From My Hospital Bed
Where do the squirrels go / during the rain? / Can they hear the thunder? / Can they feel my pain?
Writers-in-Training
Writer-in-Training
University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine
Hello! My name is Damien and I'm a student at the University of South Florida's College of Medicine. I was born and raised on the island of Antigua, and have been writing poetry and fiction for years. I hope you enjoy my work!
How Racism Makes Us Sick: Incarceration and Illness
Today, there are more people in jail for drug offenses then there were prisoners for all crimes in 1980. People of color comprise more than 60 percent of those incarcerated, yet represent only a third of the country’s population. While the issues leading to the disproportionate incarceration of people of color are many, I wish to focus on a single contributor which is the most important cause of America’s dramatic increase in incarceration — the structural racism readily apparent in our country’s approach to drug offense convictions.
Careless Curiosity: Reflections from the Anatomy Lab
On my left, the ragged, meaty stump of a severed neck stands upright like an abandoned signpost. A classmate examines it carefully. She is petite. She stands on a stool to obtain a better angle for observation. She cranes her neck, twisting the very muscles she is studying back and forth, back and forth.
Let Food Be Thy Medicine: Student-Run Nutrition Education Programs for Medical Students
Hippocrates, the ‘father of medicine’ said, “let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” The role of nutrition in health has been recognized since the beginning of medicine, yet somehow nutrition education has fallen by the wayside in most medical curricula. Given that 34.9 percent of Americans are obese and obesity has been linked to diabetes, heart disease, stroke and certain types of cancer, nutrition should be a focal point of medical education.
Cutting
Everyone / in this cold / room is dead.
From Hospice to Heaven
To my dearest dying patient: / May I emulate half your strength, / and a portion of your wisdom, / just a part of your life’s length.
Where Does Your Cadaver Come From?
“Hello there,” I thought upon meeting my first patient in medical school. I did not get a response. Not that I was expecting one; my first patient was, as are most medical students’ first patients, a cadaver. She was draped with a bed sheet. Even when we began making the first cuts on her back, we kept her covered from the waist down.
On Silence: The Limits of Professionalism
In her memoir “The Cancer Journals,” radical feminist and civil rights activist Audre Lorde documented her experiences as a woman with breast cancer recovering from a mastectomy. Lorde was a black lesbian and patient who is “defined as other in every group I am a part of. I’m the outsider, both strength and weakness.”
NeuroTouch Advances the Field of Surgical Simulation
Parallels are often drawn between the fields of aviation and medicine. It has been said that the number of hospital-related preventable deaths in the United States alone is equivalent to 20 large airplane crashes, with no survivors, each week. With the advancements made in flight safety, doctors are now looking to the field of aviation to improve patient safety.
Death with Dignity
Whenever someone hang glides, / They pick a place to land. / Somewhere soft and somewhere close, / Somewhere that they planned.
Booster
For me, hepatitis B booster shots feel pretty much as pleasant as being sucker punched in the arm. You can imagine that it didn’t inspire much elation when I scrolled through my calendar to see, spelled out in big red letters, a reminder for “Hep B #3.” Now, as I reflect, this reminder feels like a victory of sorts.
Mine
You claim that my choice breaks your heart, / as if mine isn’t shattered and cracked. / You think I don’t know how beautiful he’d be, /or wonder how he’d walk, talk and act.
Writer-in-Training
University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine
Hello! My name is Damien and I'm a student at the University of South Florida's College of Medicine. I was born and raised on the island of Antigua, and have been writing poetry and fiction for years. I hope you enjoy my work!