Ascensus V 2016 Weill Cornell Medicine Journal of Humanities
Ascensus Journal of Humanities Volume V August 2016 • Weill Cornell Medicine
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Ascensus Leaders: Olivia Sutton, ’19 & Stephanie Chen, ’19 Editor-in-Chief: Olivia Sutton, ’19 Visual Media Editor: Zhenzhen Shi, ’19 Written Media Editors: Lorien E. Menhennett, ’19 & Lisa Zhang, ’19 Design Editor: Sapir Nachum, ’19 Events Director: Stephanie Chen, ’19 Events Team: Benjamin Brown, ’19 & Lynne Rosenberg, ’19 Web Editor: Davinder Sandhu PR Staff: Chris Marnell, ’19, Jenny Xia, ’19 & Lisa Zhang, ’19 Faculty Advisors: Susan Ball, MD Randi Diamond, MD Front Cover Design by Davinder Sandhu. Inspired by Back Cover Image, by A.C. Antonelli. For additional details see pages 44-45. Table of Contents Artwork by Susan Ball, MD. Layout by Sapir Nachum. Contact us at wcmc.lit@gmail.com. With special thanks to the Liz Claiborne Center for Humanism in Medicine and support from the Office of Academic Affairs and NIH grant “Enacting the Social and Behavioral Scencies in Clinical Training.”
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To Our Readers: This issue of Ascensus marks five years since we started publishing contributions from the Weill Cornell Medicine community. A fifth anniversary is an important benchmark. A lot of things can’t last five years: the lifespan of a goldfish, an iPod mini, most celebrity marriages. This fifth anniversary is an assurance that Ascensus’ marriage between medicine and the humanities is thriving and will continue to grow. It’s a milestone that says maybe this really will work out, and maybe we can finally stop going on expensive dates and start appreciating what we have. What we have is an incredible roster of artists: members of the Weill Cornell Medicine community that approach medicine with thoughtfulness, empathy, curiosity, hope, and grace. Medicine seeks to offer solutions, but art offers a counterpoint. It presents questions: What is important to us? How do we cope? This year, our submissions showed us that the boundary between medicine and art is tenuous, and sometimes even disappears. The two disciplines are different ways of answering the same question: What does it mean to be human? If that sounds too ambitious, it’s not. Our contributors gave us simple answers in a way they know how: poems about family, essays about their fears, and photographs that show the world in a new light. This year we also incorporated multimedia into the journal to reflect the totality of our experience: new ways to understand the same problems we’ve always had. Between the covers of this journal, you’ll find a whole world that will make you laugh, make you cry, and hopefully even make you pass the journal along to others. Maybe this is just us being vain, but we think five years looks pretty good on us. Here’s to five more years, and five more, and five more… — Olivia Sutton & Stephanie Chen Ascensus Leaders
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Table of Contents Frozen Pond
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Icebreakers I & II
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Anatomy
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Canvas
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Brooklyn Sunset
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Reframing Success
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Grey Audobon
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Charles Bardes, MD | Professor of Clinical Medicine Poem Linjia Jia | MD Student, Class of 2019 Photography Olivia Sutton | MD Student, Class of 2019 Colored Pencil Zhenzhen Shi | MD Student, Class of 2019 Poem Leah Moroge | Social Worker, MSKCC Photography Lorien E. Menhennett | MD Student, Class of 2019 Prose Zhenzhen Shi | MD Student, Class of 2019 Acrylic Pain on Rives BFK Paper
My New York from A to Z
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On Death and Dying
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Fading Melodies
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Behind the Deep Set Hollows
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Andrew Ebanks | MD Student, Class of 2019 Poem Olivia Sutton | MD Student, Class of 2019 Mixed Media Ramya Tadipatri | MD Student, Class of 2017 Prose Gary Kocharian | MD Student, Class of 2018 Poem
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Dancing Tree
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Elegy for Zachary Carpenter
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Rooster
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What I Miss...
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Harvey's Odyssey
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Sevastopol. Ukraine
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Sandy
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Finding Confidence in Science and Failure
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Prosodic Boundaries
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Improvisation: The Arts of Jazz and Medicine
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The Bridge and Tunnel Crowd
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Mist
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Shahnaz Mohammed | Secretary in Medicine, MSKCC Photography Stephanie Chen | MD Student, Class of 2019 Poem Dipti Barman, PhD | Postdoctoral Associate, WCM Oil on Canvas Brisa Palikuqi | PhD Student Poem Lawrence Palmer, PhD | Professor, Department of Physiology and Biophysics Poem Paul Miskovitz, MD | Clinical Professor of Medicine, Department of Medicine Photography Linjia Jia | MD Student, Class of 2019 Photography Sarah Powell, PGDip, MSc | Research Technician and Lab Manager, WCM Prose
Lara Wahlberg, DNP, AGPCNP-BC, ACHPN, OCN | Nurse Practitioner, Palliative Care Program, Bellevue Hospital Center Pastel on Paper Tony Sun | MD-PhD Student, Entering Class of 2014 Prose Christopher Marnell | MD Student, Class of 2019 Photography Milna Rufin, MD | Class of 2016 Photography
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Alive
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Peaceful Solitude
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Small Fire Under the Pulaski Skyway
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Untitled
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Hiding Grace
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The Condition of Being a Student
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Ode to "High-Yield"
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Dirt Devil
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For you
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Morning Alarm
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I Saw the Pope, and He Waved at Me!
