Contributing Writer
Name of Institution
Rachel is a third year medical student at Florida International University in Miami, FL class of 2025. In 2020, she graduated from University of California, San Diego with a Bachelor of Science general biology and Bachelor of Arts in global health. In 2021, she graduated from the University of California, San Diego with a Master's of arts in global health. She enjoys reading, collecting sneakers, and going to the beach in her free time. After graduating medical school, Rachel would like to pursue a career in Surgery.
My understanding of the reality of pursuing a career as a physician was shattered when I started my third year of medical school. When I entered the double doors of the hospital, I was no longer the main character of my day. Instead, my attending’s patients became the highest priority and feedback transitioned to how I could improve to better serve them.
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.”
I start the day like most of us do: stimulating the needy vessels we call bodies with caffeine. As I open up my coffee jar to dispense ground Turkish coffee beans, I am met with a hint of loving bitterness. It carries a comforting brown sugar warmth that often stirs a sense of weakness given my inherent dependency on this substance but also commands secure boldness through notes of molasses and dark chocolate.
The once-sterile hospital room had become a sacred space, where the raw emotions of love and loss hung in the air. The young daughter, vibrant in her essence but tethered to life support, teetered on the precipice between existence and the inevitable.
“254?!” I gawk at the glucometer, stunned that Tom’s blood sugar has soared to such heights when it has consistently remained below 125 for the last two weeks. Tom glances up at me with an amused look on his face, clearly entertained by my reaction — “It was probably that pork chop that did it.”
My first time in the operating room (OR) was when I was a junior in college. I was beaming under my mask, so excited to shadow and observe my first surgery ever, a riveting and exotic procedure: a planned and standard laparoscopic cholecystectomy. A friendly circulating nurse that I had been chatting with asked me, “Sabrina, what’s your glove size?”
The first thing I noticed entering Betty’s room was her walls. They were papered, nearly from floor to ceiling, with photographs of celebrities. Taylor Swift, Sam Smith and Ed Sheeran all stared back at me.
Writers-in-Training Intern and Contributing Writer
Geisinger College of Health Sciences
Ceili Hamill is a medical student at Geisinger College of Health Sciences in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Class of 2025. In 2020, she graduated from Saint Joseph's University with a Bachelor of Science in biology. Ceili is also a student member of the Health Humanities Consortium and of the Academy for Professionalism in Health Care. She enjoys reading, baking, and playing with her pug Poppy in her free time. After graduating medical school, Ceili would like to pursue a career in pediatrics.
