Everyone has a voice that deserves to be heard.
Throughout the hospital, the voices of patients, doctors, students, and staff members all have stories to tell. And it is the mission of Duke Med Voices to broadcast those voices to the community.
Duke Med Voices was founded on the belief that medicine is more than just facts and numbers, and patients are more than just their medical records. Behind each patient’s chart, there are many more thoughts and experiences that transpire than the words of an official document. They are real people with stories of love, loss, and near misses with the inevitable.
Human nature is often most raw when we are standing at the fork between life and death. Despair, humiliation, and sacrifice juxtaposed with hope, laughter, and delight in the face of shock, wonder, and awe at how thin the line is between the living and the dead. Healthcare providers have the privilege of listening to and participating in patients’ stories, and we have featured the creative expressions of providers and trainees in this publication.
Medicine is a full-time commitment, both physically and emotion- ally. Vinayak Venkataraman narrates the oscillation between loss and hope in “The Best and Worst Four Months of My Life,” as he details his experience as a second year medical student on the pediatric hematology-oncology service. Umar Qadri, in his poem entitled, “My Sister,” explores the all-consuming nature of a medical career that can tear us away from the life around us.
The omnipresent forces of love and loss are poignantly explored in Chinmay Paranjape’s poem “Iron Gong” and Kristian Becker’s “Au- bade for the Unwanted.”
The unpredictable nature of medicine is noted in Hussain Lalani’s prose about his experience in the emergency department, and Sherveen Parivash imagines a similar event from a patient’s perspective in his short story entitled “Games.” At the same time, we are reminded of our own vulnerabilities and humanness in Kristian Becker’s poem, “The Giant Moth of the Heart,” and Chinmay Paranjape’s “Scar’s Song.” Because otherwise, “Congenital Insensitivity to Pain” becomes the only way we can deal with our own emotions, as Carlisdania Mendoza writes beautifully in her poem.
As always, our hope in editing and managing Duke Med Voices
is to uplift the voices of the Duke medical community, and encourage creative ways of expression. If you are interested in writing or editing for Duke Med Voices, please do not hesitate to contact dukemedvoices@ gmail.com.
Rui Dai, MS2 Anna Brown, MS3
Co-Editors in Chief, Duke Med Voices
