Hurricane Taxi Sketch

“As a medical student, I began sketching patients and jotting snippets of our dialogue as a way to spend a few extra moments with them and to focus more closely on their expressions. I drew on whatever paper was at hand–a prescription blank, a wrapper for latex gloves, a scratch pad from a drug company or a local business (in this case from ‘Hurricane Taxi,’ made during my family medicine residency in Miami). These drawings bring back the essence of an encounter, details of personality, and fragmentary clues that a patient gives her doctor about her life.  Some of the dialogue I jotted down for this patient reads as follows:  ‘Healing helps the medicine…and the medicine helps the body…You know ‘cause you’re a doctor…You have a feeling of healing here [in your fingers]…’ “