The Healer's Art • 2019 • Issue 3

the

artHEALER’S
ISSUE 3
2019

This issue is dedicated to

Dr. Milford Foxwell

The stories shared by our students in the pages to come could not
exist without Dr. Milford “Mickey” Foxwell. By admitting each
in us, our motivations, and our dreams to become physicians. By
supporting the mission of this student group since its very begin-
To Dr. Foxwell, we dedicate this third issue of The Healer’s Art
as a sincere thank you for your service to our University for over
35 years and for your mentorship and friendship to thousands of

students amongst and before us.

Copyright © 2019

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used, reproduced, edited, stored, or transmitted in any
manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher and authors of original works.
Published May 2019 w Printed in Maryland, USA
Any donations to the Creative Hearts team go towards programming and future publications.

On the cover: the

Para Ramón artHEALER’S
ISSUE 3
Lucy Wang, MS2 2019

a foreword
from the Creative HeArts Faculty Advisors, Spring 2019

working medical students on the Creative Hearts Team have channeled their collective
energy to generate this beautiful journal before you, a compilation of creative works
shared by both students and faculty. Even before they matriculate, my role in Admis-
sions allows me to catch a glimpse each year of the many talents our students bring to
our campus. Make no mistake, there is so much more to our students than their intellect!
In the most generous way, our students seek to share their talent, and in doing so inspire
us all to tap into and release our own creative energy. Engaging in the creative process

Sandra Quezada, MD, MS dedicate space and time to this very important and valuable exercise. I am grateful to our
Creative Hearts Team for the beautiful and important work they do, and for consistently
Assistant Dean for Admissions motivating us to remember that underneath and within all of our layers of identity, we
Assistant Dean for Academic and are also poets, painters, and sculptors, creative minds and spirits with a collectively pow-
erful voice.
Multicultural Affairs
Assistant Professor of Medicine, - Maya Angelou
Division of Gastroenterology and

Hepatology
University of Maryland School of

Medicine

skilled in the art of medicine. But what does the phrase, “art of medicine,” really mean?

through uncharted waters, and create safe spaces for the joys of healing and the trag-
edy of loss. However, these skills can only be earned through literal blood, sweat, and
can take a toll on one’s own well-being, as it requires a physician to maintain a certain
and the needs of others is a challenge every physician must face and few have truly
mastered. To manage our own well-being, many physicians turn to the healing arts.
Healing arts can take many forms. When a physician uses creative expression for their

am glad to say I am not alone in this endeavor, and the work contained in this issue John Allen, MD
of the Healer’s Art is truly inspirational. I am proud to be part of this process, and I
encourage us all to allow these works of art to help guide us in our journey of healing Assistant Professor of Medicine
both our patients and ourselves.
University of Maryland School of
Medicine

from the Creative HeArts
Michael Sikorski
I have played the violin since age 7, and I attended an annual summer arts program
called Common Ground on the Hill for the 10 years prior to medical school. Once
school began, I worried that music and art might give way to our medical studies. Cre-
ative Hearts and our publications help foster and maintain reflection and creativity in
medicine. Three years strong, this team encourages our classmates and faculty to seek
new outlets of expression and to cultivate personal relationships beyond the scope of
our clinical education.
Kathryn Champ
Creative Hearts is a reminder for me to always keep my artistic side close. Art and
medicine go hand-in-hand, and I get such joy from creating when I face challenges
during medical school. I love having the chance to pursue my own artistic passions
while also encouraging others to do so as well.

Christine Server

Being a part of Creative Hearts reminds me of the importance of finding time to do
the things that make me feel like a whole person. For me that means playing the violin
and writing, but it’s inspirational to see all the other ways that our classmates express
themselves. There is something especially grounding about being able to share in this
creative spirit.

Saachi Nangia

I first joined Creative HeArts to stay connected to the crafts I so love but have lost
touch with over the years. The group has not only delivered on that promise and en-
couraged me to once again bring pen to paper, but it has also allowed me to connect
with my classmates on a powerful level: to poignantly acknowledge our struggles and
triumphs together, often at a time when one most needs it. So, thank you Creative
HeArts!

Dahlia Kronfli

One of the reasons I wanted to go into medicine is that I not only admire it as a science
but also as an art. Creative HeArts helps remind me of why I began this journey, and
I am proud to be part of a group that provides an opportunity for self-expression, re-
flection, and unity between those in this field. My own personal pursuits in art include
photography, drawing, and amateur DJing.

2 The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

Team

Zahur Fatima Sallman

One of the unique challenges of the third year of medical school is that there
doesn’t ever seem to be enough time (or energy) to reflect on how far we’ve
come in the past couple of years. Despite that, I know that I can always rely on
Creative HeArts and all the work we do as a team to keep fostering creativity in
ourselves and with each other as a community.

Chelsea Alvarado

I feel privileged to have been part of this group for the past three years - to
participate in and witness the creativity of my fellow classmates, which we do
not typically see exemplified in class or the clinic, has been truly amazing. Ad-
ditionally, I believe that if not for the encouragement from Creative HeArts, I
would not have continued to nurture my painting the way I have during medi-
cal school.

Molly Himmelrich

Being a part of Creative HeArts has been a great outlet for me to remind myself
that there is more to life than just studying for tests. It has given me a perspec-
tive of how medicine and art can come together to affect one’s outlook, and I
have enjoyed embracing the arts with like-minded people.

Lucy Wang

I’ve always had an appreciation for all types of art and culture: visual, sculptural,
fashion, dance, music, architecture, theater etc. although the career I chose al-
lows very little time for this medicine tends to dominate my time, I never want
to lose this part of myself!

Amrita Sarkar

I joined Creative Hearts as a way to continue pursuing my passions outside
of medicine and science, including dance, art, and design. I wanted to stay
involved with these interests and foster my creativity while connecting with
my medical school peers and expanding my horizons. Being a part of Creative
Hearts this year has been a great experience and I'm looking forward to our
future projects!