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Crystals In Culture
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Lara Wahlberg, DNP, AGPCNP-BC, ACHPN, OCN | Nurse Practitioner, Palliative Care Program, Bellevue Hospital Center Poem MitsĂş Jane McHugh | Quality Control Specialist, MSKCC Photography Daniel Lembo | PhD Student Photography
Brendan Barrett | MD Student, Class of 2017 Poem
Lara Wahlberg, DNP, AGPCNP-BC, ACHPN, OCN | Nurse Practitioner, Palliative Care Program, Bellevue Hospital Center Pastel on Paper Olivia Sutton | MD Student, Class of 2019 Colored Pencil Peter Hung | MD Student, Class of 2018 Prose Lauren Antrim | MD Student, Class of 2019 Photography Stephanie Chen | MD Student, Class of 2019 Poem Shokhi Goel | MD Student, Class of 2019 Photography Jenny Xia | MD Student, Class of 2019 Prose A.C. Antonelli | Graduate Student Microscope Image
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Lab, Midnight
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Phases
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Lorena
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Bucolic Sight
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New Beginnings
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A Dream
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Erbursaig
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Penguin Island, South Shetland Islands, Antarctica
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Inner Sound
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Sunset
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Peacock Infrastructure
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The Water and Rice
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Brisa Palikuqi | Graduate Student Poem Lynne Rosenberg | MD Student, Class of 2019 Photography Brisa Palikuqi | Graduate Student Poem Pierre Adumeau | Postdoctoral Fellow, WCM Photography Shokhi Goel | MD Student, Class of 2019 Photography Jenny Xia | MD Student, Class of 2019 Prose Jordan Roberts, MD | Class of 2016 Photography Paul Miskovitz, MD | Clnical Professor of Medicine, Department of Medicine Photography Jordan Roberts, MD | Class of 2016 Poem Christopher Marnell | MD Student, Class of 2019 Prose Peter Hung | MD Student, Class of 2018 Photography Milna Rufin, MD | Class of 2016 Photography
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Mountain
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Inside My Head
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American Pragmatism and the Frontal Lobes
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Lunch Break
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Currency
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Perspective
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Heart Failure
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To Coping I & II
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Neoplasia
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Why We Fight
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Equanimity
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Divine Encounter
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Karen Chu | Graduate Student Digital Art Lauren Antrim | MD Student, Class of 2019 Photography Matthew Schelke | MD Student, Class of 2017 Prose Jenny Xia | MD Student, Class of 2019 Photography Zhenzhen Shi | MD Student, Class of 2019 Poem Jason Lambden | MD Student, Class of 2019 Photography James Wang, MD | Class of 2016 Poem Milna Rufin, MD | Class of 2016 Acrylic on Canvas Olivia Sutton | MD Student, Class of 2019 Colored Pencil Benet Pera-Gresely, PhD | Postdoctoral Associate, WCM Prose Linjia Jia | MD Student, Class of 2019 Photography
Lara Wahlberg, DNP, AGPCNP-BC, ACHPN, OCN | Nurse Practitioner, Palliative Care Program, Bellevue Hospital Center Poem
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Urban Ribs
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A Body to a Student
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Multimedia
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Choreography
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Electronic Compositions
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Voice
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Peter Hung | MD Student, Class of 2018 Photography Andrew Ebanks | MD Student, Class of 2019 Poem
Mitali Kini | MD Student, Class of 2019 Multimedia Davinder Sandhu | Graduate Student Multimedia Lisa Zhang | MD Student, Class of 2019 Multimedia
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frozen pond Emma skating, a lone red figure in falling, wind-driven snow — Charles Bardes, MD
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Icebreakers I & II Photography
Linjia Jia
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Anatomy Colored Pencil
Olivia Sutton
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Canvas barely fourteen, you read to me poems on ascetic death i want to say you know nothing of dying but neither do i -only the aftermath, twenty-six bodies opened in perfect symmetry tears (preservative) pooled in the junction between nose and brow, only the notion of covering this angular body with canvas, levity, soft words — Zhenzhen Shi
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Brooklyn Sunset Photography
Leah Moroge
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Reframing Success Lorien E. Menhennett
Eight months into medical school is far too early to start becoming disillusioned. Yet that’s where I was headed. I’d entered medicine thinking I could help people. All too quickly, I realized that I couldn’t help those who resisted helping themselves. It wasn’t something that occurred to me while studying biochemistry, anatomy, or cardiology. You don’t learn such lessons from books. I discovered it, painfully, while working with a patient who simply wouldn’t take medication. “Take your medication.” It sounds simple, doesn’t it? You have a chronic illness. Pills can prevent that illness from getting worse, and also prevent disastrous complications. So why wouldn’t someone take a few pills? I don’t understand the logic, and probably never will. But for months I tried. I tried both to understand it and to fix it. For months, I smashed my head against a brick wall I couldn’t tear down. I’m not the patient’s physician. I am a sort of medical student liaison. But I am part of the medical team, and as just as invested in the patient’s care as anyone. Naïvely, I thought that if only I could come up with the right words, I could show that taking the medication was critical. That it was lifesaving. But nothing I said made a difference. Emotionally and professionally, I felt beaten down. I felt I had failed. By some measures, I had. In medicine, success is gauged in many ways, from saving lives to saving money. Much of the day-to-day success in internal medicine, though, is a numbers game: improving a patient’s numbers, and therefore his or her odds. Medically lowering a patient’s blood pressure, for example, means a lower risk of stroke. My patient’s numbers hadn’t gotten better — they had gotten worse. So had my patient’s odds. Finally, at a loss, I went to a physician on the faculty at my medical school. She knows me, and she knows this particular patient too. Her years of experience in primary care allowed her to understand the frustration firsthand. Her advice was simple and elegant. What you need to do, she said, is “reframe” your notion of success. Consider this patient’s willingness to talk to you, to call you with problems, as success. There was a time when the patient didn’t have a positive relationship with anyone on the medical care team. Now the patient does. That ongoing dialogue — that’s success.
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The reframing helped, though the feeling of culpability didn’t immediately dissipate. But the physician added something else, something I desperately needed to hear: “We didn’t expect you to fix [this].” I still hope we can. Maybe one day, something will click and the patient will understand why complying matters. But I no longer define my success that way. In medicine, you walk a fine line. You must maintain empathy without getting lost in it. Establishing appropriate emotional distance from a patient is not only a suggestion but also an imperative. That’s hard for me. I started medical school driven by idealism. I wanted to help everyone and thought I could. My very first patient has taught me otherwise. Some conditions simply aren’t fixable, and some people with fixable conditions won’t fix themselves.
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Grey Audobon
Acrylic Paint on Rives BFK Paper
Zhenzhen Shi
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My New York from A to Z From the palisades, the sun adorns it in caramel The city shines, rust patching each domicile A city of dreams and thieves Between the trees and leaves A garden with wealth that could fulfill all needs But laden with thorns and too high to feed What is this place I want to shun? The best and worst rolled into one? A place of hope, a place of despair Dickens alone, lost in Times Square The crowding, the bustling The standing, the shuffling Where would I begin? Along most streets blind men tap twice But only in this city will sticks strike thrice Where lights will turn from red to green Then mothers turn from nice to mean The engines start; the strollers go clack Babies in onesies, like racers to a track The subway it lives; it sparks and clatters But people seem dead, look stiff, no chatter Where peddlers play guitars in bands With a song in their hearts and a hat in their hands But hardened hearts are not surprised With exhaustion and loathing heavy in their eyes Is this the dream that many chase? To pay big bucks just to keep this pace?
