DNR
20 / still / except / her chest rising, falling
Tag: death and dying
Contributing Writer
University of California, Riverside School of Medicine
Margaret is a fourth-year medical student at University of California, Riverside School of Medicine, class of 2022. She has a Master of Science in computer science from University of California, San Diego and a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering and computer sciences from University of California, Berkeley. After graduating medical school, Margaret would like to pursue a career in psychiatry, with a focus on the prevention/early intervention of psychiatric disorders and innovations in mental health. In her free time, she enjoys reading, writing, music, and ballet.
Medicalizing My Grief
A classmate of mine committed suicide a few weeks ago. Though I’ve heard the harrowing statistics about physician and trainee suicide rates, to be honest, I never expected to personally encounter such a tragedy. The small classes at my medical school allow for a strong sense of community in which we all know each other, celebrate important life milestones, and happily reconnect when we’re together after clinical rotations scatter us throughout the hospital.
A Moment to Reflect
The first thing I notice are his boots. He’s still in his street clothes, having just been admitted. He looks thin, emaciated — his clothes hang off him, shirt collar drooping down from his neck like peeling paint. His boots, however, seem to fit him properly. They look warm, well-worn but sturdy, like they have weathered a hundred bitter winters and could withstand a hundred more. For some reason, this comforts me.
Dissecting Anatomy Lab: Epilogue
I no longer feel alone the way that I did the first few weeks of dissections, because now I recognize that my peers were sectioned off at their tables also worried that they were losing their sensitivity, that they weren’t good enough to belong, and they didn’t know how to cut into a person. I wish that I had known what my classmates were thinking and feeling during the anatomy course.
Dissecting Anatomy Lab: The Final Disposition
Why would someone choose to donate their body to medical education? We have a dishonorable history in medicine of illicitly sourcing cadavers for dissection: robbing corpses from graves, murdering people for their bodies and salvaging the unclaimed dead from city hospitals and morgues. Today, we call the bodies we learn from “donors” instead of “cadavers” to honor their autonomy and personhood, their choice to be in the room.
Dissecting Anatomy Lab: The Lifecycle of Anatomy Instruction
It is the day before the first anatomy lab for the first-year medical students, and a single professor walks alone, up and down rows of tables laden with 26 naked, embalmed bodies. He silently shares a few minutes with the donors, a private thank-you. Soon the donors will be covered in white sheets, and the students will tentatively spill through the locked wooden doors of the labs, a rush of anticipation, teamwork, questions and learning.
Dissecting Anatomy Lab: The Assembly of a Medical Student
In the golden glow of a fall day, 104 first-year medical students parade out of the medical center carrying boxes of bones to aide our anatomy lab studies. The crates look suspiciously like instrument cases, perhaps the size of an alto saxophone, and it feels absurd to march back to our houses a la The Music Man, knowing all the while that we are bringing real live (well, dead) human skeletons into our living rooms, kitchens and coat closets.
A Blue-Lit Room
In a hospital room lit blue / By the rays entering in from the clouded sun
Learning to Cope with the Dying Patient
I had developed a strong friendship with Ms. D during the rotation, and her passing became one of the first confrontations with grief that I encountered as a rising medical student.
Epistolaries
He and I became friends and fell in love, in part over our shared love of running. I think he would be proud to see how quickly I cover the ground between the chemistry building, my house on campus and my car.
Stuck
My first day in the morgue was a shock to the system — the smell of death, the sight of rigor mortis and the comfort of everyone around me with the task at hand. I thought my prior health care experience prepared me for this, but it clearly did not.
Strength
She was a woman in her early twenties accompanied by her husband. She was a first-time expecting mother at 19 weeks gestation with twins. They had received regular prenatal care and had been doing everything as the doctor had instructed to ensure a healthy pregnancy. She made this appointment because she felt something was off, her motherly instincts already keen.
Contributing Writer
Florida International University Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine
Imran Sehgal is a fourth-year medical student at the Florida International University Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine in Miami, Florida class of 2021. In 2016, he graduated from the University of Central Florida with a Bachelor of Science in biomedical sciences. He enjoys playing with his dogs, reading, and exercising in his free time. After graduating medical school, Imran would like to pursue a career in Obstetrics and Gynecology.