3The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

1 Foreword from Faculty Sponsors

contents 2 From the Creative HeArts Team

5 Where There Are No Doctors JM Blake, MS3
6 All a Blur Brandon Hassid, MS4
7 Cycling On Brianne Redman, MS1
10 Healer’s Hands Anna Lin, MS1
11 Necrotizing Fasciitis Emma Kaplan, MS3
12 Holding On Zahur Fatima Sallman, MS3
13 A Ramble...a Reflection Anonymous, MS1
14 Beyond the Record Charlotte Healy, MS1
15 CO62NS Nicholas George, MS4
16 Down the Hole Anonymous, MS3
23 Rubies Anonymous, MS1
24 The Life of a Medical Student - Phase 3
Ankur Vaidya, MS3
25 Baltimore Cityscape Anonymous, MS3
26 Unity Dahlia Kronfli, MS1
27 Going Through the Step 1 Storm JM Blake, MS3
29 Almost There! Saad Shamshair, MS3
30 Four Pillars of Success Megan Behua Zhang, MS2

4 The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

for more submissions including multimedia & videos, Where
please visit the Creative HeArts website at
There Are
creativeheartsumb.wixsite.com/thehealersart No Doctors

JM Blake, MS3

31 I Love you, Doc Charlotte Healy, MS1
33 Hydrops Fetalis Ji Ae Yoon, MS3
34 Side Effects Charlotte Healy, MS1
35 M(R.I.) Gina Savella, MS2
36 My Eye Kristen Langan, MS3
37 IgM, Schematized Nabid Ahmed, MS3
38 Inner Monologue
Meghna Ramaswamy, MS2
39 Para Ramón Lucy Wang, MS2
40 The Light at the End of the
Tunnel Brandon Hassid, MS4
40 The Invisible Illness
Poorna Sreekumar, MS3
42 Mirror Lake Donna Parker, MD
43 They say, I say
As I walked behind her I felt
Sandra M. Quezada, MD, MS strength, compassion, dedica-
44 Crashing Waves Katayoun Eslami, MS4 tion, and respect radiate from her
45 City Sights Lavanya Garnepudi, MS1 shadow. She is one of hundreds
46 Day and Night Michael Sikorski, GS1 of female workers who serves to
improve the health of her com-
munity. She is the health system
in places where doctors do not
reach. Want to know what a boss
lady looks like?
You're looking at one.
- JMB in Gaibandha, Bangladesh

5The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

All a Blur

Brandon Hassid, MS4

6 The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

Cycling On
Brianne Redman, MS1
Week one of the new block
Try to hit the ground running
But it’s really more of a stuttering, stumbling
Of dragging our feet, and snoozing the clock
Runners, please come to the starting block.

Get ready, get set
It’s time to run.
The countdown starts now

In Three
Two
One

The weekend arrives
And coursework left behind

In favor of
Drinking and dating
Family time and baking
Desperate for socialization
Some semblance of vacation

Monday mourning
Doesn’t delay

The start of week two
Seems bleak, seems blue.
We’re all in this together
And assure one another, it doesn’t matter
“I wasn’t productive at all”
Is the standard weekly chatter.

But priorities shift,
Old habits renew.
Pushing sleep to the wayside,
Replace one coffee with two.
As our academic ambitions rise,
Social plans fall through.

The second week of the block is a struggle
Trying to reach a happy ideal

Both finding time to study and cook a nice meal
We’re human, that’s all

And want work-life balance
But it’s hard not to see time with friends

As a “social allowance”.
How many you take is up to you

7The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

cont. from pg 7

After all, we each have the same number of hours to use
Week three brings tension
And stress
And fear
Less than a week
Until the exam is here.
The stakes are higher,
Embers catch on fire.
Study by day,
Study by night

I might forget what sunlight feels like.
Long library afternoons,
Hours on laptops
In windowless rooms.

When Friday arrives, I think the week flew!
How many hours of studying do I still have to do?

It’s Saturday:
But what does that mean?
Life goes on all around me
But it’s hard to feel seen
When you’re hidden in plain sight:
Headphones in, eyes down
My own private academic world
With no one else around.
The final weekend passes

It blurs, it flies.
Until the night before the exam finally arrives.

They preach wellness like it’s simple
To give yourself a rest

When all they really care about
Is that we do well on their next test.
How do you find respect for yourself?
And so continues the battle of health.

Exam day came.
I think,

But can’t recall.
I block it all out the second
That I leave the lecture hall.

Tonight’s about me
My class

8 The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

cont. from pg 8
My friends.

Another course on the books, another ANKI deck ends.
Who cares if it’s Tuesday?

Let our weekend begin; it’s our time to reign
Serotonin flowing through the brain.
Maybe we drink too much
And maybe we don’t.
We all have our personal ways to cope.
In the days to come,
I’ll sign in and sign out;

But please don’t ask me what the required seminars were about.
“I deserve a break”
I think; I know.

But here we are, waking up at 6:30 on the nose.
I live up my free weekend as best as I can

--by not sleeping enough and spending every second with friends.
It’s hard to admit defeat at Sunday’s end,

Preparing for the hamster wheel all over again.
Resigned, I take myself back to the start.
How do I move forward?
With passion? With heart?

I must maintain my interest, my drive, my spark,
To break free from the cycle
And finally leave my mark.

9The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

Healer’s Hands
Anna Lin, MS1

10 The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

Necrotizing Fasciitis

Emma Kaplan, MS3

I’ve learned a bit of tissue planes.
I can hold a pound of flesh for you
to zap through, rainbow of browns
or tans through pinks and yellows—

every layer where I’ve hidden
those unrealized memories,
those photographs I’d cherish

if only I were in them.
I know a little of subcuticular sutures.
I’ve learned to run a needle just between
what you call skin and the raw pink—

the real skin I know beneath.
So I close the wound between what is
and should or would or might have been

stitch by stitch by hour by day.
But I think too often of the other me

or two
or however many lives
hide threaded to this one.
Each time I think of what I sewed away
some decay grows a little wider,
a little blacker, ripping skin and real skin

from underneath
with nothing but its breath.

11The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

Holding On

Zahur Fatima Sallman, MS3

Sometimes it feels like you’re in tornado of your own making. Whether it be because of an ambition or aspiration
you desperately want to achieve, a personal struggle, or maybe just trying to find your next purpose.
Your feet have left the ground and you feel a twinge of panic in your chest, a tightening in your throat. Kind of
like that feeling you get when you’re looking down from the summit of the first drop of a roller coaster, about to
plunge down at an unbelievable speed. You’re unsure how far below the ground is. But unlike the roller coaster,
you won’t be plunging downwards....it’s only up from here.
To everyone who’s encouraged me to keep doing what I love despite the difficult and busy times of this year,
know that I probably would’ve given up entirely on trying to paint if you hadn’t.

12 The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

A ramble...a reflection

Anonymous, MS1

As the ebb and flow 
of med school goes,
we move on slow.
From the toes to the heart,
already so far from the start.
Can you expand on that please?
An artificial encounter,
did I build empathy that hour?
A reminder 
of the towering number of things to know.
I couldn’t have imagined so,
just months ago, 
how much we’d have grown. 
20,000 leagues under the sea,
fished out by my…
soon-to-be colleagues,
saving me at every turn.
Do I take tums for heartburn? 
Take a second to relax.
Drink a beer, take a bath,
you’re only human too.
For no one is immune 
to sadness, ecstasy 
or the damn ole’ flu.
Is excess Vitamin C bad for you?
A ramble, a reflection…
med school’s simply a collection 
of stories and incoherent rhymes.
One day we’ll learn to read the signs.
Tick tock-tick tock,
It’s almost our time.

