Beating the chest, emergency surgery, stopping the bleed, The obvious ways to save a life, that which we all agree. Picture a doctor saving lives–what first comes to mind? The ER doc, the trauma surgeon, surely the first to find. But we often fail to see beyond in more subtle ways, How other doctors save lives through different displays. The patient with chronic back pain, feeling death the only solution, Relieved from misery by a …
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 …
My patient sleeps peacefully. / I wake him guiltily. / I don’t want my face to be the first he sees.
The year turns four. / April weeps: the vootery / Of a heart too weak / To hold the stifling tears until December.
Medicine is a march, but it’s not like Sherman’s to the sea. You don’t burn what you leave, and the sea is always just beyond the next hill.
A few winters ago, you called me after a ski accident and announced / “I have fractured my tibial plate.”
Draped the head and steadied the bed / For the life-saving aneurysm clipping, / I stop thinking of my former life.
Your Smile / Wrinkles, / Where my jokes weren’t funny.
Filled with fear and pain but love and hate / To raise it alone since he never agreed
We stand beneath tin roofs / with raindrops on our lips / regret behind our eyes.
So, one way or another / I keep craning my neck / Looking up.
I’ve thought about this for quite a while: / How much I owe to just a smile.
Contributing Writer
The University of North Carolina Chapel Hill School of Medicine
Nisitha is a third year MD/PhD student at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill School of Medicine. Her PhD will be in genetics with an emphasis in lung cancer metastasis. In 2016, she graduated from Ohio State University with a Bachelor of Science in molecular genetics. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, painting, and singing.
