingling of denied identity with humility. And it is from this vantage that we can harness the power of narrative medicine to create space for reflection, to make sense of medicine and how it unfolds.
Read moreOn the Sacrosanctity of the Body Chambers by Michal Coret
A medical student balances the duties of respect and learning in the anatomy lab.
Read moreWhen Treatment Takes Over: Thoughts on Two Visual Artworks by Simona Carini
Poetry and art explore the deeper emotional dimensions of cancer.
Read morePilgrimages at Nightfall: A Reflection on How We All Have to Help Each Other by Ariel Boswell
Michael Fredrick Geisser’s “Night Trip” (Fall 2015 Intima) takes place at the same time as my poem “Late Night,” that dark lonely hour when one should be asleep.
Read moreThe Worthwhile Art of Careful Listening by Hui-Wen Sato
We live in a world and line of work where so many voices compete for our attention. But as we consider the potential for hope and help that exists within our efforts to connect meaningfully with our patients, we are fueled with greater generosity of spirit even as we acknowledge our own limitations as healthcare providers, as humans.
Read moreOn the Value of Toys and Bridges: How Healers Make Connections by Samuel LeBaron
In my story “Bling” (Spring 2020 Intima), an adolescent’s “toys” create a connection that reawakens her joy and spirit for a brief, crucial moment.
Read moreAging and Memory from Two Poetic Perspectives: A Reflection by Larry Oakner
As I age into my late sixties, I’m experiencing the blips of short-term memory loss that are common for many people my age. I find the experience a little frightening and disconcerting because I have always had great recall throughout my life, with deep detail and clarity of memories, right down to the emotions at the time.
Read moreDiscerning Different Shades of Grief by Jeffrey Millstein, MD
In my essay, “Remembrance,” I discovered my own grief for a recently deceased long-time patient while continuing to care for her widowed husband. John Jacobson’s piece “Now and Then” (Fall 2018 Intima) brought me deep into the chasm of a different type of grief, from loss of someone who was, and to a more attuned place from where to offer empathy.
Read moreHow Nature Calms Us in Challenging Times: A reflection on Sara Awan’s “Twins in Yellow Hats” by Katharine Lawrence
I was introduced to Mary Oliver by my grandmother, who always kept the most fantastic gardens. These two women instilled in me a deep appreciation for nature; it is something I draw from regularly to keep me grounded, calm and grateful, particularly during stressful periods. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I was repeatedly struck by the small beauties of nature I encountered while working and sheltering in New York City.
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.