student winner
Erica Warnock
University of Minnesota
Erica Warnock has a perspective on medicine that few other medical students have. Having dealt with her own chronic health problems, she knows what it’s like to be a patient. “I feel like I’m trapped between two worlds having had so many experiences as a patient and trying to learn to be a doctor,” she says.
Writing, she says, helps her process what she is experiencing and feeling. “It’s therapeutic.” Growing up in Pittsburgh, she wanted to be a writer. But when she started experiencing migraines in middle school, her interests turned to medicine. She studied communication sciences and disorders and psychology at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, before starting medical school last fall at the University of Minnesota.
Last spring, as part of the “Essentials of Clinical Medicine” class, she began spending half a day a week in the hospital, taking histories and performing physical exams. One of her patients brought her to the crossroads of being a patient and being a physician. “A lot of the things she was saying felt like words that could easily have come out of my mouth or have come out of my mouth at some point,” Warnock says. “I felt like there were so many parts of her story I could relate to: having to deal with side effects of medications, having anxiety, feeling tired of being tested, having to figure out how to live her life now that she has this diagnosis.”
Warnock couldn’t stop thinking about the young woman. “There was the weird dynamic of realizing I’m now on the professional side and not knowing exactly how to approach her, what to say, and then about what I wanted to say to her.” She wrote her winning poem “Unspoken Words” soon after that encounter.
Warnock says she doesn’t usually write poetry but felt this story could better be told as a poem. “I wanted to frame it as an exchange between her and I, which seemed to fit the format of a poem better.”
Unspoken Words
What do you know about suffering?
About living with sickness as a constant companion?
You are innocent and inexperienced
A carefree child
Your only understanding of pain
Is what is written in textbooks
You know nothing about disease.
Illness makes no distinction
All are vulnerable prey when it attacks
We fool ourselves into thinking
Healthy habits will protect us
Or the invincibility of youth will intercede
But the cloak of disease has enveloped me
As surely as it has surrounded you.
What do you know about medications?
About the problems that arise when the same drugs that help you
Post a flashing neon welcome sign on your forehead
Inviting infections to invade
Turn your lungs into the perfect lair for bugs
Bacteria and viruses and all types of nastiness
You know nothing about side effects.
It is a never-ending balancing act
Like walking on a tightrope in a circus
All it takes is the tiniest nudge
Or a strong wind
To push things in the wrong direction
Then the side effects become worse than the disease itself
And you must cope with the consequences.
What do you know about being a patient?
About the procedures that never end?
Scan, scope, culture, repeat … and repeat again
They search deep within
Examining your innermost parts
Yet answers remain elusive
You know nothing about tests.
Sometimes you feel reduced to a specimen to be studied
You wonder if you are a person anymore
Or just a body to probe and scope
An empty vessel full of isolated organs
Your diagnosis becomes an intellectual challenge
Dependent on your body but not on you
And test after test tells them nothing.
What do you know about fear?
About all of the worries that come with being sick?
Last night I had a heart‐pounding,
Thoughts‐racing
Body‐sweating
Panic attack
You know nothing about being afraid.
It is terrifying to face the unknown
Like a child plagued by recurrent nightmares
Only it is more likely your fears will come true
Than that you will discover a monster hiding under the bed
What will they find? What will you do?
Potential answers fill you with dread
And worst-case scenarios displace all other thoughts.
What do you know about uncertainty?
About constantly questioning what the future holds?
Being too afraid that a bad day is on the horizon
To enjoy the good days
Having life controlled by your bowel habits
My world has changed so much in three short years
You know nothing about ambiguity.
I’ve already scoped out this unit
For the nearest bathroom, just in case
Three years ago I wouldn’t have needed to
But now I know symptoms always lurk in the shadows
I try to appreciate the good days as a blessing
But sometimes they just make the bad days
Seem that much worse by comparison.
What do you know about how to reassure me?
About how to empathize with patients?
You nod your head
Say you’re sorry
Claim to understand
Do you really?
You know nothing about what I’m going through.
I wish I could take off my white coat
Sit beside you and confess everything
Tell you that I know plenty of things about illness
Never covered in our curriculum
Because I’m living through it too.
Tell you I know how difficult your life has become
Sometimes I think being a patient is harder
Than learning to be a doctor.