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When the moon rises, many still wander Bankers and partiers, both sober no longer Drowning the speeches too hard to miss Those whose words carry on like this: “Excuse me, ladies and gents Can you please spare a few cents?” Kids who dance on poles like strippers But heads turn like those from lepers For the pregnant, disabled, the veteran To the people we all feel better than New York, it’s love-hate. I’m not sure I’m ready Should I make you a mix tape, ask you go steady? Let’s say I leave, turn you down for Boston Or embrace the dry heat and high tail it to Austin No matter. Wherever I go or the time zone I keep Ill lie there and remember the place that won’t sleep In the city, this city; it’s so expansive Wild and untamed; I’m so entranced with My own imagery, it’s large, the city larger Or vice versa, I forget. Why even bother? Each borough, up and down each side Walk the people with feelings they don’t hide Lost awake or safe in dreams I see From here at my vantage, NY from A to Z — Andrew Ebanks
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On Death and Dying Mixed Media
Olivia Sutton
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Fading Melodies Ramya Tadipatri “This patient was once a concert pianist,” we were told when we arrived at the patient’s home. I was not quite prepared for the encounter that was in store for us. As a piano player myself, my eyes were instantly drawn to the dusty old wooden grand piano tucked away in the corner of the living room. I imagined the spectacular performances of this faceless patient I had yet to meet, and I imagined the standing ovations. When we entered the bedroom, I observed a frail, elderly lady lying in bed. We greeted her genially and were met with a vacant stare, with no sign of the vibrant life force formerly weaving symphonies to an audience of thousands. I looked around the room at the beautiful paintings of meadows and streams that covered much of the wall space. They were certainly appropriate for establishing a tranquil healing environment. However, I was surprised to see the patient’s name elegantly scripted in the bottom corner of each of them. It was time to measure and clean her pressure ulcers. We turned the patient onto her left side. I took her hand. Her fragile fingers that once struck piano keys with power and with nuance. Her trembling fingers that once swept brushstrokes gracefully across canvas. I met her gaze while the ulcers were being cleaned. Her eyes were no longer vacant but pleading. I gently squeezed her hand tighter. Once communicating an expansive array of emotions through melodies and harmonies, she now had to resort to communicating with her eyes. It was at this moment that I realized this could be me one day. A dying patient surrounded by remnants of her past life: the passions, the skills, the energy, and the emotions.
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Behind the Deep Set Hollows Deep set hollows filled with dancing flames Stared into my own lenses, As I gazed upon a face etched with the wisdom Of a lifetime’s experience. Each line representing a multitude of frowns A myriad of tears And innumerable smiles. Each cough sent a shudder through the aching bones. One cough for each of the countless cigarettes Amid the timeless pack years. And yet with each cough and every shudder Still the fire burns Behind the deep set hollows. Each step sent waves of instability Along long forgotten cerebellar paths Over the countless tiles of this house of healing. And yet with each step and every wave Still the fire burns Behind the deep set hollows. With each line And each cough And each step The vigor of a lifetime yearns To escape the dying embers Behind the deep set hollows. —Gary Kocharian
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Dancing Tree
Photography
Shahnaz Mohammed
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Elegy for Zachary Carpenter 1. Pressed your palms into the soil, a Gentilly garden below the metal body rumble of the underpass. Pea pod, Abita, clean wishes. 2. Pressed your palms against the wall for the scrape of skateboard wheels, a sliding sidewalk that recalls seamless streets. Clean morning. Parking space, armor, cement dancer. 3. Pressed your palms along a lifeline, 2 a.m. radio through the speakers when you turn to go— Panorama bullet / 4. Pressed our palms together above Elysian Fields. They found a body like poetry over the steering wheel.
and how to remember the light inside your lips.
avenue. Calcium fissure.
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5. pit bull ashes clean balloon. — Stephanie Chen
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Rooster Oil on Canvas
Dipti Barman, PhD
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What I Miss... The dust that settled after rain on a summer day. The smell of Earth afterwards. The sun rising from Dajti Mountain. The sunset I could see for miles. The roasted eggplants and peppers. The fried squash in the yogurt. The watermelons. Salads with cucumbers and tomatoes. They remind me of my grandmother’s smell. I used to sit on her lap for hours. She told me stories of the days when there was no electricity. Of the land that she knows unjustly taken won’t ripen the tomatoes the way it did when it was with whom it belonged. White and red you must wear on the first spring day she would say… painting boiled eggs red. Making red and white bracelets. And sweating starch with butter and sugar on the stove top, she made Paluze. I can hear myself saying. Sprinkle mine with cinnamon grandma… — Brisa Palikuqi
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Harvey's Odyssey The Oracle of Dexios has her say, That ends the calm and gets us underway. The tides that turn by some eternal node Begin the journey down the briny road. The breeze that all the watching crew needs heed might roll and pitch the hull as we can speed. At half moon tides turn out from port to main Our stays turn taught our timbers sing with strain. Each catapulting gust helps press  our stern From port to quickened, roiling seas we turn. Our pulses race as quick we move ahead, The sky arched high above, the sea is red. All sails unfurl and pull the ship as one, As to the open sea we start to run. The edge of cloven gulf recedes so far As embers deep in Hades to a star. Then leagues downwind through streaming mists appear A headland from whose rocky points we steer, Which darkened channel we are forced to choose And every chartered guide about to lose.
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We ran the wave without a care or did we not a moment take to heed the current laminar, Though any turn could swiftly break all timbers of our straining frame and strew them ’bout the briny lake. We weren’t a-sea for gaining fame or all the gold our holds could bear but just to answer to our name. Death here admits no mis-en-terre I can but search a liquid lair, Eternal grace a watery prayer. The wind upon our sails are never slack As channels narrow more with every tack, And each wave slows our progress through the course Then speeds us as the tide regains its force. ‘Tween cliffs with streaks of alabaster lime That quiver in and back with force sublime, Now through the straits the ocean changes hue From cardinal to darkened cyan blue. The hurricane upon our sails near died The passages ahead grow ever wide. The briny air is not so strong or sharp, The wind is gentle as a soft-plucked harp. Our voyage nears the port we call our home our rest until its time again to roam. — Lawrence Palmer, PhD
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Sevastopol, Ukraine Photography
Paul Miskovitz, MD
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Sandy
Photography
Linjia Jia
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Finding Confidence in Science and Failure Sarah Powell, PGDip, MSc I am not generally a nervous or anxious person. I’ve traveled solo to 47 countries and six continents, sailed 4,000 miles on the Pacific Ocean, landed a helicopter sans engine, and been diagnosed with a chronic lifelong disease. I’ve been held at gunpoint, assaulted, kidnapped, and once even talked my way out of being mugged. All of this before 27. You’d think that after all of these unexpected experiences, I’d find confidence and a sense of control in a lab. After all, science is the art of imposing rules and making sense of what would otherwise appear to be chaos. But I confess, it’s science that makes me most anxious, and the lab where I sometimes feel least in control. It’s not the failure of an experiment or a result that puts me off, though: It’s the loss of reputation and perceived ability that could result. No matter how much experience I may have in one area of research, I still often feel incompetent, anxious, and at a loss for how to proceed. I can follow the directions, spend weeks or even months on a project, but if it fails, all of that work is called into question. Sure, we may still get a paper out of an interesting failure—or I could simply lose the confidence of my superiors and co-workers. If, as a scientist, I’m only as good as my assay, then much of my sense of self-worth becomes bound up in what I can accomplish within the constraints of budget, scientific literacy, equipment, and sometimes sheer luck. When I travel, it’s much easier to distinguish what I am and am not capable of doing. I know who I am and where I fit in the scheme of things. I am no better and no less than those who surround me, regardless of job title, life achievements, or papers published. The people I meet will either like me or not. I will get the directions right or end up on a completely different adventure, which has its own rewards. I go into each new experience accepting that I am the one and only thing I can control. Things will not always go as planned, and I will have disappointments, but I’m not competing with anyone. I will have to improvise, accept the chaos, and improve because of it. The end product is not a paper or commission or validation from others; it’s simply personal experience and an opportunity to improve myself and help people I meet along the way. It is not, in short, something to put on a resume.
