“Of Prematurity and Parental Leave” (Intima, Fall 2021) describes the harrowing experience of giving birth to a premature baby during residency. It’s written by doctors married to each other —Dr. Campagnaro and Dr. Woodside—who co-construct a narrative by telling it from their own perspective.
Read moreWhat I Learned about the ICU: A Reflection by Benjamin Rattray
In her essay “The Shape of the Shore” (Spring 2020 Intima), Rana Awdish takes us into the intensive care unit during the ravages of a pandemic. She shows us “…the desperate thrashing patients on the other side of the glass” and “…the sticky blood on the floor.” As I read the words, my breath becomes shallow as fear and grief pummel into me. Somewhere deep, beneath the shrouds of consciousness, the words resonate, and I feel as though I am slipping beneath an indigo sea.
Read moreShakespeare, Stanzas and How We Think About Death by Albert Howard Carter, III, PhD
When my sonnet “All Tuned Up” appeared (Spring 2021 Intima), I was asked to write about another piece published in the journal. I chose “I Picture You Here, But You’re There” (Spring 2020 Intima) by Delilah Leibowitz. Her poem and mine both explore how we think and feel about death.
Read moreHow a Doctor Learns to Act: A Reflection by Claire Unis, MD
“Am I becoming / something unfamiliar?” asks Lauren Fields in her poem “My First Mask Was a White Coat” and in that simple question she brings back for me the struggle of becoming. With our first medical school clerkships we don white coats and mimic our preceptors: some false confidence here, a prayer for invisibility there. Silent reassurances never spoken aloud: It’s okay to pretend at doctoring. That’s how you learn.
Read moreHow Touch Affects Healing, a reflection by Wendy Tong
In her Field Notes essay “Hand Holding” (Fall 2019 Intima), Dr. Amanda Swain describes the experience of beginning her surgery rotation as a third year medical student. In the early days of the rotation, she feels an intense sense of being out of place within the “intricately choreographed dance” of the operating room. But when the next patient is wheeled in, Dr. Swain is reminded of how a nurse once took her hand before she underwent surgery, the touch conveying an unforgettable message of comfort during a time of deep vulnerability.
Read moreAuscultating Meaning: Reflections on the Heart of Medicine by Marc Perlman
© Gordian Knot by Elisabeth Preston-Hsu Spring 2020 Intima A Journal of Narrative Medicine
From diaphragm to earpiece, a stethoscope dutifully chaperones a patient’s internal orchestra to a clinician’s ears. This facile acoustic communication not only allows a provider to screen for a wide host of cardiovascular, pulmonary and gastrointestinal anomalies, but it also may be a conduit for moral reflection.
Read moreDoctoring and Disobedience: Speaking an Important Truth, a reflection by Kelly Elterman
Sometimes, the truth can be uncomfortable. It can be difficult to hear and often, even more difficult to say. In her Field Notes piece entitled “Doctoring and Disobedience” (Spring 2020 Intima) Dr. Lisa Jacobs recalls her struggle with being told to hide the truth of a prognosis from an elderly patient with metastatic disease. Despite the instruction of her attending physician, and the decision of the patient’s family and ethics team to not speak of death to the patient, Dr. Jacobs feels compelled to let her cognitively-intact patient learn the truth. So strong is her conviction that she takes on considerable risk to her own career for the sake of bringing the truth to her patient.
Read moreThe Cost of Efficiency and the Price of Empathy, a Reflection by Jordana Kritzer MD
After the long hours and intense learning curve of my Emergency Medicine residency, I had become one of those efficient robots who could solve medical puzzles and save lives, but I felt empty, disconnected—the classic symptoms of burn-out. I was once a wide-eyed, empathetic intern constantly criticized for trying to solve their patient’s chronic issues. I remember one attending saying, “Figure out the least amount of things you need to do to rule out an emergency.” I see now that he was trying to teach me efficiency.
Read moreGrowth is Not Linear: A Reflection on Recovery and Healing by Sujal Manohar
I skimmed through “Eight Months after a Suicide Attempt” (Spring 2015 Intima) once as I perused articles in past issues of Intima. But I came back to it, read it again, and again. Andrea Rosenhaft’s non-fictional and personal narrative speaks to the nonlinear recovery process after mental illness. It is also a deeply vulnerable account of the realities of suicidal depression.
Read moreBecoming the Superheroes Our Parents Need: The Journey from Child to Worthy Caretaker by Usman Hameedi
Our parents are often our first examples of superheroes. They make gourmet meals from minimum wage, give hugs that vanquish our demons, and provide limitless love. They are impervious to damage or decay and are always ready to save our days. So, seeing the human in them, the mortality in their breath is unsettling. When they come to need us, we feel so grossly unprepared.
Read moreCaring for Our Caregivers: A short reflection by poet and hematology-oncology nurse Nina Solis
Caregivers deserve patience, gratitude and comfort just as much as those they support. As healthcare providers, we all could use a reminder to advocate for these irreplaceable members of a patient’s team.
