Writer-in-Training
Queen's University School of Medicine
Maggie Hulbert is a third year medical student at Queen's University School of Medicine in Kingston, Canada. In 2015, she graduated from Queen's University with a Bachelor of Science in life sciences. She is an active member of the medical humanities community and spent this past year developing the first Jacalyn Duffin Health and Humanities Conference. Her favorite writers include Danielle Ofri, Roxane Gay, and Samantha Irby. After graduating medical school, Maggie would like to pursue a career in Psychiatry.
If you come into the hospital room before she arrives, you might miss the telltale signs of her existence. They are subtle — a soft sweater thrown over a chair for those drafty hospital wards or an absurdly expensive vegetable tray from the café downstairs on the patient’s table.
“So, how would we test for PBC?” my professor asks from the front of the room.
Charity Scott, JD and professor of law at the Georgia State Catherine C. Henson School of Law, stood at the front of our medical school lecture hall with her arms stretched wide. “The welfare of a pregnant mother?” she said as she dipped one arm down, burdened by an invisible weight. “Or the welfare of an unborn child?”
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.
Writer-in-Training
Emory University School of Medicine
Christopher is a second year medical student at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia. He grew up in Virginia where he earned a Bachelor of Science in psychology at the College of William and Mary in 2014. Prior to medical school, he spent time working as a surgery scheduler in Seattle and enjoying the beautiful Pacific Northwest. He enjoys hiking, playing guitar, and bicycle commuting. After medical school, Christopher would like to pursue a career in primary care or palliative medicine.