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Like many others, I entered science as a career because I am curious and passionate. I am curious about the world, about other people, and about the complexities of how and why things work the way they do. I am passionate about how this information might help others and improve the world in which I live and travel. Unfortunately, the culture of academic science is not often accepting of failure or understanding of limitations, nor does it readily embrace how either of those contribute to scientific advancement and growth. Instead, with certain exceptions, one often encounters a ladder of increasing egos, competitive and creative brilliance combined with socially detached expertise. There is so much more value placed on what you are and what you can produce quickly than on who you are and how you can produce something valuable. I am used to failure, but I am not accustomed to being judged on how many times I fail rather than how many times I am willing to try again, to learn, to improve. The latter, I believe, makes all the difference. While it may not be on my CV, I am fortunate enough to have life experience that provides me some other criteria by which to judge myself. But as a community, what tools are we giving young researchers to cope? What messages of discouragement are we reinforcing by not embracing failure as a necessary and ever-present learning tool, both in science and more importantly, in life? What type of social environment are we creating by prioritizing competition over support? How can this negligence not affect the knowledge we generate? There is a great need for scientists and researchers to build a community that is focused less on competition and more on collective achievement—one whose goals align more with advancing knowledge and research through social connectedness and mentorship rather than hierarchical judgment. As cliché as it may sound, I have found that there is a truth universal to cultures, countries, and continents: that social connectedness and working together will always lead to a richer outcome. I refuse to believe that the scientific community is an exception. So many of us are taught to look for our confidence and validation at the bottom of a test tube. It’s no wonder, really, that we seldom find it there.
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Prosodic Boundaries Pastel on Paper
Lara Wahlberg, DNP, AGPCNP-BC, ACHPN, OCN
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Improvisation: The Arts of Jazz and Medicine Tony Sun What does jazz music have to do with medicine? I’ve seen countless writings regarding the broad relationship between music and medicine, but not so much focused on jazz music. When I run a Google search of “music and medicine,” I get 339 thousand hits (the first page is incidentally our very own Music and Medicine program), while a search of “jazz and medicine” yields one log-fold less hits around 49 thousand. This article is a nod to other jazz artists who also happen to be in medicine, many of whom are at Weill Cornell. The focus is on relating the defining feature of jazz music, improvisation, to medical care. Improvisation is essentially musical composition on the spot, a skill that I feel is more emphasized in jazz teaching and playing than in other genres of music. Briefly, where did jazz come from? Although its origins are connected with the music of Africa, with its driving dance rhythms, jazz matured and evolved in the United States, moving from the swing dance tunes of the 20s and 30s through the complex harmonies of the bebop era, and finally into modal jazz and contemporary realms of exploration. The sublime American critic Harold Bloom sounded clear America’s contributions to music: The two great American contributions to the world’s art, in the end, are Walt Whitman and, after him, [Louis] Armstrong and jazz. Armstrong, Ellington, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Mingus, what you will. If I had to choose between the two, ultimately, I wouldn’t. I would say that the genius of this nation at its best is indeed Walt Whitman and Louis Armstrong. My wonderful friend Abby will tell me that jazz reminds her of “old people.” By this, she and others are really trying to remind me (jokingly) that jazz is outdated. But it’s not, and especially not for those practicing the art of patient care. This art is very much an art of improvisation, whether that be dealing with an unexpectedly difficult patient, or having a medical plan change at the last minute. Last week, an article in the New York Times titled: “The Improvisational Oncologist,” set out to describe why every cancer case today seems to be “played by ear.” The author notes that every individual cancer requires individualized treatment, no doubt a nod to the fashionable move toward personalized medicine. But what is
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the connection here between cancer treatments and jazz improvisation? Even though the oncologist and jazz musician are improvising different things (one in crafting a cancer treatment and the other in making a melody line), both must do their jobs the best they can, while keeping imperfection in mind. Improvisation requires someone to be okay with imperfection, sometimes called mistakes and wrong notes, although the bebop pianist Thelonius Monk will remind us that there are “no wrong notes; some are just more right than others.” Miles Davis took this a step further, remarking: “Do not fear mistakes [in jazz], there are none.” Of course, human lives are usually never at stake when dealing with musical improvisation. The same can’t be said for cancer treatments, so for medicine, Monk’s quote seems to be the more conservative and better guide.