Read moreLady Psychiatrist Queen: Compassion in Caregiving, a reflection by Eileen Vorbach Collins
Lisa Jacobs, in her nonfiction piece, March Manic (Intima Spring 2019) describes a long shift on a psychiatric unit. She is “beyond exhausted” to the point of having questioned her own grasp on reality.
As a case manager in a Baltimore City hospital, I once spent hours attempting to find placement for a homeless 19-year-old addicted to heroin who needed long term IV antibiotics. When I asked if I might call her mother she replied “I don’t give a fuck” but retracted her permission as I was leaving the room. I pretended not to hear. The next day I was told she had signed out AMA (Against Medical Advice). a colleague said, “Get over it. She was a waste of time and resources.”
Read moreThresholds and Transgressions, a reflection on ICU chaos, communitas, liminality and Levinas by Nancy Smith
Nancy Smith is a retired Registered Nurse. Though she moved through the many domains of hospital nursing, most of her work took place in an Intensive Care Unit. Her co-workers noticed that she would place small strips of paper with poems by various authors on her locker from time to time along with the pictures of her family.
Read moreHow to Hold Cold Hands by Laura-Anne White
I have spent my career as a nurse working with adult cancer patients. I, too, have experience with the self-protective tool of ‘numbing.’ Last spring, the COVID-19 pandemic hit New York City at full force, and I was temporarily transferred to an inpatient, COVID-19-positive cancer unit. I saw no one aside from co-workers, patients, and other essential workers.
Read moreOn Trauma, Hope and Dragonslayers, an essay by hospital-based physical therapist Galen Schram
Can what we know about PTSD in frontline workers who treated the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings help us understand how to care for our COVID-19 frontline workers? What will be done to understand and treat race-based traumatic stress, a term I hadn’t heard until this summer?
Read moreWho Draws First? A reflection about racial stereotyping by Dr. Ibrahim Sablaban
So, who draws first? Figuratively speaking. In America, someone’s going to draw. Someone’s going to attack and define you by some arbitrary standard. And that someone could be anyone.
Read moreFinding What's Essential in Just Laundry: Painting and Poetry in Dialogue By Alexis Rehrmann
In both the painting and the poem, these particulars are gone but the objects remain and hold an impression of that past life. There’s honor in caring for these objects, in both our daily work and our creative lives.
Read moreMy COVID Hero: How Art Helped Me Reflect on a Global Pandemic by Dr. Brandon Mogrovejo
One late evening, just two months into my intern year in Pediatrics and seven months into a forever changed New York City, I sat down and drew. I drew from a place of anxiety, working the equivalent of two full-time jobs in a hospital during a time when the people I care for, my loved ones and my patients, were under great strain.
Read more“A Line Blurring Joy and Grief”: Empathizing from a Distance, by Daniel Ginsburg
How do clinicians carry on their vital work without bearing the grief of patients and their families, yet still comfort them?
Read moreCaught between Floating and Drowning, a reflection about poetry, memory and adapting to chaos by Mikayla Brockmeyer
A state of flux. The COVID-19 pandemic has induced a state of “How will I react to _____?” Listlessness and emotional exhaustion bring about feelings of isolation and longing to be somewhere we are not. Yet, in learning to modify behaviors, collaborations have emerged.
In the opening couplet to Sheila Kelly’s poem entitled “Breathe” (Fall 2017 Intima). she sets the stage and introduces a poignant metaphor, depicting calmness, yet incertitude.
You are floating in the swimming pool again.
Your childhood best friend rises like prayer.
“Breathe” was penned well before the current pandemic, yet the feelings of serenity and safety one day, and panic the next, expressed are relevant today. Using a second-person narrative, she paints a vivid picture of a disjointed home life, sifting through old, painful memories. In the poem, the main character is catapulting between chaos and “floating in the swimming pool.” At the end, I interpret a sense of adaptation from the character that leaves a residue of hope.
In my essay “Turbulent Undertow” (Fall 2020 Intima), parallel feelings are grappled with, as I describe a surfing attempt, and later, my experience as a hospitalist scribe. Woven together, I write about two near-drowning experiences: on surfing and on caring for patients with COVID-19. The best friend in Sheila Kelly’s poem encourages the main character to put on her old swimsuit when distressed. After a long series of days working with the hospitalist, I, too, wanted to offer solace. But instead, all I could offer was “Glad you’re okay,” a phrase that has reverberated through my brain ever since I first heard it myself.
Riding metaphorical surfboards together and finding ways to float in metaphorical swimming pools may not be the best solution to curb the emotional toll of the pandemic. However, validation and shared human connection serve as two ways to avoid possible drowning amidst the pandemic waves.
Mikayla Brockmeyer
Mikayla Brockmeyer is a first year osteopathic medical student at Des Moines University in Des Moines, Iowa. She began working as a hospitalist scribe in 2018, while she was enrolled in the Master of Science in Biomedical Sciences program at Des Moines University. She successfully defended her thesis in 2019 and spent her gap year scribing full time. This is her first time showcasing her storytelling abilities in a public arena. Her non-fiction essay “Turbulent Undertow” appears in the Fall 2020 Intima.