13The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

Beyond the Record
Charlotte Healy, MS2

14 The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

CO62NS

Nicholas George, MS4

During my final year of medical school I had the incredible opportunity to rotate with the Essex
and Herts Air Ambulance Trust (EHAAT) in Colchester, England. Founded in 1997, this char-
ity’s over $6 million yearly budget is funded almost entirely by donations. Operating from two
bases, teams of physicians and critical care paramedics respond via helicopter or rapid response
vehicle to an average of 6 missions per day. EHAAT is part of a larger network of charitable
organizations providing emergency helicopter EMS service in the UK at no cost to the patient.
When I was not flying, I took the opportunity to photograph the teams as they departed for
missions. I took this picture as the crew of G-EHEM (call-sign Helimed07) was about to lift off
into the sunset to attend a critically ill patient at the end of a busy shift.

15The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

Down the Hole

Anonymous, MS3

FIRST YEAR
You didn’t think it would be like this. Staring into a dead man’s excavated abdomen with four other first year students. The
smell is overpowering, mind-altering. The skin doesn’t even feel human. It’s clammy, rubbery almost. You have to take
frequent breaks in the hallway outside because you can’t stand there for more than 20 minutes at a time without gagging.
You try your hand at dissecting, which is the stuff that makes you feel like you’re really in medical school. But honestly,
you suck at it so you stick to reading directions from the computer screen. Still, you wear a mask, gloves, scrubs. The whole
get-up. For two months, you and your group set to work: cutting, probing, sawing. 
In November, they hand you a white coat with your name on it in delicate red letters. You put it on and wear it around the
house when your roommates aren’t home. A tiny voice in the back of your head says, what the hell are you doing? But you
ignore it. In the meantime, you skip lecture. You watch all 8 seasons of Dexter during biochemistry. You nap more than
you’ve ever napped in your entire life. You watch the playback videos of lectures at twice the speed and cram for every
exam. You do the minimum to get by. You start to understand the whole C = MD thing. Strangely, it’s much less pressure
than college. 
Your classmates are an eclectic bunch. Some of them, like yourself, seem perpetually dazed by the fact that they’re in
medical school. The most vocal though, are the students that never pass up a chance to talk about how they’re living their
dream. You didn›t know that people still had dreams at this age. In random fits of jealousy, you wonder what that must be
like, living your dream. You picked your future by throwing darts at a target and seeing what stuck. Some of the hype is
too much though. You especially can›t stand it when people talk about how they want to save lives, like they›re on Grey›s
Anatomy or something. It makes you feel guilty, like you›re not pure.  There’s something wrong with you, you think. You
make no real friends. 
Soon, they start letting you see patients in the hospital. For four hours a week, you go and learn how to take a medical
history. The patients are so very patient, even with you. You stumble through the history robotically. What brings you in
today? Does the pain radiate or stay constant? Do you have sex with men, women, or both?  You wonder if you’ll ever get
the hang of this without sounding like a second rate AI.
School starts feeling overbearing. They start monitoring how many seconds students are late to class. They stop letting you
see what questions you got wrong even after suffering through a 3 hour exam.  They schedule 8 am wellness lectures to
tell you to sleep more. The material alternates between dull and slightly less dull. You used to be an overachiever, but now
you’re just barely pulling in Cs. Nothing seems to stick, even after you read the same slide 20 times. The same old pressures
are there, the ones that you thought you left behind in college. It’s only been a couple of months and people are already
talking about doing research and volunteering and running for class council. You thought getting into med school meant
getting off the hamster wheel, but no, it just means having to run faster. 

16 The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

(cont. from pg. 16)
Your sleep pattern’s all messed up. You sleep too little at night, worrying about everything, about how you’re not living
your dream or how you’re not making any money like your friends in engineering. During the day, you go to class and
then come home and sleep like it’s your job. Two or three hours easy. When you wake up, always groggy and feeling worse
than before, you wander to your desk and stare blankly at the lectures you missed. Your body starts aching everywhere,
even though the most strenuous activity you do is power walk 10 minutes to class. You’re tired in a way that transcends
mere physical exhaustion. It’s as if you’re bleeding life. 
You realize that you’re sinking into a bland, semi-functional depression. Everything seems to match your mood: the blue-
gray bedsheets, the lifeless house, the dreary city. You’ve slid into a deep, dark hole and now you don’t know how to get
out. Even time seems unremarkable; the past and future and present all merging into one oppressive fog. You’re obviously
aware of the passage of time, which you measure as the weeks in between exams, but only in a circadian way, like some
sort of animal. 
You start to veer off the narrow course you’ve been on since high school. You start thinking too much, questioning things,
asking yourself what you want. It’s more of a curse than any kind of clarity. You try not to give into the disabling dread
that grips you in moments of idleness. The kind that’s always staring back at you in the mirror or lying beside you at night.
You forget what your life was like before school. Your non-med school friends are doing fun things like making money
and going rock climbing. You try to take it up before realizing it really is a hobby for rich people.
You start writing again, bit by bit. You start random stories and essays but never finish them. It’s all just half written stuff,
taunting you from the screen. You’re afraid that if you write down too much, you’ll write something you don’t want to
read. Instead of studying, you start daydreaming about what you could do if you weren’t in school. The grass is always
greener, you tell yourself, as your boyfriend talks about his 401k or your friend from high school quits his job to backpack
through Asia. In moments of weakness, you passively look through job postings on Indeed, trying to find something your
basic science degree would be good for.  
Despite your best efforts, your friends start to notice how spaced out you are. How angry. How you start crying for no
reason at all. But it’s not till winter break, in the McDonald’s parking lot back home, that your friend Michelle says it flat
out. Dude, she says, something’s wrong. You know but you don’t know what to do about it. Med school messes people up,
she says. She interned in a hospital in high school you remember. All the doctors looked so miserable she had said.
You want to quit, you tell her but she shakes her head. Don’t take the easy way out.

