Contributing Writer
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine
Max is a third year medical student at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, IL class of 2025. In 2017, he graduated from The Ohio State University with Bachelor's degrees in biomedical sciences and creative writing. He enjoys rebuilding cars and motorcycles, board games, and disappointing golf outings. In the future, he hopes to discover his career field and embrace it as a physician-author.
“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.”
At the start of clinical rotations, we are urged by preceptors to immerse ourselves in the experience, advocate for our patients and strive to understand them better than the rest of the team. I could not, however, shake an underlying thought: Why would any patient divulge their most intimate details to someone so inexperienced? After all, I was just a medical student.
During my family medicine clerkship in medical school, I worked with a free mobile primary care clinic dedicated to serving uninsured patients. Parked outside a church in a large city, the clinic was a large blue bus standing in stark contrast to the gray asphalt parking lot around it.
No matter how much I learn, some things cannot be taught. There was no prepared script and no checklist to follow when my father tersely told me, “Your uncle in India passed.” Five solemn words and a pregnant silence. His eyes, rung with the blue of cataracts, did not shed a tear. Instead, they were fixed on an empty corner of our worn sectional couch.
Waiting in the snow for the 43, / Mind focused on the cold. / The bitter wind, the bus kneeling
Bright and early, I made my way into the hospital sipping on my coffee in hopes that it would make up for my lack of sleep. This was an ordinary start to a day in my OB/GYN rotation. After pre-rounding, I offered to help the residents with anything they had pending. One of them tasked me with seeing a new consultation in the emergency room (ER) for a pregnant woman who had presented intoxicated.
Murmur. Murmur. A dull, swirling sound that seems a mile away reaches my ears as they roll me through the endless hallway.
Going into my third year of medical school, my goals were simple: survive and figure out what I wanted to do with my life. My first clerkship was surgery, and what a chaotic start it was. I often felt like a burden on my team. I knew nothing and asked the exhausted, busy residents a lot of questions. I was a walking ball of anxiety those first four weeks: How many questions was too many? How many questions was not enough?
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.
I placed the first pill on my tongue, opened my mouth so the nurse could see, closed my mouth, swallowed the pill, and opened my mouth again so the nurse could confirm that I had swallowed it. I had to repeat this for nine more tablets and this drill continued for seven days a week and for seven more months of the treatment.
As we got closer to the ED, the excitement evolved into a feeling of discomfort. It was uncomfortable to feel even briefly excited by another person’s misfortune. I felt a sense of disequilibrium as I realized I had strayed from the delicate balance medical students and physicians continually try to find.
The once-sterile hospital room had become a sacred space, where the raw emotions of love and loss hung in the air. The young daughter, vibrant in her essence but tethered to life support, teetered on the precipice between existence and the inevitable.
Contributing Writer
Anne Marion Burnett School of Medicine at TCU
Chandana is a medical student at the Anne Marion Burnett School of Medicine at TCU in Fort Worth, Texas, Class of 2025. She graduated in 2019 from the University of Washington with a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry and a minor in Medical Microbiology, and furthered her academic pursuits with a Master of Science in Physiology from the University of Cincinnati completed in 2021. In her free time, Chandana enjoys singing and was the founder of a band called UW Unplugged during her undergraduate years. She is also a trained classical dancer, and loves to read mystery novels. After graduating from medical school, Chandana aspires to pursue a career in promoting cardiovascular health in women through a blend of clinical practice and public health initiatives.
