On Rounds
Because I could not stop for death, / He kindly asked I pause. / My arms were full of sterile wraps, / Scissors, tape, and gauze.
Tag: death and dying
Contributing Writer
University of Michigan Medical School
Anna is a member of the class of 2024 at the University of Michigan Medical School. She graduated from University of Michigan in 2019 with a degree in French Language and Literature. In her free time, Anna enjoys cooking, exploring nature, and taking care of her plants.
I’ll Call Her Tiffany
Pink playdough littered the exam table, sink, counter and floor. In a flash, a thin child, all elbows and knees, jumped athletically from the sink counter to the exam table and then to the floor, stomping over my feet in the process.
Sensing The Emergency Department
“Three, two, one … lift,” the circulating nurse directs as I raise the patient’s feet from the trauma table onto the recovery bed, gushing with the giddiness of getting to use my hands in a medical setting for the first time.
To Grieve Appropriately
What does it mean to “grieve appropriately?” / To silently cry / as to not break the fragility in the air.
Meditations on Mortality
One of the most powerful paradoxes of medical education is that we learn how to heal the living by dissecting the dead. Our cadavers house the beauty and intricacies of human creation, the distinctiveness yet commonality of each human body and the finality of decline.
Air Hunger
His diseased lungs / stiff like dry clay / function like gills out of the water.
Dying Is Not
Dying is not / as romantic as I once thought. / I think you always knew this.
Souvenirs
Mr. G was a patient I met while on the surgical oncology service. He was in his early 50s, a loving husband and the father of two children. He was the middle sibling with two brothers. He also battled metastatic cancer.
Abrasions, by Morgan Shier, MD
My mother likes to tell the story of how, as a small child, I referred to the superficial wounds sustained in my first head-over-handlebars accident as an “abrasion.” I remember staring at my knee, fascinated by my body’s ability to heal itself. The sacred anatomy of wounds, atoms as spacious as galaxies, coalescing and woven with no instruction of my own to renew what had been lost.
Caduceus
Should the symbol of medicine bear one snake or two? / If you answered two, then the joke is on you! / Or, at least, that’s the current popular view.
Trauma Shift
I imagine her mother / Squeezing daughter’s limp hand / Silent tears
Anatomy: A Cadaveric Poem
Anatomy is more than flesh and bone and blood. / It’s more than the donor and the scalpel teaching the student.
Contributing Writer
Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine South Georgia Campus
Jordan Erdfrocht is a fourth year medical student at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine South Georgia Campus in Moultrie, GA class of 2023. In 2017, he graduated from the University of Central Florida with a Bachelor of Science in health sciences. He enjoys playing video games, reading history books, and finding the best cup of coffee in his free time. After graduating medical school, Jordan would like to pursue a career in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.