Former Editor-in-Chief (2017-2018) and Former Medical Student Editor (2016)
University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry
Ria is a Class of 2018 medical student. She graduated from the University of Rochester with a BS in neuroscience. Her interests include human behavior, social justice work, art, public health, and mnemonics.
I only realized that I was an optimist on November 9. Crushing disbelief is cliche, and yet — as I walked home, hot-cheeked, through rain and yolk-colored streetlights just after midnight, past a dive bar where neighbors tallied states and feverishly refreshed fivethirtyeight — I felt trampled.
Post-election, many of us in the medical field have become ever more aware of the somber sentiments expressed by the groups that were rhetorically and literally targeted throughout the election cycle. Many of us are women, immigrants, people of all faiths, people of color, refugees, disabled individuals and members of the LGBT community. We understand that policies and hateful rhetoric impact us, impact our colleagues, impact our families and impact our patients. We can see how the communities we serve have already started to be affected by this election.
Black hellebore, a flower of the deepest black and with petals the sinister shape of blunted arrowheads, grows wild in the cool, mountainous regions of the Balkans. Despite its unintimidating label as the “Christmas rose,” the hellebore has a much darker history, one bespoken more by the flower’s ebony hue than by its innocuous nickname.
Jamming to Vampire Weekend’s “Diplomat’s Son,” I walked passed two women on 95th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenue. Each woman had an unlit cigarette in her mouth, and one woman was pushing a stroller. Thinking that the stroller could be empty, holding groceries, or carrying a small dog (as is the trend in parts of New York City), I turned around and was surprised to see a child, no more than a few weeks old, quietly sitting in the stroller.
My struggle began around nine months before my eventual diagnosis. This was on a background of an entire lifetime governed by this haunting feeling that something was different. Or that something was not right. Yet being the overachiever that I was, no one noticed. I was always left to question whether my reactions were just a disproportionate reaction to certain life events. And I was repeatedly told the same thing.
On Thursday, many of you will gather round a dinner table with your loved ones and give gratitude for your friends, family and good fortune. Many of you will think of the meal associated with the inception of this holiday, be filled with warm fuzzy feelings and gloss over the real history surrounding the relationship between those who supposedly attended the first “Thanksgiving” dinner. After eating a second helping of Grandma’s famous pie, few will be concerned about the side of historical oppression or racist colonization offered with this dinner because well, that isn’t so palatable.
Gun violence as a public health issue is not a new phenomenon. In 2014 alone, there were 81,034 injuries and 33,599 deaths due to gun violence in the United States,which equate to 222 Americans injured, and 92 killed, by firearms every day.
During my last visit home, my mother waited less than an hour before showing me her medical records. She offered them up the way I’d once presented my middle-school report cards, steering the papers across our kitchen table between bowls of peppercorn chicken and eggplant until they slid to a stop in front of me. Looking at them made my head spin, as they were written almost entirely in Chinese.
It’s been a hard week. Hard, of course, because this election has caused an unprecedented wave of fear across our nation. Hard because those whose lives have been invalidated by our newest president elect are already exhausted by the daily struggle of living in a hostile country. And — not to be discounted — hard because bad days in medical school seem to hunt in packs and pounce all at once.
“Here is what I would like you to know,” writes Ta-Nehisi Coates to his son in his New York Times bestselling book Between the World and Me. “In America, it is tradition to destroy the black body — it is heritage.” Drawing on recent events, Coates shines a bright light on the very tangible obstacles African-Americans face in our country. Unfortunately, this is a reality that has largely been swept under the rug by the rest of America, including its health care providers.It is time that healthcare providers, and in particular primary care providers, confront this reality.
Reminiscing on the Etta James hit “At Last,” that’s exactly how I felt when Steven J. Stack, MD, president of the American Medical Association, finally addressed the epidemic of gun violence in our nation. Finally he hit the nail on the head, and called the situation what it really was: a public health crisis.
The history of the HIV/AIDS epidemic is marked by devastating losses and a disease burden that persists to this day. Though slow to emerge, both government policy and pharmaceutical research began to address the epidemic, and the resulting combinations of antiretroviral cocktails and outreach programs have helped make HIV infection a manageable, if inconvenient, chronic condition. In 2012, however, the FDA approved a drug that had the potential to shift both the American and global strategies regarding HIV and AIDS.
Writer-in-Training
Rowan University School of Osteopathic Medicine
Neepam Shah is a New Jersey-based osteopathic medical student interested in Netflix binges, Spotify's eclectic recommendations, and examining the power structures and cultural trends that shape lived experiences. When he's not in class, you can find him in a Philadelphia coffee shop over-caffeinating and procrastinating.