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The Bridge and Tunnel Crowd Photography
Christopher Marnell
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Mist
Photography
Milna Rufin, MD
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Alive You whisper to me, “I’m not dead.” For three nights You lay there Surrounded by your weeping family “No you are not dead,” I say. And it surprises you. Your mouth is dry With blood-crusted corners “Let’s clean your mouth,” I say. Smiling. You accept the green sponge soaked in mouthwash. It turns brown and your lips glisten. “Enough?” I ask. You sigh, and let out a raspy, quiet, but satisfied, “yes” I see your relief. “You are alive,” I say. And you nod, Looking around the room, As if for the first time. — Lara Wahlberg, DNP, AGPCNP-BC, ACHPN, OCN
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Peaceful Solitude Photography
MitsĂş Jane McHugh
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Small Fire Under the Pulaski Skyway
Photography
Daniel Lembo
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Untitled The girl, five, clutches her doll, in nervous scrutiny of the operating table. No, she declares, a tremor in her small voice, No, I don’t wanna. Her parents murmur, kiss her, lift her over her objections. She sobs, into a mask now full of sibilant sevoflurane slumber. The surgeons are (perhaps unexpectedly) patient, and when the girl has given up, they begin their work. ‘He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion.’ Lord, how often am I like the girl? — Brendan Barrett
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Hiding Grace
Pastel on Paper
Lara Wahlberg, DNP, AGPCNP-BC, ACHPN, OCN
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The Condition of Being a Student Colored Pencil
Olivia Sutton
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Ode to "High Yield" Peter Hung “High-Yield.” What a phrase. I don’t know how or when it was commandeered for medical education, but it’s the tag that study guides have adopted to mean “yo dawg, test questions ask this all the time so memorize it.” For us medical students with finite memories and limited study time and lots of people to impress, “high-yield” are words we cling to dearly. The Step 1 board exam is a formidable 8-hour exam during second year of medical school that broadly tests all of clinical medicine, and for six weeks this winter I did nothing but blitz-study for it. It was like trying to gulp down a high-yield firehose of facts. Forget running, forget hobbies, forget talking to people, I just tried to bury my face in the books and videos for 9-13 hours a day, 7 days a week. Here’s a sample of that dull lifestyle: I watched Pathoma, which is basically the author, Dr. Sattar, reading his review book out loud while doodling laughable diagrams and while reciting high-yield information prefaced with phrases like “this is high-yield, especially for the purposes of board examinations” and “this is a particularly high-yield concept so let me say that again: a high yield concept is that… .” Ironically, those phrases add considerable length to his 35-hour video series, but that’s okay because all us med students save time by watching it at 2x speed! We’re used to it because we also watch our regular lecture recordings at 2x… Yet, at this ridiculous words per minute, our ears instantly perk up at the mention of “high-yield.” High-yield is like a little brat holding a blowhorn trying to get attention by being annoying. As the mantra goes, if Dr. Sattar says it twice, it’s gotta be high-yield. My key study resource was First Aid, 600 pages of pure condensed facts and mnemonics. It’s considered the second year med student bible, and it freaking says high-yield on the cover. I couldn’t have finished studying without the help of “high-yield.” Reclaiming 1.5 years of minutia and holding it in surface memory is quite a stretch, but these high-yield associations structured it for me. Nonetheless, this attitude made me uneasy. High-yield for the purposes of board examinations does not equate high-yield in clinical practice because testable does not mean practical. Must I possess instant recall of the fact that von Hippel-Lindau disease’s mutation lies on chromosome 3? It’s an autosomal dominant congenital syndrome
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with an incidence of 1:36,000 that presents with slow-growing tumors. The disease is not going to catch me off guard, and the chromosomal information doesn’t affect treatment or steer conversation anyway. Yet, First Aid has a mnemonic for that! VHL = 3 letters. In our age of information supersaturation and instant digital data retrieval, we must strive to fill our brains with expected relative importance. Pretty soon the knowledge we’ll want is the nuances of exceedingly common diseases like diabetes, heart failure, and asthma. I believe that statistical likelihood is crucial knowledge for responsible doctoring. Lacking that perspective means we’d be scanning brains left and right for every headache we encounter because we learned more about glioblastomas than headaches. Yes, details are a matter of life and death in medicine, and there are some factoids that deserve remembering. They are the critical, the lethal, the ones so urgent that no time should be wasted. For instance, if someone has a one-sided headache and clenched jaw, I’ve got to remember to immediately infuse high-dose steroids. It might be an overly cautious knee-jerk reaction, but someday one of those patients will actually have temporal arteritis. Same goes with remembering hemorrhagic strokes before giving tPA, or having dantrolene ready during anesthesia, or treating alcohol overdose with thiamine and glucose. Those are the true high-yield associations, especially for the purposes of being a responsible doctor.
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Dirt Devil Photography
Lauren Antrim
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For you Tympanic membrane humming with a waltz, some fragment of song stumbling through a crack in the window. Maybe you would have thought it enough just to hear its beating, its 1-2-3. Just to be here, the lever and pull of the afternoon lifting in your hands. Cause and effect. Its happening. The elementary laws never apologize… I exist as I am, that is enough, said Whitman, but I couldn’t believe him—me blindly thinking I’d live forever, the way they do in movies. But you knew better—no wild-eyed car chase no explosions reckoned in another galaxy. Here, it was just you – enough: A fist held into the sky. Once, on a cable-access drama, I watched sisters clamoring for a great aunt’s estate: spoon sets and dollars and ugly paintings. But you knew: All goes onward and outward and to die is different from what anyone supposed, and you didn’t look for a standing ovation when you stood. You were laughing doubled over and you were sprinting for the bus, and napping and sobbing and cooking and searching for your keys and leaping outwards, eyes filled with action, urge of the world, you didn’t have to ask for it. I held you delicately as if you could break in my hands—
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Ludicrous, because of course we will live without end. In all our conversations, we are turning and nothing collapses.
I imagined you were saying you could teach me how to dance. — Stephanie Chen
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Morning Alarm Photography
Shokhi Goel
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I Saw the Pope, and He Waved at Me! Jenny Xia Two blocks down from the hospital, the fenced off streets were lined with excited New Yorkers, hoping to get a glimpse of the Pope as he makes his turn. At this street corner, the world seemed to have taken a pause with excitement. Or tried to. A psychiatrist with a stethoscope around his white coat flashed his ID at the police. “I need to get to rounds now!” He was not allowed to cross. Two lawyers in dark suits argued pressingly with the police - they needed to get to a woman who was vomiting up blood. “I have the will right here! She needs to sign it before she dies. It could be any minute!” One of them yelled as he brandished around an official looking thick booklet. They were not allowed to cross. “I have VERY important samples in this box that need to be refrigerated NOW!” pleaded a young (probably PhD) student. He was not allowed to cross. “My son is in the emergency room. How am I supposed to get there?” A well dressed young woman in her 20s screamed and cussed at the police, sweat and tears running down her make-up. “Yeah like the Pope would want me to stand here! He’s a baby, he’s 3 months old..” She was not allowed to cross. “Excuse me I..” “You can’t cross ma’am, the Pope will be here any minute.” “Yeah I... well he’s a nice guy but my brother is...” The old woman shook as she spoke. “It could be a difference of life and death but I guess...” She waited, quietly. I saw the Pope, and he waved at me.
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Crystals In Culture
Microscope Image
A.C. Antonelli I had the idea to do a series of pictures like this after accidentally splashing some medium on the upper part of a cell culture flask. The medium must have dried out and crystallized over time, and when I checked on my cells through the microscope a few days later I was surprised by this bizarre formation in the field of view. The colors, textures, and shapes of the crystal struck me as pretty beautiful, so I decided to “accidentally on purpose” splash some more media onto my culture flasks to see what kind of crystals they’d form. The subsequent pictures are all results of that. I suppose a scientist should always include materials & methods: All pictures were taken using an EVOS XL Core Cell Imaging Microscope from Life Technologies. Crystals were all formed in culture flasks of follicular lymphoma or diffuse large B cell lymphoma cells (which can be seen as blurry white spheres in the periphery of some of the pictures) in RPMI-1640 with 10% FBS and 1% penicillin / streptomycin.