17The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

(cont. from pg. 17)
You’ve never been in a therapist’s office before, but it’s just like you’ve always imagined: soft yellow walls, a flood of light
from a large window, two couches. Indians don’t believe in this stuff. Your parents would probably flip if you told them.
They think it’s a white people thing, like apple picking or CrossFit. They’re of the hardy, immigrant stock. Perhaps geneti-
cally engineered to withstand these attacks on the mind. You feel kind of guilty, like you’ve failed your heritage in some
colossal way.
Obviously, you and your therapist talk about that. In fact, you and your therapist talk about everything: your parents, your
childhood, your fears, your hopes, your deranged sleeping pattern. It’s almost too cliché, but still you start liking therapy.
Who wouldn’t? You get to talk about yourself for an hour and then have someone comment on the minutiae of your mun-
dane feelings. It’s a psychic cleanse. You start doing better. Going to class, working out, drinking water. You get behind
this whole self-improvement thing. You even get yourself one of those stress relief coloring books. 
And then because you’re you, because you’re so unfortunately you, you screw it all up. Like you can’t be a normal human
being. Or no, that being a normal, functioning adult is just so much conscious work that you need a therapist to do it. You
imagine your parents disdain. Your mom did her residency with two kids in a foreign country. But you can’t get these
thoughts out of your head, even after you do all the CBT stuff your therapist teaches you. You feel like you’re just doing a
caricature of someone in therapy: the meditation, the journaling, the deep breathing.  It’s not you.  
It’s not like it all comes crashing down at once. First, you stop going to the gym, then to lecture, and then to the therapist.
With all the extra time, your perpetually unmade bed looks more inviting than ever. When you get tired of sleeping, you
lie on the white carpet floor next to the window and stare at the ceiling. Slowly, the formless thoughts that’ve been brewing
in your brain for the past few months start to take shape. What if you never belonged here? What if you quit? What if you’ll
never be happy? What if it was all a mistake?
SUMMER
The afternoon of the last exam of first year, you come home and face plant on your bed. Your final grades alternate be-
tween Bs and Cs, but you kind of wish you just failed. It would have been the easy way out. Summer stretches out before
you, but you have no real plans other than the research project they make all the students do. You send the same formulaic
email to maybe a dozen professors and pathologically check your inbox until one of them responds. Most of them don’t
bother, but some of them do, probably enticed by the prospect of free labor. You figure student labor is, after all, what
keeps the whole research machine running. You console yourself with the remote possibility of a publication. 

18 The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

(cont. from pg. 18)
You spend the long summer hours watching BoJack Horseman, a show about a depressed anthropomorphic horse. You
watch the show in a stupor, sitting on the floor and perpetually nursing a warm beer. You draw the blinds shut so that the
only light in the room is the ambient glow from the TV screen. You’ve probably hit bottom, but who knows? Like BoJack,
maybe you’re still falling. Your roommate interrupts one such wallow session to announce a trip to New Hampshire to do
some hiking in the White Mountains. Buy new hiking shoes, she tells you. 
Reluctantly, you go. Even though you think this might be some kind of wilderness therapy ploy, you get the new shoes
anyway. You spend the entire 9 hour drive in your new hiking shoes, complaining about everything. Mel listens and un-
derstands, but secretly you’re worried you sound crazy. But even you’re awed into silence as you approach the campsite
at dusk. The mountains, back lit by the sun and you, a tiny being in a car in the middle of all of it. It’s so beautiful you can
almost ignore the giant Trump signs everywhere.
Out here, you feel less claustrophobic, less painfully aware of yourself. You always hated the noise and the lights and the
indifference of cities. When Mel’s asleep in the tent, you unzip your sleeping bag and walk out into the light summer air.
For the first time in months, you feel like you’re climbing out of yourself. Who knew your mind was a literal space you
could get lost in?
The hike is going to be a long one. 8 hours, you estimate because you’re slow and out of shape from all that time lying
in bed. Your thighs jiggle when you step too hard on the trail and your little daypack is too heavy but you just keep put-
ting one foot in front of another. The great thing about hiking is that it feels like pure, condensed existence. When you’re
hiking, there’s nothing to do but exist. The very effort of walking, of watching the sun march across the horizon, of just
breathing, is overwhelming. It leaves no room for doubt. No room for thought. You and Mel hardly talk the entire 8 hours
either, both of you out of breath, both of you really no match for the elevation gain. So it’s just you. No thoughts. No
doubts. Just you. 
On the drive home, lulled by the never ending strip of pavement, you turn to Mel and say, Maybe I should quit. You know
she understands the urge, just as much as any other student. But she just says, And do what? 

19The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

(cont. from pg. 19)
Back in Baltimore, you struggle to recall the vast wilderness of New Hampshire.  Even in summer, even with the sunlight
irradiating the ivied bricks of row homes, the city feels like a dud. There’s always dog crap on your street and a single,
lonely tree in the faded dog park next to your place. And behind it all, the hospital looming like an omen. You start your
new research project. It’s tedious, repetitive work but the professor assures you that it will be good experience, aka, you
can put it on your pitiful CV. His latest email reads, So sorry we don’t have money in the grant to pay you. You carry on
with the work either way, which makes you feel as if all the juicy, creative parts of your brain are atrophying. 
When you’re not watching Netflix or mucking around in literature reviews, you go back to reactivating the same loop
of What if’s that have been marinating in your brain since last year. It’s so easy to pinpoint exactly where you went
wrong. You should have been a journalism major. You should have taken more comp-sci classes. You should have written
more. You should have tried harder to step off the path that was rolled out for you from the beginning.
When the thoughts become too much, you retire online to convince yourself you’re not over thinking it. And how eager
the faceless voices are to welcome you. You scroll through obscure SDN thread after thread about people asking how to
drop out or how to stop feeling so bad or if medicine objectively does suck. Maybe all the career surveys are true. Maybe
this really is the worst profession. 
So you start planning an exit strategy. Without the pressure of marginally passing exams, you can devote all your energy
to answering Mel’s question. You start doing too much: making excel spreadsheets, taking career finder quizzes, trawling
through every job site you can imagine, haphazardly throwing your resume to whatever position you might qualify for.
Then you realize, in a delayed, ashamed kind of way, that it is damn hard to find a job. 
Either way, the interviews start rolling in. Scrappy startups and buttoned up research firms all want to interview YOU for
an exciting opportunity. You go to all the interviews and feel startlingly out of your element. You wear your med school
interview suit to lunch with a bunch of young developers and then over correct for casualness at the research firm. At
every interview, you feel like you’re floating over your own body, like you’re not yourself when you say things like, Yes, I
find theintersection of health and technology to be the future. By the end of all of it, you›re more hopeless than when you
started. You retreat inside your mind again, to the quiet little room where you go to examine all your stupid decisions.

20 The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

(cont. from pg. 20)
The rejection emails stat coming in from all the good jobs. Then the acceptances from the bad jobs. Your boyfriend reads
over them skeptically. Are you going to throw away med school for this? he asks.  But he doesn’t push, it’s not his style.
You sigh and then you scream and then you delete all the stuff that makes you mad from your inbox. The panic that you’ve
been pushing down all summer is starting to well up again at the thought of going back to school. There’s no other viable
option. Who wants to hire an inexperienced chemistry major to do anything besides pipette? But you’re afraid that going
back to school means going down the hole again. It suddenly feels inevitable, like there’s a part of you always tip toeing
around a large, gaping crater no matter what you do. 
SECOND YEAR
You end up coming back for second year anyway. It’s the logical thing to do according to everyone you know. You’re still
apprehensive though, still worried that someone will see through your immaculately pressed white coat to the confused,
lonely person wearing it. How long does it take before you stop hating your life? you ask the internet. Some say when you
find ‘your bliss’ or when you find that special someone. Or when you let go of all your material possessions. Some say
never. 
Either way you know you can’t do another year of whatever mess first year was. So you commit yourself to doing better,
but you don’t go overboard like before. You’re not even sure if it’ll work. There’s no magic to it, a friend says, there’s noth-
ing that’ll fix it just like that. He confirms your worst fear: that the real work happens day by day, minute by minute. You
go crawling back to your therapist after a months long hiatus. You try actually engaging with the lecture material instead
of just scanning it before exams. Talking to patients gives you a small measure of joy. When you finally stop hiding from
everyone, you discover that your class actually has some cool people in it. For the first time in a long time, you can see a
thin path through the fog. 
Periodically, you bring out the measuring tape to see how far you are from the crater. There’s days where you slip. Days
where you sleep too much or excavate old insecurities and examine them for hours. Days where you feel like you’re stand-
ing alone on an abandoned beach, waiting for a single wave of gloom to drown you. But there’s others days too. All the
days in between where you get out of bed and go to class.

