Witnessing the first breath of life, the last before death, “You are cancer free!”, “The cancer has returned,” “Congratulations, you are pregnant!,” “I am so sorry, but there is no longer a heartbeat,” The scream of a mother echoing down the hallway as she brings new life into the world, the scream as she watches her child depart it, Tears of joy in one patient’s room as their scan was clear, tears of sorrow in …
There’s a room down the hall where a woman sits in silence, a shadow of herself, caught between jobs, between her husband’s labored breaths— the shallow rise and fall of waiting. They call it hospice, but only for those whose time they deem nearly spent. Yet her husband, with days stretched tight as thread, fails to meet the protocol, and now he’s slipping through the cracks of criteria, as if life were a ledger to …
In halls of sterile light and steel, Where pulses echo, hearts to heal, A quiet truth begins to rise— Care can’t be measured by device. For every chart, each test result, There lies a gap, a hidden fault, Where voices lost, unheard, remain— A silent burden wrapped in pain. From city streets to rural lanes, Health divides in unseen chains, A mother waits, her voice denied, As walls of care grow far and …
Septic shock. Liver failure. Kidney cancer.
This was my patient. I sat with her, held her hand, coaxed her to share pieces of her life story from underneath the covers.
A spoken word piece dedicated to the generous donors and their families of the Donor Body Program at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine.
Waiting in the snow for the 43, / Mind focused on the cold. / The bitter wind, the bus kneeling
Murmur. Murmur. A dull, swirling sound that seems a mile away reaches my ears as they roll me through the endless hallway.
My patient sleeps peacefully. / I wake him guiltily. / I don’t want my face to be the first he sees.
I am moving, yet I am going nowhere. I am going nowhere, yet I have come a long way. I do not count how many go by, but each spin demands that I keep moving. With every rotation, I take another step, another leap, one jump on this Earth. These cycles fly by, so much so that I can almost hear them as they whoosh over my head in an instant, making seconds go slow.
A bag full of dreams was all my mind possessed, / To leave my mark on the turbulent sands of time and be respected,
Finally, it’s been three months since // He and I were strangers with bad blood, / breathless in bed, / discussing the acts of giving and / receiving as indulgences, / mulling over our motivations and / the contraindications for / charity.
Editor-in-Chief and Former Writers-in-Training Intern
Geisinger College of Health Sciences
Eshiemomoh Osilama is a medical student at Geisinger College of Health Sciences in Scranton, PA, Class of 2024. He graduated from Columbia University in 2016 with a Bachelor of Arts in biology. He enjoys reading and writing poetry, baking, theater, singing, museums, traveling, beaches and oceans, photography, and being an extraordinary guncle. Momoh is pursuing a career in psychiatry.
