Tabor Flickinger
He marked a copy of da Vinci’s sketch
To map his ailments: drew an arrow from
The eye to cataracts, the feet nerve pain.
The groin said hernia, the navel at
The center of it all colostomy.
He offers up this artifact to his
New doctor: fills the outline with a tale
Of his true flesh unique in variance
From all ideal cosmographies of man.
Tara Jaffery
About the artist:
Tara Jaffery is an internist working in Shifa International Hospital in Islamabad, Pakistan. She was a FAIMER (Foundation for Advancement of International Medical Education and Research) fellow at the time she took this photograph in late 2005, when northern Pakistan experienced the worst earthquake in its history. She sends this photograph “for the people of Nepal…a little ray of hope.”
About the artwork:
“When Nepal suffered its first catastrophic earthquake a few weeks ago, I remembered, in a flashback, horrific scenes of the October 2005 earthquake in northern Pakistan, which left 100,000 dead, countless injured and millions homeless. We received many of the most seriously injured people in our tertiary-care hospital in Islamabad. The complicated crush injuries and the sense of despair were beyond description. Villages were gone, cities reduced to rubble. Every victim had a heart-wrenching story of loss and tragedy.
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Jo Marie Reilly
There’s a full moon tonight.
“That’s when crazy things happen,” my superstitious mom always says.
I’m a family physician doing weekend call at my urban community hospital. My pager rings incessantly. As I answer yet another call from the emergency room downstairs, I think, Maybe Mom has a point.
“Got a suicidal patient with nowhere to go,” the ER physician yells into the phone, against the background commotion. “This guy John has been here for three days. He’s casted on both feet and can’t walk. The insurance company’s authorization nurse says she can’t admit him because it’s not medically indicated–but if a doctor gives her an indication, she’ll authorize it. Can you do it?”
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Cortney Davis
It was a Wednesday in late spring, 1972. I was a nursing student in my final months of training, eagerly awaiting graduation.
When I arrived on the maternity ward that morning, my nursing instructor told me that I’d be caring for a baby, only hours old, with special needs.
I thought she’d send me to the neonatal ICU. Instead, to my surprise, she motioned toward the linen closet, its doors closed tight.
“The baby was born without a complete brain,” she said. “A condition called anencephaly. He can’t see or hear. And,” she added, “they don’t expect he’ll live out the day. So try not to get attached.”
Livy Low
About the artist:
Olivia (Livy) Low is a first-year medical student at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, New York. She is originally from Oakland, California. Ever since her father gave his old Nikon to her, she has been unable to stop taking photographs. For her, photography is an act of love. Her work can be seen at livylow.wordpress.com.
About the artwork:
“I’ve been thinking about what it means to become, to grow and to thrive despite the constant vulnerability that comes from being not only a medical student but also a young person creating space in the world. The inherent fragility of certain elements of nature–such as the soft petals of a flower–reminds me that when we fully inhabit that vulnerability, that capacity to become wounded or broken, we often find beauty and grace.”
Livy Low
About the artist:
Olivia (Livy) Low is a first-year medical student at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, New York. She is originally from Oakland, California. Ever since her father gave his old Nikon to her, she has been unable to stop taking photographs. For her, photography is an act of love. Her work can be seen at livylow.wordpress.com.
About the artwork:
“I’ve been thinking about what it means to become, to grow and to thrive despite the constant vulnerability that comes from being not only a medical student but also a young person creating space in the world. The inherent fragility of certain elements of nature–such as the soft petals of a flower–reminds me that when we fully inhabit that vulnerability, that capacity to become wounded or broken, we often find beauty and grace.”
Albert Howard Carter III
(for NCC and RAC)
My wife lies in the little room,
tight as a drum, and even more convex.
She breathes hard as the contractions come.
The doctor, some 20 feet away,
shares his lunch with me,
the husband and coach;
My wife, lunchless today,
hears this act of betrayal
and resents (I learn later)
that we are eating cake:
she’s clearly in “transition,”
when even the nicest women
can become cranky.
Groans and wails fill the hall;
The place sounds like a zoo.
Hilton Koppe
Jeez mate, you are really dead. “Really fucking dead,” as you would say. I don’t need to be a doctor to know that. The cop who rang me was right. You must have been sitting in your lounge chair, dead, for at least twelve hours, maybe more. Looks like you were enjoying a quiet drink when you checked out.
I’ve got to tell you mate, it’s pretty weird sitting here at your dining table, with you there, slumped over all mottled and cold, while I’m trying to fill out your death certificate. With your advance-care directive staring at me from on top of all your papers on the table. Was it left there as a gift for me? I did feel a little better when I read that you wanted to be allowed to die a natural death. That you didn’t want any more medical interventions (God knows, you’d had enough of those already). That you wanted to die in your home.
Was it the chemo that knocked you off in the end? That’s what I want to believe. Because if it wasn’t that, then it might have been the high potassium level in your
Jonathan Stockton
About the contributor:
Jonathan is completing his MFA in photography at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. He photographs in areas where communities form around addiction and documents how these communities change over time. His thesis show will be on view May 11-23 at MassArt’s Bakalar Gallery in Boston, MA. His work can be found at jonathanstockton.net.
About the artwork:
“I met Jerry (not his real name) as he drank tall boys [24-ounce cans of beer] on a warm autumn day along the Connecticut River, just downstream from a spot where many addicts get high. Jerry reminded me that I had to be careful in ‘these parts,’ and that he would see that I made it back up the embankement safely. But he had to finish his beers first. The next time I saw him, he had been sober for nearly two months. He said that just before Christmas, the police had found him in
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