fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

March 2025

Old Grammie

Leaning forward in her chair, wispy gray hair standing up from her head, fire in her eyes, she’s swatting at me with her cane and muttering in Polish. I know to not get too close. This is my step-great-grandmother, but we never called her that. She was “Old Grammie” to us.

Old Grammie immigrated from Poland to Connecticut as a teen where she married a farmer and had six children. She spent her adulthood at their dairy farm, working hard as a wife, mother and dairywoman.

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Candy Striper, circa 1985

As a teenager I donned a cheap polyester red-and-white striped smock, pantyhose, and a white blouse, and officially became a candystriper at a local hospital.

I offloaded tasks from hospital employees whose skills were needed elsewhere. I compliantly carried unbagged urine specimens with my bare hands from patient floors to the lab, pre-universal precautions. How gross in retrospect. I delivered flowers to patient rooms, dropped off meal trays, and refilled bedside water pitchers.

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Waves

“Your dad makes wonderful films. They mean a lot to all of us.” I stood there in my N95 mask and safety goggles next to a 97-year-old in memory care on hospice, mouth agape. How did she know my dad was a filmmaker? Was she psychic?

Moments before, she’d been confabulating, making up memories to fill gaps in her knowledge. She was under five feet tall, weighed less than a hundred pounds, and grew up female in America in the 1930s. Yet she told me she’d beat the biggest prizefighter in Philadelphia in a boxing match. The odds of that being true seemed slimmer than her physique, but she was certainly a fighter.

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Turning the Tables

My iPhone screams me awake, as it does every morning. Recently this incessant screeching has become less irritating, as I’ve grown more accustomed to the demands that clinical education makes on a third-year medical student. I begin my routine: shower, scrubs, microwaved breakfast sandwich, then out into the dark morning, actually looking forward to my day.

I’ve been on a roll in my new family-medicine rotation, enjoying my time with my supervising doctor and learning quickly under her tutelage. It feels as if it’s coming together—the pages upon pages of textbooks and notes replaced by real patients and newfound responsibilities.

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Ouroboros*

Time is circular.

Or so you’d think if you listened to what my mother says, the various iterations of a conversation slipping through the cracks of her memory, reused and recycled ad infinitum.

Memory does not persist.

Instead, the allure of rebirth too enticing, it devours its own tail.

Tina Arkee
Nashville, Tennessee

*An Ouroboros is an ancient symbol of a snake or dragon eating its own tail.

Ouroboros* Read More »

Her Voicemails

I can’t delete her voicemails. They span over a decade of my life and offer a lifeline to a woman who shaped it.

My grandma wasn’t related to me; she was a customer at the bank where my mom worked in Las Vegas. She chose to love my mom and, eventually, my brother and me.

I spent my childhood chasing her cat, Marmalade, around the house and telling stories with a flashlight under my chin. She taught me to knit using a mirror—because “lefties knit, too.” She made sure my brother and I learned to play the piano, like all her grandchildren.

When we moved to Vermont and later to California, she called my mom every day. Pictures of us, two brown children, sat beside photos of her own grandchildren on her nightstand.

Her Voicemails Read More »

The Gradual Eclipse of Uncle Jack

We all need one cherished relative—someone who knows exactly what to say to you when things are spiraling out of control, who guides you through life’s stormy seas. For me, that person has always been my mother’s youngest brother, Uncle Jack.

From my earliest memories, Uncle Jack has been a steadfast figure in my life. When my childhood home was fraught with tumult and chaos, his house became my sanctuary. His children embraced me like a sister, and in that loving environment I always found solace.

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Recurrence?

In bed, at midnight, nearly asleep, I roll from my back to my side. Suddenly, the universe spins. Or is it just my head spinning? If I were standing, I’d fall over.

I lie still, breathing, and waiting for the dizziness to pass.

Why am I so dizzy? I haven’t had any alcohol. I drank a lot of water today. I didn’t even take any of the medications in my cabinet that help me sleep.

Oh shit. A not-unfamiliar thought enters my head: Has the cancer gone to my brain?

Recurrence? Read More »

Whose Memories?

“Here are some things Dad brought back from moving Grandma,” my mother said, as she placed a box on my dining table. It was filled with objects from my grandmother’s apartment. My father and aunt had just spent a week relocating their mother to a memory care facility and, having little time and many items to sort, had culled out a few things that they thought might be meaningful to me.

I looked through the box. It contained primarily framed photos, most of which were of my growing family in recent years: pictures and holiday cards I’d sent to keep her connected from a distance. Why did he give these back to me, I wondered. What am I supposed to do with them? They were intended for her; they could serve the same purpose even if she was now in memory care.

Whose Memories? Read More »

Broken Neck, Unbroken Spirit

The sun is as warm as I remember it. I’d never minded that hot ball of heat, even when it beat down on me during many a long summer, as I worked outside with my hands.

My hands. I look down at them now, my fingers giving the illusion they’re gripping the little knobs on the handrests of my power wheelchair, but I recall the occupational therapist placing them there back in the rehabilitation facility’s rec hall an hour ago.

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