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

The Day After

you ran a knife across
your wrists, you called
to say you had finally
tried coffee.

“It’s disgusting. How do you drink this shit?”

Well, how do you decide your pulse
is a song on the radio you’d rather not
listen to? I didn’t say that, of course,
I laughed and swore to you that

coffee just took exposure. I could picture
you perfectly: a hospital mug tucked into
your lap, one hand on the inpatient phone,
the other toying with your bandage. I’m sure

you smirked at all the things I didn’t say.
Four years of medical education, and I
still don’t know how to talk to those
who wish to die. This is nothing like

coffee. The bitterness does not ebb the more
I speak of suicide. I will always feel that I am
burning my tongue, that I am screaming into
a heavy wind. My words, my reason, thirteen

years of friendship are all
paper airplanes when compared
with your desire to end your own life.

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Anneka Johnston is a fourth-year student at Loyola University’s Stritch School of Medicine. She studied English at Kenyon College and after graduating moved to Chicago, where she worked in a Suboxone clinic at the height of Chicago’s opioid epidemic. She began searching for the common ground between medicine and the humanities and became passionate about giving voice to patient experiences through narrative art. She received second place in the 2022 DeBakey Poetry Contest and third place in the 2022 William Carlos Williams Poetry Competition, and her work has been published in the Journal of Medical Humanities and in-Training.

About the Poem

“This poem explores the sense of frustration and hurt that can accompany being part of someone’s support network when they’re living with a severe mental-health condition. It also explores how many of us do not know how to think about, talk about or begin to understand suicide.”

Comments

7 thoughts on “The Day After”

  1. Peter Barnett (MD, MPH)

    I worked in a state psych hospital as an orderly 69-71. Many people talked about death. Only one actually committed suicide, within 24hrs of discharge, w/o ever having expressed suicidal intent.
    30+years later as a physician and parent I had occasion to listen to suicidal thoughts expressed by 2 very close relatives. I did what they called “suicide contracts”. 20+ yrs later they’re alive and well. So far, so good.

  2. She has voiced what many of us feel but do not experience up close and personal. It feels the same in the heart though.

  3. Dr. Louis Verardo

    Very powerful piece of writing, Ms. Johnston, and very insightful in describing the helplessness you can feel when talking to someone determined to commit suicide. I practiced for 40 years and still struggled to find the right things to say in the moment to a suicidal patient. It looks like you are starting from a better place in considering those conversations; best of luck to you as you begin clinical practice.

  4. Ronna Edelstein

    Your writing is amazing! I have known several people who have tried to end their lives, so your words definitely resonated with me. Also, I profoundly admire a person who excels in both the sciences and the humanities—in medicine and in poetry.

  5. Wow. I’ve practiced medicine for over 30 years and I’ve talked with lots of people about lots of things. But I’ve never knowingly talked with someone whom I know wants to kill themselves. This is pretty disturbing, but is communicated with us very effectively. I hope that maybe this person is still alive?

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