21The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

Dance

of Death

Anna Lin, MS1

Rubies

Anonymous, MS1

They caught her playing with the jar once, when she was younger. She was old enough to be curious about the
shiny and supposedly special object, but still too young to understand that a glass jar is easily broken. She climbed onto
the kitchen counter and reached up, up, on her tippy toes, to grab her sealed jar from the highest shelf, where it was dis-
played alongside her parents’ opened ones. When her parents returned from work to find their daughter clutching her
future precariously in her unsteady hands, they were horrified. Her mother cried. Her father rushed over and immediately
snatched the jar away. The little girl started crying, too, unsure where she had gone wrong, but feeling scared and sorry
nevertheless, as all young children are.

Later that night, after her father had finished building a small wooden chest and locked the jar inside, they had a
talk. The jar was precious, priceless, delicate, they said, as her mother brushed her hair and her father leaned against the
bedroom doorframe, just like the wonderful girl it belongs to and the beautiful destiny it holds in store for her.

22 The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

(cont. from pg. 22)
From that day on, her parents kept the jar locked away.
But she knew where her father hid the key. When her parents weren’t around, she liked to take out the jar and put
it on the windowsill, where the sunlight touched it in all the loveliest ways. She admired it, wondered at it, tapped at the
glass to gain clues about what might be inside before she had to put it away again.
Everyone has a jar, and every jar holds a future. They say that what it holds is determined by Fate alone. On her
18th birthday, she would find out what was inside, just like her parents had done on their 18th birthdays, and their parents
before.
On her father’s 18th birthday, he had opened the jar to find a few bent, iron nails. The next day, he was offered an
apprenticeship in carpentry. He kept the nails in his open jar as a memento.
Her mother’s jar had held a single fine-haired paintbrush. In that moment, the path towards a future in painting
felt clear beyond a doubt. Her mother still used the brush to touch up small details in her pieces.
And tomorrow, on her 18th birthday, it would be her turn.
…
There was no name for the ceremony, if it could even be called a ceremony.
She carried her jar into a simply decorated room. Eleven men wearing tailored black coats were seated in a row
behind a table. A second table, small and square, was placed in front of them. One man with blue eyes motioned to the
small table. The girl approached as directed and set the jar down. There was no chair, so she stood.
The Fates, people called them. Little was said about them other than that they were wise and kind. They served
as witnesses to the jar-opening, and advisors to the jar-openers who struggled to interpret the signs of their destinies.
Whether the Fates had a hand in determining the contents of the jars, no one seemed to know.
Standing before them now, the girl understood why so little was known or spoken about the mysterious Fates.
Each was distinct, and yet they all exuded the same aura. The air in the room seemed almost heavy with a tangible pow-
er. She was speechless in awe. Awe? Admiration? There was something else she felt, something uncomfortable, but she
couldn’t find the right words for it.
The same man with blue eyes sat in the center. A notebook and fountain pen were laid out before him.
Please, go ahead, said Blue-Eyes.
The girl’s body still felt frozen, but her arms began to move. Her hands trembled as she reached forward. She
grasped the cold glass tightly, worried that it would slip from her damp fingers.
She opened the jar and peered inside.
Blue-Eyes frowned. He wrote something in his notebook.
I’m sorry, he said, as the girl stared into the jar.
When his pen hit the table, she vanished.
…
Just kidding.
I’m sorry, he said, but she didn’t care.
She had opened the jar, and it was empty.
So she smashed it into the table, shattered it into a thousand liquid rubies that rolled down her unshaking hands,
and left with the rubies in her palms.

23The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

The Life of a Medical Student - Phase 3

Ankur Vaidya, MS3

This series is an introspective and artistic documentation of my experiences along my
journey into medicine. I created four pieces during my first year, and three in my second.
This is my first for my third year. The full series can be viewed in its entirety at ankur-
vaidyaphoto.wixsite.com/shutterfinger/medical-school.

24 The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

Baltimore Cityscape

Anonymous, MS3

25The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

Unity

Dahlia Kronfli, MS1

May our woes, fears, and sadness be eased, by the awareness that
we feel these as a shared human experience.
For this piece, I asked the Class of 2022 to share their worries with
me. I am so grateful for those who chose to offer a submission.
You are brave, and above all:
You are not alone.

26 The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

Going through the Step 1 Storm
JMBlake, MS3

-Dedicated to the MS2s Anxiously Preparing for Step 1
This study journey has been more difficult than I could have ever imagined. I prepped myself by creating a sched-
ule early, securing the ok from my family to move in and study, organizing all my notes etc yet I still struggled.
The self-doubt is overwhelming sometimes. I am notoriously bad at taking standardized tests, I consistently pick
the wrong answers, doubt myself and talk myself out of right answers. Y’all could give me a multiple choice ques-
tion asking what is my name and I bet I’ll talk myself into choosing something that is not my actual name (but
for real though). When I tell people this I always hear them say “but you’re in medical school”. Yes I am in medi-
cal school, but that doesn’t change the fact that I am not exaggerating my test taking abilities. Check this out: I
literally failed the MCAT. I’m not joking, I took it twice and got so far below average that when I got into med
school, Maryland didn’t even include my MCAT score in the score range they showed to our class on the first
day (I inwardly cried at orientation when I saw they left MY score off the slide as if they were embarrassed by it).

Phew, talk about a tangent! Anyway I said all that to say that
I succkkkk at standardized tests and have a somewhat fear
of them. I took the SAT 3 times, the GRE, I bombed that
too...so bad that public health schools I didn’t even want to
go to rejected me. Standardized tests are my Achilles heel.
These past few weeks I have studied harder than I have ever
in my life. I drink coffee at least 3-5 times a week (that ain’t
like me, an avid tea drinker to the death). I worked my butt
off and each practice test or quiz I took I kept failing. I cried
consistently every day, had a panic attack for the first time
in years, and cried myself to sleep more times than I could
think.
Studying up to 14 hours a day I was absolutely exhausted.
If you looked at me too long, I cried. My family found me
asleep on the floor surrounded by notes, dry erase marker
in hand more times than I could count. I dreaded opening
my computer. Our academic counselor was on my speed
dial list. On one particularly bad day I began crafting a let-
ter stating that I was leaving medical school after failing yet
another practice test. I drove for an hour crying too embar-
rassed to go home and tell my aunt and uncle that while I
had been studying for weeks in their house I was nowhere
near passing. Twelve days before my test I sat down with
my family and sought their advice resulting in me extend-
ing my stay and pushing my test back 5 days. My big talked
me off numerous ledges, my classmates listened to my sobs
while yelling at me to stay, my family prayed and prayed,
and my guardian angels held me up.

