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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.