Daniela is a fourth year medical student at Florida International University Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine in Miami, Florida class of 2025. In 2020, she graduated from the University of South Florida with a Bachelor of Science in biomedical sciences. She enjoys spending time with her family, rollerblading, playing pickle ball, and watching the sunset in her free time. After graduating medical school, Daniela would like to pursue a career in Pediatrics.
Bright and early, I made my way into the hospital sipping on my coffee in hopes that it would make up for my lack of sleep. This was an ordinary start to a day in my OB/GYN rotation. After pre-rounding, I offered to help the residents with anything they had pending. One of them tasked me with seeing a new consultation in the emergency room (ER) for a pregnant woman who had presented intoxicated. Many …
My patient sleeps peacefully. I wake him guiltily. I don’t want my face to be the first he sees. We love you, Pop-Pop, the whiteboard reads. No code, the chart reads. Later the neurology attending hurriedly packs his case reflex hammer flying. My wife went into labor He says. I’ve got to get going. I sit, in the empty conference room, feeling something a little like joy, a little like loss. The presentation about gait …
In elementary school, Indigenous land lived in my imagination as an expansive, beautiful and windy place. Images from storybooks painted pictures of golden plains speckled with horses, an oasis away from my suburban hometown. History is told in stories and these were the stories we were told. In February 2024, I had the privilege of serving at the Indian Health Services (IHS) in Chinle, Arizona. This land belongs to the Navajo Nation, a sovereign state …
“Nurse! Nurse! Please help me! Can someone please help me?” For several minutes, her cries echoed through the halls. Something felt wrong. I brought her cries to the attention of the Charge Nurse. “Oh Michael, don’t worry about her, she’s delirious.” “Really? She seems like she needs some help.” I replied. Boldly, I walked into the patient’s room. In front of me was Lucy, an elderly frail woman with a very disfigured face. She looked …
Going into my third year of medical school, my goals were simple: survive and figure out what I wanted to do with my life. My first clerkship was surgery, and what a chaotic start it was. I often felt like a burden on my team. I knew nothing and asked the exhausted, busy residents a lot of questions. I was a walking ball of anxiety those first four weeks: How many questions was too many? …
I never understood the appeal of people who liked to be “low key” or exist under the radar. As a lifelong social butterfly, the spotlight was always a more natural setting for me. I thrived in environments where I was visible, putting my skills on open display and receiving opportunities to grow, whether through praise and encouragement or constructive feedback. However, there were, at times, circumstances where I had finite say in my visibility. My …
When you begin clinical rotations in medical school, people encourage you to be as involved as possible in patient care. They tell you to take initiative, to challenge yourself.
Fluorescent lighting, lemon-scented cleaner and recently mopped tile floors. The sights and smells of a hospital floor were slowly becoming familiar to me as I wound my way around corner after corner bright and early at 6:15 a.m. on a Thursday morning.
“We have reason to believe that your daughter is brain dead.” The silence was deafening.
As we got closer to the ED, the excitement evolved into a feeling of discomfort. It was uncomfortable to feel even briefly excited by another person’s misfortune. I felt a sense of disequilibrium as I realized I had strayed from the delicate balance medical students and physicians continually try to find.
It will soon be over seven years since the last time I saw you. It feels like yesterday we were singing along to your favorite song as you drove me to my weekly dance class.
I first wrote to author George Saunders in my senior year of high school. Thankful for everything his writing taught me about empathy, I sought advice as I crossed the “seemingly arbitrary line into adulthood.”
Writers-in-Training Intern and Contributing Writer
University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine
Pal is a medical student at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine in Chicago, IL, Class of 2024. In 2019, he graduated from the University of Illinois at Chicago with a Bachelor of Science in neuroscience. He enjoys playing basketball, trying out new recipes, and giving belly rubs to his two cats in his free time. After graduating medical school, Pal would like to pursue a career in Med-Peds.
