Audrey Lyu is a first year medical student at Rush Medical College in Chicago, IL. She graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2023 with a degree in Neuroscience. You would find her making art or playing with her bunny in her free time. Audrey hopes to pursue a career in psychiatry.
when i die, donate my body to science. for perhaps i may be dissected, by childlike hands and fresh minds, whose shoes I once stood in. open my body, peel back the layers of fascia and adipose, swallowed with that in which I lived for. when they open my abdominal cavity, may they learn my favorite foods, the myeokguk i ate every birthday, and my love for candies, that painted my stomach red. and in …
It began with a list. Not of medication or interventions, but of what we needed to prepare my grandmother for burial. In the seven-by-ten-foot room tucked behind the prayer hall, there were no beeping monitors, and no nurses rushing to check vitals. Instead, bathroom tiles were beneath our feet, a floor drain at the center and a shelf filled with supplies. I could hear the faucet dripping in the back, almost rhythmic, like a slow …
“You’re thinking about it all wrong,” my fiancé said. His voice poured from the phone like a warm cup of tea, steeped in the miles that stretched between us. “You still think you can be a savior, when really you’re a vessel. If you’re alone and giving someone CPR and they die, you can’t ask yourself if they would’ve lived by someone’s more experienced hands, because it was always going to be you. You were …
“That doesn’t happen often,” I quietly but excitedly say to myself while discussing our consult from the PICU. My attending hesitates, pondering the precarious balance between encouraging my medical curiosity and protecting me from the horrors of child abuse and mistreatment that still haunt her to this day. That day, I was a first-hand witness to the necessary but horrible clinical task of a brain death exam. This task is a rite of passage for …
Septic shock. Liver failure. Kidney cancer.
“Patient is a 34-year-old male with a nine-month history of rheumatoid arthritis-associated interstitial lung disease who is currently being treated with mycophenolate and rituximab. He remains on high-flow nasal cannula with oxygen saturations of 84-87% overnight. Transplant team signed off as the patient did not qualify for transplant. He reports feeling well this morning and that he learned a great new magic trick with a disappearing card.”
“Could you water my plants?” I asked my roommate when I was out of town. They say it takes a village to raise a child, make it through medical school, to do anything worth knowing. When I started medical school, I had a village: parents, friends, family, a partner and my plants.
“Your time starts now. You may begin your examination.” These were the words said moments before a life-altering moment during my high school years.
The transition from the classroom to the hospital was an incredible experience. After spending endless days behind a bright screen, I felt an overwhelming sense of excitement to finally apply my medical knowledge and delve into the world of patient care.
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.
On September 29, 2021, my world started to unravel. My first anatomy lab as a medical student had just begun. I stepped foot in the cadaver lab where the pungent odor of formaldehyde clung to the air, and I was overflowing with eagerness.
Contributing Writer
Florida International University Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine
Austin Guerrina is a third-year medical student at Florida International University Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine in the vibrant city of Miami, Florida. Passionate about the field of physical medicine and rehabilitation, Austin envisions a career dedicated to collaborating with patients to enhance their overall health, encompassing physical, mental, and emotional well-being.
