Contributing Writer
Florida International University Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine
Christine Zickler is a medical student at Florida International University Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine in Miami, FL, Class of 2026. In 2020, she graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a Bachelor of Arts in english with a concentration in creative writing. She enjoys long walks by the water in her free time. After graduating medical school, Christine would like to pursue a career in pediatric orthopedic surgery.
“They should have a vaccine for cancer.” Tears were running down his face and onto his lap as I passed him another tissue. He couldn’t continue chemotherapy until the wound on his leg healed. It was my fourth day on my pediatric plastic surgery rotation as a third-year medical student and I was learning how to do a wound vacuum-assisted closure. He begged us to leave him alone. “I want my knee back,” he started …
“That doesn’t happen often,” I quietly but excitedly say to myself while discussing our consult from the PICU. My attending hesitates, pondering the precarious balance between encouraging my medical curiosity and protecting me from the horrors of child abuse and mistreatment that still haunt her to this day. That day, I was a first-hand witness to the necessary but horrible clinical task of a brain death exam. This task is a rite of passage for …
Septic shock. Liver failure. Kidney cancer.
This was my patient. I sat with her, held her hand, coaxed her to share pieces of her life story from underneath the covers.
“Patient is a 34-year-old male with a nine-month history of rheumatoid arthritis-associated interstitial lung disease who is currently being treated with mycophenolate and rituximab. He remains on high-flow nasal cannula with oxygen saturations of 84-87% overnight. Transplant team signed off as the patient did not qualify for transplant. He reports feeling well this morning and that he learned a great new magic trick with a disappearing card.”
As patients moved in and out of the modest office for their appointments, their duffel bags and luggage in tow containing all their personal belongings, the day unfolded in typical fashion. Yet, within the confines of this psychiatry office catering exclusively to the local unhoused population, “normal” took on a unique meaning.
At the start of clinical rotations, we are urged by preceptors to immerse ourselves in the experience, advocate for our patients and strive to understand them better than the rest of the team. I could not, however, shake an underlying thought: Why would any patient divulge their most intimate details to someone so inexperienced? After all, I was just a medical student.
“Could you water my plants?” I asked my roommate when I was out of town. They say it takes a village to raise a child, make it through medical school, to do anything worth knowing. When I started medical school, I had a village: parents, friends, family, a partner and my plants.
As the hands of the large clock on the wall turn to 8 a.m, a wandering medical student strolls through the intricate hallways of the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital. Her eyesight shifted to various places in the unit as she struggled to find the so-called “fishbowl,” an office space where residents station themselves to work.
A light knock at your hospital room door and my introduction: “I am a first year MD-PhD student. Thank you.”
During my family medicine clerkship in medical school, I worked with a free mobile primary care clinic dedicated to serving uninsured patients. Parked outside a church in a large city, the clinic was a large blue bus standing in stark contrast to the gray asphalt parking lot around it.
On the fifteenth day that Marietta had not eaten, the psychiatry team knew they could no longer take care of her. With each day, her body grew weaker, her blood pressure softened, and her heart beat faster to keep her alive. By the time the medicine team was consulted, her heart was laboring at 130 beats per minute.
Contributing Writer
Rutgers New Jersey Medical School
Casey is a medical student at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School in Newark, NJ class of 2025. In 2021 she graduated from Washington and Lee with a Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience and Classics. She enjoys spending time with her two sisters and friends, reading, and surfing at the Jersey Shore. After graduating medical school, Casey would like to pursue a career in general surgery.