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Lab, Midnight This is the way I live now. One foot in front of the other. Icebergs. Some days. But I’m no Titanic. Just a boat. A boat with a hole. I paddle. I’ve reached equal distance between Iceland and Greenland. Someone throw me a life jacket. — Brisa Palikuqi
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Phases
Photography
Lynne Rosenberg
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Lorena Lorena comes down to the playground holding a thick piece of bread, lightly sprinkled with sugar like the rest of us. You cannot play, we hurry to tell her though she knows that already because everyone in the neighborhood says her family is weird. Then she lends us her red ball so we are nice and let her play a game or two for the day with normal kids like us. When it gets dark, we sit by her and her brother Thomas and beg them to tell us one more story about the spirit of Satan, which camouflaged as a snake one day stopped their car. And then of course we ask about God. One day, Lorena’s name sits on a white piece of paper along with her picture on the front entrance of the stairwell. Her face too young for the kind of people we’re used to seeing on the front entrance of buildings. Death notice it reads. While her body sits cold somewhere under the earth with old people without teeth I imagine. Intact, except for the slimy muscle in her chest. That night I sit in my bathroom. I light a green birthday candle I stole from the drawer where my mother keeps birthday candles once our birthdays are over.
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It’s dark and I don’t even peep I light the candle and think of the snake and Satan and God and what my parents would think if they knew that because of the girl from the weird family the bottom of the candle once covered in frosting now sits on my hands like bamboo in a little lake.
— Brisa Palikuqi
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Bucolic Sight Photography
Pierre Adumeau
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New Beginnings Photography
Shokhi Goel
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A Dream Jenny Xia When I was 12, my parents sent me back to China for boarding school. They didn’t tell me then, but things were rocky between the two of them, and they were trying to work their marriage out. Without me. So I re-learned my mother tongue, and assimilated to the familiar new culture. I was there for a year. I think it was great, but I don’t remember. Fast-forward by 12 years. Life happened, my parents are divorced, I’m in medical school. I received a text from my closest friend from that Chinese boarding school, who is now married. Give me your address, she requested, I found your composition book. And so, 2 weeks later, I received a tattered old composition book from the past, full of white-out marks and red-inked corrections. One assignment caught my attention: “Write about a dream you have, and include a foreword to go along with it.” I was 12 when this happened, and I am 24 now. I have no recollection of ever writing this, and I still refuse to believe that a 12 year old did. But what I do know is, this 12 year old and I, we both have the same dream. I guess people never really change. [Composition translated verbatim from Mandarin Chinese, including the parenthesis]
Foreword The author wrote this during a period of hardship in life. Jenny Xia (born Oct. 6, 1991), is a distinguished Chinese writer, who immigrated to Canada with her family at a young age, and returned to China after obtaining her PhD abroad. Having achieved “happiness” in life, she found a composition from her middle school years, which deeply reflected her feelings. Jenny uses descriptive language to illustrate her dream at the time. (sorry, this is probably not a proper foreword)
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I have a Dream Dream, this word I followed through the years. From pilot, to doctor, to archaeologist, to biologist - I have had countless different dreams. Dream, it is still with me, but it has changed a lot. The old ones never left, but they have aged, and by my side, a newly born, freshly energetic dream has taken their places. And that is happiness. I dream of happiness, to smell the sweetness coming from its flowers, to be drunk in it, to never have to worry about leaving. I’ve walked by many gardens of happiness in the past, but could not stay, in order to continue my long journey. But now I am trapped in a dark forest, and all my hope is focused on walking out of it, and back into my garden of happiness. But dreams don’t come true themselves - it takes courage and determination. Wait for me, I believe I can, return to that garden of happiness once again. I will not ask for wealth and fame, but only need this garden to be big and beautiful, full of laughter and songs. I think, what I ask for will materialize in an aromatic garden, where flowers will nod at me, and leaves will wave. As I strive for that, I will also help others find happiness. Because I know, when I help others find theirs, I will receive a small gift too, a gift that I can’t get elsewhere. After I watch them walk into their own gardens, I will continue on, to help more others find their happiness. And then one day, when I’ve tried my best to help everyone I can help, I will arrive at my gift, a garden full of this gift. I will stop moving forward, and just stay here, lie down quietly in it all, look up at the sky, appreciate everything in the surroundings, and slowly close my eyes, becoming one with mother earth...
I don’t know who wrote this, but this 12 year old reminded me of my dream.
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Erbursaig Photography
Jordan Roberts, MD
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Penguin Island, South Shetland Islands, Antarctica
Photography
Paul Miskovitz, MD
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Inner Sound Photography
Jordan Roberts, MD
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Sunset Christopher Marnell* While in college, I was a volunteer at Connecticut Hospice in Branford, Connecticut. The hospice sat along on the shore, overlooking the Long Island Sound. Watching those sunsets along that New England coastline, I thought back to the American painter Kensett, who captured them from his studio in nearby Darien. With the falling tide arose sandbars connecting to nondescript islands dotting the foreground of many of his paintings. Hospice had one much like it. I’m told that sixty years before, the plot of land Hospice sat on was a bustling beach resort. Families would bring children to play here in the summers, their bright cries punctuating the suburban shoreline calm. Later, it would be converted into office space for a local telephone company, employing many locals. Sometime after that, the office building would morph into the sort of place that people come to find peace – to die. One afternoon with one patient, is imprinted in my memorywith Jenna. Would I be willing to sit with her outside on the terrace overlooking the shore, the hospital nurse had asked me. Of course. Together we helped her into a wheelchair, and we moved outdoors, my hand clasping the pack of cigarettes and lighter the nurse had given me on the way out. Once we reached the terrace, I tapped out a cigarette and passed it to her. It seemed strange to me, handing her what had most certainly lead to her cancer. “Could you light this for me, honey?” she said. Because they were terminal, I was told, comfort was key – and accommodation, so long as it was safe, was the rule. I flicked the lighter open and held it beneath the tip of the cigarette. Dragging a chair next to her, I sat down, our gazes surveying the Sound. Jenna spent her life working as a nurse at a nearby hospital in New Haven. She was roughly my mother’s age, but looked older, the hard creases around her mouth and wrinkles on her face the product of years of smoking a pack or more each day. She long suffered from chronic pain in her work – for most of her life, she attributed those pains to the strain of moving, lifting patients for changes and cleanings and long hours spent on her feet, attending to the needs of those on her floor. In spite that pain, her voice betrayed how much she loved being a nurse – how much she missed it. Two months ago, after helping move a patient from
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one bed to another, she felt a new pain that would not go away. Visits to the doctor confirmed what she had suspected. “I’ve watched many people die as a nurse, you know, and I don’t fear it. This is a beautiful place to do it,” she said. Not knowing how to respond, I said nothing. I learned, while talking to her, that she had grown up next to where my parents had lived right before I was born. We joked that we could have been neighbors. She then told me of how she had moved to Connecticut for work. “The beach, not far from here – we used to go there, me and my kids,” she said. She pointed east to the sandy area a few hundred yards away. We talked about her kids, and laughed, and shared more stories, and laughed more. We talked about her dreams of travel – how she longed to see the French Riviera, how she planned to go right after she retired. “I was just about to move down to Florida to live with my sister when they told me I was going to die soon,” she told me, matter-of-factly. No tears. She dropped the cigarette butt, and reached her hand reached over to mine, our eyes turning out towards the water. The tides had risen since the beginning of our afternoon, the sandbar to the rocky island now disappearing. The sun hung low in the sky, painting the clouds above with fine orange brush strokes – Kensett, again. When I returned the following Saturday, her room was empty.