27The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

(cont. from pg. 27)
Step 1 studying was awful because it felt like no matter how hard I studied, stuck to the plan, and learned I could
not pass a practice test. Not for lack of knowledge, but sometimes due to lack of confidence from being knocked
down many times before or other times for sheer confusion. When I take tests it’s like all of the words on the
screen get jumbled up and mushed together. I actually wanted to be tested for test taking dyslexia (which I’m not
sure is a thing). I start reading and it’s like the letters have a mind of their own and dance across the screen...it’s
awful. If you took the same question and verbally asked me I can verbally tell you the correct answer (hence why
I’m doing much better in third year). But, that’s not how the test is set up, so I kept pushing, I kept trying. I cried
through it and finally made it to test day.
Five days later than originally planned and a post exam trip to Belize postponed (with no refund) I stepped
into the same testing center where I took the MCAT (s) and the GRE. Eight hours later I walked out adrenaline
pumping, feeling like I had been hit by a car. I wouldn’t call my test taking experience a success by most standards
but for me, I made it through without crying, having a panic attack, or completely blanking out. For me and my
counselors that was success enough. In the moment I couldn’t care less that I ran out of time on two sections and
lost two minutes of time at the end for “not signing my name correctly” I was damn proud that I took that test
and didn’t have a panic attack or need to take medicine to prevent a panic attack...damn proud. When I walked
out of there I felt victorious regardless of what the score would say in a few weeks. And, in a few weeks when I
received my score I opened it while sitting with my mama after decorating her gravesite and sighed a relief. I had
passed. I literally barely passed by a few points, but I had passed. Something I hadn’t been able to achieve before
sitting to take the test. I’m not very excited about my score but I’m so blessed to never have to take that test again.
My faith in Him secures my future, not some test score which He has proven to me time and time again.
Why am I sharing all this? Far too many people share their study plans and advice, but few people share what’s
it’s like to not have the answers, what it’s like when others around you have no idea the struggles you hold in-
side. What it’s like to fail over and over again while studying your butt off for 12+ hours a day. What it’s like to
hyperventilate when pushing submit. What it’s like to fear having a panic attack after years without one. There
are people out there who need to know they are not alone. No one says med school would ever be easy, but it can
take away your sanity and your sense of being. It can make you feel like you’re alone. But, you’re not. I’m here, I
see you, and I too have trekked through this ratchet storm. I did it, tears and all and so can you.
Let’s defy the odds and continue to show that we are more than our test scores and class ranks. Great doctors are
born in the heart with your compassion, humility, and gratitude. Always remember that.

28 The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

Almost there!
Saad Shamshair, MS3
29The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

Four Pillars of Success
Megan Behua Zhang, MS2

30 The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

I Love you, Doc
Charlotte Healy, MS1

As Doctor Bennett enters the room, his eyes briefly lock with Lee’s and he smiles empathetically. Bennett’s sturdy
stance contrasts with his fragile face, a face lined with kind wrinkles. The crinkles around his eyes suggest a life-
time of smiling. Not dressed in a typical white coat, Bennett wears a blue button-up and an indigo paisley tie.
As expected, a stethoscope hangs from his neck. He takes a seat on the overly cushioned stool; he slouches his
shoulders over the keyboard and focuses his gaze on the glaring computer screen.
In a slightly awkward greeting, Lee tentatively clears his throat while keeping his eyes on Bennett. But, Lee’s
movements suggest a graceful intention and a touch of elegance. He is impressively tall – tall enough perhaps
to be a NBA point-guard. He’s dressed entirely in black, all the way down to his socks. His belongings sit beside
him, enclosed in a thin white plastic grocery bag. He thrusts his arm forward in one fluid gesture, offering Ben-
nett a white piece of computer paper with large hand-written block letters- Lee’s long list of symptoms. After
presenting the list to Bennett, Lee takes a seated position on the lightly padded brown patient chair in front of
the doctor. The list seems to fill the gap separating Bennett from Lee.
Legs still crossed, Bennett peers down at the paper in his lap, “Tell me about your jaw pain.” Lee, in response,
draws his left hand to his left cheek, “It’s like the top of my jaw is going this way and the bottom is going the
other.” As he continues to describe the pain, his entire face begins to wrinkle, as though his head were a giant
stress-ball that someone was aggressively squeezing. Flitting his eyes back and forth from the list of symptoms to
Lee’s eyes, not unlike a butterfly, Dr. Bennett manages to scribble notes on a sheet of paper sitting on the counter.
The faucet, gently dripping, marks the passing moments.
“Migraines,” says Dr. Bennett with an upward inflection. Intently watching Bennett, Lee, in an effort to describe
the migraines, says, “Doc, I’d rather drink hot lava.” As he says this, his face becomes more contorted, almost
gargoyle-like. “Codeine is the only thing that works.” He begins to pick at his nails, and as his gaze begins to wa-
ver, his voice rises in pitch and rapidity. “Twice a week they’re so bad, I cry like a baby. You wish you could die.
Unless I got codeine, there’s nothing I can do. Right now, I go out to the street to get the codeine.”
Over the next forty-minutes, Bennett patiently investigates the remaining symptoms on Lee’s sheet including:
sciatic pain, ringing in his ear, swollen feet, and STD testing. Lee remains planted like a tree, his gaze moving
from Bennett, to the ceiling, to the floor, to something in the air and back again to Bennett. The doctor’s gaze
appears more methodical and purposeful, moving back and forth from the hand printed sheet to Lee, with an
occasional gaze at his notepaper.
Scrolling back to the computer screen, Bennett asks Lee a series of quick questions from the VA checklist and
mechanically clicks along while scrolling down:
Flu shot, uncheck. Shingles vaccine, uncheck. Allergies, check. Tetanus shot, uncheck. Medications,

check, testosterone supplements since ‘95. Colonoscopy, uncheck. Seizures, uncheck.
When Bennett lifts his gaze from the desktop his eyes rest on Lee for a lingering moment, concern wrinkles up
his forehead, “Any symptoms of depression?” After an uncomfortable pause, Lee replies, “Just headaches, that’s
all,” this time without distorting his face. “What do you like to do for free time?” A slightly longer pause passes.
Seemingly puzzled, Lee responds, “Hmm, watch sports, I guess.” Breaking the tension, “Well, as long as you
aren’t a Patriots fan.” Lee reveals an open mouth grin, “Unfortunately,” he says, “I’m a Jets fan.”

