Writer-in-Training
Emory University School of Medicine
Zaynah Alam is a member of the Class of 2021 at Emory University School of Medicine. She grew up in Chapel Hill, NC and has a BS in Neuroscience from Duke University. Her interests include science fiction, health as a human right, and eating at every pho restaurant in the city of Atlanta.
The room is unassuming from the outside. It’s a tiny space not much larger than a storage closet tucked into an office in the school of public health. I do my usual clinic routine in reverse: notebook pulled out of pocket and white coat slipped off and left outside.
Why does a life-saving drug, for infants no less, carry such an astronomical price tag? Nusinersen falls into the category of ‘orphan drug,’ a drug designed for a disease so rare that it becomes fiscally unsustainable for corporate sponsors to invest and market the medication to the public.
I know that being a third-year medical student is like being a transplanted kidney. One starts the day in one body. School is composed of lecture halls and written exams. However, the world has shifted by the end of the day, and shockingly, one’s old body is not present.
I had felt strange during the week leading up to the last ultrasound. Pregnancy is a roller coaster of sensations, but that week had been off a little. I barely noticed the ultrasound tech rubbing the cold, blue gel on my massive belly. I wanted to hear that sound: that quiet, pulsing sound of my baby racing to be born.
Draped the head and steadied the bed / For the life-saving aneurysm clipping, / I stop thinking of my former life.
On the first day of my summer fellowship, I almost stepped on a used needle. The road was littered with needles and syringes, a byproduct of widespread intravenous drug usage and a physical embodiment of a much larger problem. The United States is in the midst of an epidemic that takes over 115 lives per day.
If gross anatomy has taught me any topics, they are the sheer beauty and capability of the human body.
The practice of humanism must be at the core of medicine, and this different model, entitled the biopsychosocial (BPS) model, permits and exemplifies this practice.
Second year? Could that be? It felt wrong. It threw off my whole identity. “I’m just a first-year,” had been my motto for the past twelve months.
And now here she was, in the family lounge at a hospital waiting to speak to her father’s neurologist. Her dad, Ricky, had collapsed at work — or so she had been told. This was the most she had heard of her father’s life since she moved out of the house.
The opportunity to be immersed in learning the stories behind the health of patients is one of the things that drew me to medicine, and, indeed, it still intrigues me. More importantly, I was (and still am) intrigued by the opportunity and challenge of using the multiple streams of information patients present with to make functional improvements in their lives.
Dr. Goodly saw patients on Thanksgiving every year. Wasn’t that the whole point of the holiday?
Writer-in-Training
University if California San Francisco
Shakkaura Kemet, MPH, is a member of the Class of 2021 at University of California San Francisco. She completed her Bachelor’s degree at Harvard University in Human Developmental and Regenerative Biology with a minor in African American Studies in 2015. She then went on to complete a Master's of Public Health at Yale University where she focused on social determinants of health, with a particular focus on women's health. She is currently a second year medical student at UCSF School of Medicine where she is co-president of SNMA, teaches a course to first- and second-year medical students about integrating advocacy work into one's medical career, and helps to design and implement quality improvement projects with the OB/Gyn healthcare providers at San Francisco General Hospital targeted at closing health care disparities in maternal care. Her areas of interest for research and practice include women's health, maternal health, health disparities by race and socioeconomic status, and medical education.
