(All patient names have been edited to ensure anonymity.)
“I want you to know that you’re such an accomplished person for being here, and I hope the rest of your day is nothing but happy,” Mr. Lebowski said to me.
“Thank you so much, Mr. Lebowski, I wish you the...
I grew up feeling more concerned about looking normal than looking pretty. The first makeup product I owned was this pot of cream concealer that my mom carefully applied to my cheek, covering the splotch of red with the skin I was supposed to have. Before my first day...
“How’s this one?” your friend asks.
“Looks good to me,” you respond.
You both sit down on the bench and you let out a sigh. You think to yourself, “Was I always this tired?” It’s a beautiful day.
“It’s a beautiful day,” you say aloud.
“Isn’t it?” your friend agrees.
There’s a pause as...
“How much would it be worth to a young man entering upon the practice of law, to be regarded as a white man rather than a colored one? Six-sevenths of the population are white. Nineteen-twentieths of the property of the country is owned by white people. Ninety-nine hundredths of...
“I see,” said the blind man.
-English expression
Once again, I’m cramped in a narrow armchair in front of the department head’s enormous desk, trying to suppress shivers. Why is it so much colder in here than in the rest of the hospital? It is 4 p.m. on post-call Monday. I’m...
Devil’s Pocket, South Street Bridge, side entrance, freight elevator, JMEC.
I can trace the path I walk to and from medical school every day using the tip of my finger. It forms the shape of a staple, tilted 45 degrees to align with the blue stripe on my monitor that...
“Good morning, my future doctors!” the crossing guard’s joyful daily greeting echoed across the intersection, her customary grin lighting up her face. “Have a wonderful day!”
The crossing guard at 20th and Catherine began greeting us this way back in October. Without question, this is now my favorite part of...
On the corner of 38th and Chestnut stands a couple of affordable neighborhood restaurants that will shutter by the summer of 2022. In their place will rise a 13-story privately developed lab building, the latest of a trend in recent years to turn Philadelphia into the next hub for...
What follows are excerpts taken from the 12th edition of Science and Postmodern Medicine, which is a popular textbook among introductory history of medicine courses.
Chapter 64: The Empathy System
The first discovery was made in 2042 when neuroscientist Nahima Khan discovered the location of a network of mirror neurons deep...
August 2018 – Arrival
My mother hugs me
Goodbye
In a city where
No one knows
The color of our eyes,
And I learn in an instant
The difference between
A house
And a home.
They use my full name here
Elizabeth
It swallows me like an
Oversized garment, and
I wonder who this person is
Besides lonely.
“May I sit with you?”
A woman with...
You died today.
You died today,And I never saw your eyes.
You died today.Heart, stopped.I could feel it, under my hands, as I pressed down, over and over again.Just one of the volunteers in the line,Keeping the blood pumping,Until we could rule out any hope of resuscitation,And let your body pass,...
As a new fellow, I met a young man during his initial presentation with Burkitt lymphoma. He was a fun-loving teenager who enjoyed computer gaming, lived for music and rapping, and was starting college. His mother had died of cancer a few years before; his dad was struggling to...
It was the summer after freshman year. The air, sticky-sweet and salted with possibility, reminded me of a future yet to come. That July evening, my friend and I found ourselves crowded into an indoor batting cage, which served as a temporary concert space, illuminated by a few string...
I didn’t expect you to pick up the phone right away. “I’m scared,” you say. “I’m in pain.” When I ask how you plan to get to your appointment with the surgeon in five days, you reply with a determination that roots into my mind. “I’ll be there. Even...
My Facebook feed has always been an eclectic place. Pictures of friends, clips from old TV shows, and collages of memes, news, and fun facts have always combined in a form of algorithmic chaos. But during the COVID-19 pandemic, and especially since entering medical school, my Facebook has been...
Three. It’s always been my favorite number – the one I’d write with neat curls on my elementary school fun fact questionnaires. The number I’d rely on in my paintings for the perfect balance of asymmetry.The number of people my friend circles tended to feel most comfortable in. Yet,...
On the eve of 2021, I felt like I was peering down an unlit road. Theoretically, I knew what lay ahead: my debut on the wards in scrubs and my embroidered Patagonia, six weeks to study for Step 1, then the glorious freedom of PhD-land after the summer. My...
Hospital Tour (n): a floundering attempt to mentally memorize maze-like routes down identical hallways while speed walking pell-mell behind a guide who believes he or she is offering you a beneficial service and not a panic attack
Q&A Session (n): an opportunity to sit in panicked silence while trying to...
At the beginning of medical school, I had started developing a vision of the physician I wanted to become. My background working as a nurse had allowed me to spend ample time at the bedside, helping me better understand how patients personally experience their lives in the hospital. I...
It's 6:45 am on a random Wednesday in July and I’m wearing the wrong size scrubs to shadow on the Labor & Delivery floor. Too-big top and too-small pants. The combination is dreadful. I am a formless light blue bedsheet billowing down the South Street Bridge, sweating hard in...
Trusting my hands has never come naturally. I still remember my stomach sinking when it was my turn at piano recitals. I’m useless at ball sports and until a few years ago the only things I assembled were PowerPoint decks. When I moved to Philadelphia, my dad built my...
The day before medical school began, I found out my dad was in the ICU.
The youngest of four siblings, he immigrated to the U.S. from South Korea fourteen years ago. When I got scared as a child, he would say “strawberries strawberries strawberries” over and over again to help...
“ADMIT BABY” flashed on the incubator, and it was the most bewildering thing, because the baby in question had not yet come.
A woman laid in the hospital bed, legs wide, expression unreadable. The moon-dome of her belly rose through her gown. Her husband stood still and quiet to her...
Love at first sight was a lie until I met him.
We met during the pandemic at a small gathering hosted by a mutual friend. A month later we took an impromptu trip to DC to see the cherry blossoms in full bloom. It was unforgettable, and so was dinner...
Friday night, at the start of the fall semester, I stood in my kitchenette—a segment of my bright Philadelphia studio—gently washing a peach. I was two years into medical school and a week into graduate school, turning a corner. First a peach, then a plum, an apple, an orange,...
The caterpillar crawls about, looking for a succulent leaf of milkweed to start her busy morning off right. Arising as a pre-butterfly is an honor, and it comes with a heavier workload than she expects. First off, the calorie requirements for cocoon preparation are enormous, and milkweed is so...
“Where do you see yourself in ten years?” “Do you know what specialty you want to pursue?” “How do you see yourself using your M.D. in the future?”
We all faced questions like this throughout the process of interviewing for medical school. In fact, these were probably some of the...
This piece was originally submitted on April 23rd, 2021
How are you feeling after 478 days of being fire-hosed with doomsday soundbites and click-bait headlines swirling around in a slow-and-low cooked propaganda stew?
Although the COVID pace of life initially gifted us with time to scrutinize available data and come to...
Medicine has always been about the process. In undergrad, we told ourselves that grinding on the MCAT was what we needed to do to go to medical school. Now, we tell ourselves that we need to grind in our preclinical classes to do well in our clerkships. Then, we’ll...