31The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

(cont. from pg. 31)
“What about alcohol use?” Lee swiftly responds, “Not often. I might have a drink a month, but it
can cause the migraines.” Bennett responds, “Maybe there are some good things about your migraines.” They
share a communal laugh. “It’s not funny,” Lee says with a smile, apparently trying to control his laughter. Bennett
sadly nods.
Bennett asks Lee if he smokes. “I have those Native American cigs once in a while; maybe a pack a month.” Ben-
nett follows up, “What keeps you from smoking?” “Well, when I have weed, they don’t hurt like the cigarettes do.”
“I would love if you quit all together,” the doctor replies. Lee, nodding his head, says, “Yes, I would too.”
Bennett inquires about his family history and if his parents are alive. Lee lifts his head, eyes fixed on the corner
right where the walls meet the ceiling, “Mother left us three years ago, at 88 or 89. I forgot what she died of...it was
all of a sudden. Wrong medication, I think? Mom didn’t drink much water. She preferred champagne.” A closed
mouth smile passes over Bennett’s lips, a mix of concern and humor.
“And your father?” Lee begins with snippets of his dad’s story—a solider in World War II with PTSD, roommates
with Tony Curtis in art school. He then shared that dad left in the 1990s, “The camel took him out.” A more nota-
ble pause occurs in the dialogue and the only sound is the clicking keyboard. After a dozen taps, his fingers freeze
and his chin lifts. Tears begin to leak out of Lee’s eyes, “It doesn’t always happen when I talk about my mom.”
“Ohh, it’s okay,” Bennett replies with awkward affection. He swivels his stool 180 degrees to grab the blue box of
tissues—a maneuver he has clearly performed countless times. Lee whispers, “thank you,” as he rises out of his
chair to accept the blue box. As he sits back down, a stream of tears floods down his soft face.
Bennett then instructs, “Well, let’s do this. Sit up on the exam chair. You can take your shoes off.” Circling the
chair like a line-dance, Bennett patiently performs his standard procedures. After finishing his routine checks, he
reviews his notable findings, prescription orders, referrals, etc. Lee lengthens his spine when Bennett announces
his order of forty pills of Codeine.
He exclaims — quicker than a reflex — “I love you, doc.” But Bennett, hearing a very different message, lets out a
sigh. With a purposeful gaze he responds, “Well, don’t love me too much. I’m hoping this will be temporary and
that the neurologist will address your migraines.” Lee bobs his head in a compliant silence.
Before leaving, Lee asks one final question with a subtle but telling smile, “Will I die, doc?” Bennett provides a
surprising answer: “Until you die, you’re going to live.”

32 The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

Hydrops Fetalis
Ji Ae Yoon, MS3
Thank you for letting me learn
from your heartbreak.
33The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

Side Effects
Charlotte Healy, MS1
A drawing of my mother’s first chemo.

34 The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

M(R.I.)

Gina Savella, MS2

A T-2 weighted image of the Ocean State

35The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

My Eye

Kristen Langan, MS3

He is my solace
on the days that it rains -
we sit on the floor
of the bathtub and pretend it’s
the ocean.
He splashes me and it feels like
I am drowning
in that
tablespoon of water.
He always makes the small seem significant.
He is my gravity
when I feel like I could float away -
we strap on lead sandals and pretend
we are Achilles.
Keeping each other immortal on this
earthly ground.
He is my peace
when the mind is a tornado -
Flashes of lightning, memories, jumbled
words,
quietly stack and fold away, laundry of the
brain.
he is My own personal ‘eye’.
He is my yang
while I am his ying –
together one full circle.
He is my day
while I am his night –
together one full cycle
Neither whole without one another –
Together, one.

36 The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

IgM, schematized
Nabid Ahmed, MS3
37The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

Inner Monologue
Meghna Ramaswamy, MS2

Take a deep breath, letting your eyes relax in a soft gaze, and when you are ready, allow your
eyes to close

I have got to do my laundry before going to bed. I should probably put my dishes away too - do I
have a lunch for tomorrow? How did mom make sure we had freshly prepared meals three times
a day?

Bring your attention to your body. Notice any points of tightness you might still be holding on to,
and with your next breath, let go of the tension

Tension. I haven’t spoken to my friend in a while. Should I reach out? She should reach out! But
we’re both busy. I should be more understanding.

If you do get distracted, note any thoughts or feelings, acknowledge them, and then gently re-
direct your mind to your body.
Breathe in. Breathe out.

I mean, we’re both busy. Why hasn’t she reached out? Haven’t I been making all the effort?
When was the last time she reached out to me? I thought a friendship is supposed to be a two-
sided relationship. I don’t have any more energy to give. Is this a feeling? I feel sidelined and
ignored. How do I accept that? Does this friendship have anything left in it to be worth saving?
How do I respond to passivity?

Breathe in. Breathe out.
When you feel ready, allow your eyes to open to your surroundings

38 The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

Para Ramón

Lucy Wang, MS2

Ramón y Cajal was a Spanish neuroanato-
mist who was a grandfather to the field of
neuroscience.
He hand-sketched many beautiful neuron
forms that elucidated so much with
elegance and simplicity.
It inspires and comforts me that someone
who made such a huge contribution to
science (eventually going on to receive a
Nobel prize), was also an artist.
I heard that he struggled with a constant
conflict of love for art and science. I too
live in that space. Unfortunately, my 2 great
loves seem to contradict each other-- they
do, after all, live on opposite poles, creating
a tension that honestly makes me miserable
sometimes. But these magnetic pulls are the
forces that motivate me, give me purpose...
make me spin about my axis. I only hope
that I can inspire others like him one day.

39The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

The Light at the

End of the Tunnel

Brandon Hassid, MS4

The Invisible

Illness

Poorna Sreekumar, MS3

My father has suffered from migraines almost his whole adult life. As a child, I knew better than to go
into his darkened room when he had one of his attacks. The migraines were bolts of pain that struck at fancy.
They were triggered by seemingly random things like soy sauce, or the heavy heat that settles into the Maryland
air in July. Anything that could be floating out there beyond the safe four walls of the house. In childhood, I
was peripherally aware of my father’s pain. But as children, I think we lack the development to feel profound
empathy. I knew my father suffered but I thought suffering was a transient thing, like a scraped knee or the fleet-
ing discomfort of a pulled tooth. Who knew that pain could come to define you? That it could dictate so much
about how you exist in the world? That it could transform the body, our vehicle in the world, into a fatigued and
useless thing?

Identity has always complicated the experience of pain. The question of who suffers and how much has
been one of the central issues of medicine, and the answer has influenced everything from treatment to ethics
to how doctors ration their sympathy. But the question of identity and pain extends the other way too. Pain also
has the power to warp identity. It changes not only the patient’s perspective of the world, but also the world’s

40 The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

perception of the patient. In her essay, “Illness as Metaphor”, Susan Sontag writes, “Everyone who is born holds
dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only
the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that
other place.” With the experience of chronic pain, many find themselves as permanent citizens of the kingdom
of the sick.