*Names and details changed to preserve privacy
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Peacock Infrastructure
Photography
Peter Hung
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The Water and Rice Photography
Milna Rufin, MD
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Mountain Digital Art
Karen Chu
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Inside My Head Photography
Lauren Antrim
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American Pragmatism and the Frontal Lobes Matthew Schelke In his 1959 summary of experimental psychology, the philosopher Bertrand Russell joked “Animals observed by Americans rush about frantically until they hit upon the solution by chance. Animals observed by Germans sit still and scratch their heads until they evolve the solution out of their inner consciousness.” National character aside, the quote captures important features of mind and brain that have not been reconciled until recently. On the one hand, the brain is fundamentally an organ of behavior and the motor system is its ultimate output. Three systems are devoted to action— the motor cortex, the basal ganglia, and the cerebellum— and some of the most functionally impairing sequelae of neurologic disease involve loss of motor control. On the other hand, we have long recognized that there is an additional factor in human action above the bare motor output that furnishes behavior with intelligence, thought, and, in Russell’s words, the “inner consciousness” of the Germanic animals. We have not been able to progress far beyond Russell’s characterization of this additional element as “inner consciousness” and its relation to motor action is still opaque. Today, it is more often described as “executive function” and we have attempted to localize it to the frontal lobes. In this model, the cortex consists of three fundamental units: sensory input, motor output, and the executive function that coordinates the former two. This scheme is not novel, as executive function is the most recent descendent of a host of terms designed to capture the intelligence of human behavior: Descartes postulated a human “mind” or “soul” governing basic reflexes, the Enlightenment adulated “reason,” and Freud invented the “ego.” American pragmatism is one of the few Western philosophies to disavow this third element separate from sensation and action. The achievement of pragmatism was to integrate intelligence into sensorimotor links and to show that the most elaborate behavioral performances were continuous with the simplest motor responses. At the sensorimotor level, humans react directly to stimuli in their environment: they drink when thirsty or go inside when they feel the rain. With intelligence, humans begin to use these stimuli to alter future behavior and introduce a gap between the stimuli and the ultimate response. The sight of the oasis leads the travelers to a later drink; the storm clouds on the horizon
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induce the picnickers to leave early. In the words of John Dewey, “use of the given or finished to anticipate the consequence of processes going on is precisely what is meant by ‘ideas,’ by ‘intelligence.’” Intelligence widens these associations and increases control of future behavior by current stimuli, but operates within the same sensation-action couplings as basic reactions. In neurology, injuries of the prefrontal cortex generate dramatic changes in character and personality that are often described as loss of self. Further analysis reveals that this loss of self is actually loss of a single core function: the projection of distant goals from current stimuli. Everyone knows of Phineas Gage, who was “no longer Gage” after a railroad accident drove a tamping-rod through his prefrontal cortex. For his doctor, however, this general loss of personality centered on a specific deficit: Gage “devised many plans of future operations, which are no sooner arranged than they are abandoned in turn for others appearing more feasible.” Similarly, a patient who underwent frontal lobectomy in 1934 “expressed an ardent wish to return to work as a stockbroker and made no move to carry it out,” instead spending his time “going to the barber shop, attending moving pictures, or sitting with his family.” Goals can be abstractly expressed but they do not guide current behavior, which is reduced to the immediate sensory-motor responses that characterize the bustling American animals. Ultimately, goal-directed behavior is the core of identity and personality. We understand other people through their long-term goals and we find meaning in the world through its support or hindrance of our own goals. John Dewey differentiated between two kinds of goods in life: those that we stumble upon by accident and those that result from intelligent planning. The patient with frontal injury loses his self precisely because he loses the latter class of goods. The organization of the frontal lobe reveals that this intelligence is not exogenous to basic sensation and action but is rather an elaboration: the prefrontal cortex sits just anterior to the primary motor cortex and receives much of its input from sensory areas in the temporal lobe. Rather, Dewey’s intelligence, Descartes’ soul, and our prefrontal cortex allow action to be planned instead of blind and thereby generate the enduring goals that structure our selves.
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Lunch Break
Photography
Jenny Xia
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Currency Some glass tubes are naked while others catch the currency of our blood All silk and sides and sand, All numbers and concordance, All paired and ready to go. You must know there are three definitions of normal for this exercise -I would teach you -but somewhere in this glass I know the balance of your body. — Zhenzhen Shi
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Perspective Photography
Jason Lambden
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Heart Failure You lie beneath your starch white sheets, No figure to your frame; Today with mute monotony And tomorrow just the same. You think of your sweet daughter’s eyes, Your son stands firm and strong, The carefree flight of grandchild’s laugh – In their glory you belong. A life once lush with dreams to fill, With whom shall time compare? That folly pride so grand and full, Will it one day be rubbed bare? At half past six, the door does knock, “It’s me, the doctor’s heir. The morning is upon us, sir, Let’s not waste the time we share. “Your heart has failed, that much is sure, But we know what to do. These pills will give you one more day; You must swallow twenty-two.” At half past nine, the marching line, They mask an inward sigh, “We’re glad you’re here and not downstairs, So hello and now good-bye.” At half past lunch or half past dusk, Or sometimes not at all, He comes back bearing sullen news, “Well tonight, sir, I’m on call.”
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You say, “Young man, now you see here, This face may be quite old, But deep beneath my dusty ribs Is a soul that brims with gold. “My time’s run out, or so you say, But what I fear the most Is parting with my memories And to leave here as a ghost. “You’ll never know my gilded home With jewels from tales long passed, My black-and-white framed fighter jets, Or my garden built to last. “You’ll never glimpse the smiles and aches Of love across the seas, For all you think with your young eyes Is a wrinkled, age-stained sheet.” All this you say to deaf-felled ears, For silence has prevailed. So, tell me, Doc – don’t dare you hide – Is it your heart that has failed? — James Wang, MD
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To Coping I & II Acrylic on Canvas
Milna Rufin, MD
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Neoplasia Colored Pencil
Olivia Sutton
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Why We Fight Benet Pera-Gresely* “Cancer is a group of more than one hundred distinct diseases characterized by the uncontrolled growth of abnormal cells in the body.” This is probably the sentence that I’ve written the most in my life, especially during my PhD training and early postdoc years. I wrote it with the arrogance of one whose health has never been seriously challenged, with the vanity and insensibility that youth provides us. For many years I was proud of published research papers saying, “Unfortunately, half of patients who initially respond to therapy will relapse and eventually succumb to their disease.” I always wrote this with the cold distance that accompanies statistics, typing it as if I were the narrator of a Greek tragedy, a spectator who witnesses war through the news, a child who did not yet wonder about his own existence and death. To me, cancer was a unique case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in which cells suffer. A small-scale reflection of Darwinian evolution by natural selection. An endless source of biological questions that I could investigate to satisfy my appetite for wonder. How naïve I was! It is not that I deliberately neglected the human aspect of cancer; on the contrary, it was one of the first points I would raise any time I found myself challenged to explain my work. But now, it is clear to me that I was like a child learning how to swim on the shores of a vast ocean, who contemplates the infinite horizon without worrying for a second about the marine monsters that patiently wait beneath the surface. And one day, without warning, life dragged me to reality. A message from my sister said: “Mum’s biopsy came back positive. It’s cancer.” Wait, what? No, you are wrong, my dearest sister. I know what cancer is. I have been studying it for almost ten years, through petri dishes, through microscopes, in mice, and I read a damn lot of tedious scientific papers about it! So I know that cancer is something that happens to others. Never to the scientist, to the doctor, or to the people that they love. Only to patients—yes, unfortunate patients who need our help and enlightenment. But I was wrong. And suddenly, the kid learning to swim on the shore found himself submerged in the dark waters of the ocean, and the fascination turned to fear. Fear of being out of one’s depth, fear of
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the abyssal creatures that once captivated his interest, and that now threateningly swam in circles around his beloved family. Negative for hormone receptors but positive for Her2. Ok, Her2positive is not as terrible news anymore. Still a double-edged sword, but since the discovery of immune therapy, humankind gained some ground in the war against cancer. So, what is the plan, doc? First surgery and then cycles of AC and paclitaxel, ending the chemo with the antibody, you say? But I read about the anthracycline-induced cardiotoxicity… echocardiograms in between? I see; makes sense, I guess. But why all this adjuvant chemo; don’t we run the risk of over-treating her? … Standard procedure, you say? Well, sorry, but this is my mum we’re talking about! She is not just any patient! Or is she? And then the kid understood: it’s not about publishing papers, it’s not about satisfying one’s scientific curiosity or about getting fellowships; it’s about helping people. People like himself, his mum, or all the patients he encounters every day in the hospital, on his way to the lab. Cancer is a part of life, but it is not fair. This is an old war that, like any war, does not make distinctions.
*Benet's mother approved publication of this essay
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Equanimity
Photography
Linjia Jia
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Divine Encounter I met God on a Monday on the M15 uptown bus She was tall so tall that I wanted to climb up each vertebrae and swing from her wispy, cotton hair Her mouth, filled with long, aged teeth, uttered wisdom and soft spittle Her voice was so quiet I had to lean in close to hear and there I saw myself staring back at me from her dark sunglasses — Lara Wahlberg, DNP, AGPCNP-BC, ACHPN, OCN
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Urban Ribs
Photography
Peter Hung
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A Body to a Student A stare to a face A clock at pause-Without a tock, A dearth of cause We stare back--and then we grow cold Your eyes transfixed Like cheek to glass We reflect. We get chills feel sick The stillness, it feels thick You wait while we wait Not a beat, But no despair Warmth is still there In a glance tears well And we tear And you stare A second glance, Not quite the rush. No not at all It gets better We gather, There’s something there The mesh of darkness unfolds Therein lies so sweet Your warmth We huddle to feel it To think what was Who you were or who we are and where we’ll be There’s something to be said It beats the cold It’s left unsaid We thank you. — Andrew Ebanks
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Multimedia
This year, Ascensus accepted multimedia submissions in an effort to further explore the ways in which different art can make us question ourselves and our world. You can experience these interactive multimedia pieces yourself by visiting the provided URL, or by scanning the Quick Response (QR) code with a QR code scanner, available as an app on most phones. We hope you enjoy these pieces!
Choreography Mitali Kini I choreographed this piece to Ariana Grande's "Problem" a few years ago as my first professional concept video. It was my first exposure to Iggy Azalea, whose rap influence in the song was a fascinating contrast to Ariana's light tone. I had originally taught the choreography in a summer workshop in Boston, trying to portray the fun summer vibe the song evokes. The style is a little different from my usual high-energy hiphop choreography, but it was a fantastic opportunity to share with my fellow Boston dance teammates who also appear in the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFlm2pQo6X0
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Electronic Compositions Davinder Sandhu I make music as a way to document my feelings. To get all pseudoscientific, extracting my feelings is a rigorous process that can take upwards of several months to complete. After I finish a piece, I listen, put it away for a week, and listen again, to make sure I have fully crystallized what I wanted to convey. These compositions are instances when I was really proud of what came out of the extraction process.
Missing Pieces
Redux
https://soundcloud.com/davinderholyfield/05missing-pieces
Windows to the Soul
https://soundcloud.com/davinderholyfield/ davinder-holyfield-redux_v2demo
https://soundcloud.com/davinderholyfield/ davinder-holyfield-windows-to-the-soul
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Voice Lisa Zhang For Ascensus, I have chosen three small audio clips recorded in between study sessions while in the privacy of my room. I sought to embody a variety of different styles and moods, with one clip sampling an a cappella version of a classic jazz tune, another with a ukulele accompaniment, and the last a soprano choral part of a beloved folk song. It is my hope that these study breaks represent the simplicity of their nature while still embodying the emotional core that exists even in a simple five minute crooning session. Study Break 1
Study Break 2
https://soundcloud.com/ascensus-wcmc/lisazhang-study-break-1
Study Break 3
https://soundcloud.com/ascensus-wcmc/lisazhang-study-break-2
https://soundcloud.com/ascensus-wcmc/lisazhang-study-break-3
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Ascensus Volume V Ascensus is Weill Cornell Medicine's annual journal of the arts and humanities. It was founded by a group of medical students in 2011 to provide a space for students to reflect on the practice of medicine. Since then, it has grown to feature work from all members of the Weill Cornell community, including faculty, house staff, medical students, graduate students, nurses, social workers, and more. Over the past four years, Ascensus has featured rich visual and written work by many members of the Weill Cornell community. The editorial team takes pride in the quality and diversity of the work showcased each year and hopes to continue serving the community through this publication for many years to come. We believe that this journal provides an important voice for members in our community as we come in contact with patients and their stories, and think of our own. The mission of Ascensus is to bridge humanities and medicine through publishing an annual journal, along with holding lectures and other events. We would like to encourage all members of the community to continue creating artistic pieces and reflections on medicine and the human experience. We look forward to receiving submissions for next year’s journal! Please reach out to us at wcmc.lit@gmail.com with submissions or questions. You can also find more information on our website (wcmc-ascensus.com) or through our facebook page (www. facebook.com/WCMCascensus). Lastly, we would like to thank our faculty advisors, Dr. Susan Ball and Dr. Randi Diamond. Ascensus is published with the support of Weill Cornell’s Office of Academic Affairs and the Liz Claiborne Center for Humanism in Medicine.