I often think about this emigration. For some it happens rapidly: a sudden terminal diagnosis or a freak
accident. For others, like my father, it happens over the course of a lifetime. Like many migraine sufferers, he
first started having symptoms as a young man. As he’s aged, they’ve started to occur more frequently and with
increasing ferocity. During a migraine, he can’t work or socialize. He can hardly leave his bed. My father tries to
keep a methodical record of his migraine triggers, but the process is more like reading tea leaves. He avoids the
obvious ones: stress and excessive travel. But unveiling the rest is like throwing darts at a moving target. Some
mornings caffeine will set him off; other days he can luxuriate in a good cup of chai. He picks the cashews out
of his green curry just to be safe, and religiously avoids soy sauce. But his migraine is a skilled shape shifter. It
always seems to be waiting somewhere: in an innocuous cup of tea or at the end of a long commute.

The insidious power of my father’s migraine is that its presence transcends his physical body. I think of
it now as a black hole: its pinpoint center unknowable but its gravity warping everything around it. Growing up,
I had the distinct impression that my father wasn’t just my father. He was always my father and his migraine.
Indeed, his migraine followed him everywhere. All the little decisions like where to eat or when to travel, and all
the big decisions like where to work, had to be considered in this context. During periods of particularly intense
migraines, his life is dedicated only to the pursuit of pain free days. Everything else recedes in the light of that
singular focus.

But my father, like other migraine patients, isn’t debilitated in obvious ways. He still lives a relatively nor-
mal life. But living with pain, I’ve heard it summarized, is like living life at half speed. It has the murky quality of
looking at the world through dirty glasses. A close friend describes it as straining to hear a T.V. that’s suddenly
been muffled. To live in fear of pain is to move through the world weighed down by a horror that is amorphous,
intangible, and worst of all, invisible.

A chronic pain diagnosis is seldom comforting. The pain now has some kind of shape, but the diagnosis
also feels like a condemnation. When my father was diagnosed, he neither felt the relief of a benign diagnosis nor
the despair of terminal one. Yes, his pain had a name, but that’s all it had. In effect, the diagnosis changed noth-
ing. He still plans substantial portions of his life around his migraines. He still rotates through various therapies
that offer little relief. He remains in limbo, half patient and half not. He confided in me, after yet another doctor
visit, that he fantasizes about being given a ‘real’ reason for his headaches. Perhaps something that can be op-
erated. Something that could be excised completely from his body. At first, I didn’t understand why my father
would wish for a ‘real disease.’ But then I came to understand how maddening it is to realize that your pain is not
a nefarious external agent, but rather an intrinsic malady. How do you suffer a pain like that? One that exists for
no reason?

This is the real horror of chronic pain today. Divorced from any tangible medical cause or even a moral
transgression, we find it impossible to ascribe any sort of meaning to the suffering it causes. Meaning gives pain
a framework for understanding, and with that understanding, a hope of a cure. Now, we fill this void by manag-
ing the symptoms because we believe that chronic pain, like acute pain, is purely physical. But chronic pain is
not just a physical illness, it is an assault on the self. Its corroding influence surpasses the mere physical body. It
fundamentally changes who you are.

I wonder if my father divides his life sharply into Before the Migraines and After the Migraines. Pain has
the power to fracture lives like that, in the stark way a car accident might. Perhaps he was like me once, healthy
and seemingly invincible, ignorant of the dark inheritance that waited. Perhaps he had held onto his passport
to the kingdom of the well firmly, unwilling to make the conscious journey to the other side. But more likely I
think, is that the line was blurred slowly. It was a gradual erosion, like the way water carves into rock, reshaping
it bit by bit into something else.

41The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

Mirror Lake
Donna Parker, Faculty

42 The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

They say, I say

Sandra Quezada, Faculty

At family gatherings, and on rotations back in the day...
They say, “Oh you’re going to be a pediatrician, right?”
They say, “You’re cute, you should be a dermatologist.”
They say, “Are you going to work part time? You’ll be too busy for a family.”
They say, “You really would be a great pediatrician.”
I say, “I am going to be a gastroenterologist, and I will be treating adults.”

On the wards as a trainee...
They say, “You’re really smart for a woman, AND you’re Hispanic!”
They say, “Congratulations, just make sure you keep your husband happy.”
They say, “I gotta hang up, my nurse is here.”
They say, “Thank you Miss.”
I say, “I am your doctor, you can call me Dr. Quezada.”

In the hallway as a faculty...
They say, “You always dress so cute, how can you wear heels?”
They say, “You look like a student in your scrubs.”
They say, “Oh you’re wearing the manly look with scrub top and khakis.”
I say, “I am dressed as a medical professional and I wear what works for me.”

Lately...
They say, “This is my boss, she’s the one in charge.”
They say, “How do you maintain work-life balance?”
They say, “You look really happy.”
Smiling, I say, “I am.”

43The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

Crashing Waves He starts talking to his resident.
“Whenever my attendings
Katayoun Eslami, MS4 yelled at me when I was a resident,
I used to wonder, ‘Why are they so
“You can’t stand there.” Bitter and angry doing what they
“Please move somewhere else.” Always dreamed of doing?’”
“Don’t get your gloves out yet.” I stand there, silent, eager
“Why are your gloves not out?” To hear his next words
“Go ahead and scrub in.” As hope sparks a new flame in my eyes
“Who told you to scrub in?” “It took 20 minutes into my first day
“Can’t you suction faster?” As an attending to do the same
To my residents.”
At what point in your training
Did you suddenly forget Raging waves. Crashing.
The joy of getting an acceptance letter Putting out another flame.
Only to break under the pressure “Suction faster.”
Of your responsibilities as a professional?

When did you finally go through enough
To forget the thrill of taking care of patients
And have enough raging waves
Crashing in you, to squelch the fire
In the eyes of a medical student
Simply just excited to be in an OR?

What does it take
For a person
To go from having dreams
Of being a doctor
To forgetting the importance
Of being human?

44 The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

City Sights

Lavanya Garnepudi, MS1

45The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

Day and Night

Michael Sikorski, GS1

46 The Healer’s Art ◆ 2019

Medical school always felt like a train conducted by someone else.
It always le on time. It never waited. Full steam ahead.

e track shined. You could see for miles. Full steam ahead.
But don’t be late. Don’t fall behind. You’ll never catch up.
Graduate school has felt like a train conducted by myself.
It leaves anytime. It waits. But where is the steam?
Where is the track? It’s hazy for miles. I can’t nd the steam.
Am I late? Is anyone waiting? Am I ahead or behind? Where do I stop?
It is day and night. Or, night and day. Either way, it is.
But way in the distance, I believe, there are glorious moments ahead.

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