Precious
Fictionalized account of a tender relationship, Sita the life-long companion and carer of her frail husband
Let Go
A lyrical interpretation of patients’ feelings of being misunderstood and aching to be free
Desert Rose
An encounter with a young girl in Zimbabwe is pivotal in this poet’s choice of medicine as a career
A Note On Haiku
Imaginative, poetic presentations of medical conditions
Asthma
A lyrical interpretation of respiratory challenges
The Twilight Years
Poignant narrative about a widow’s first day as a resident in a care home
Things were rubbish until Josie came to love me
The pivotal role of dogs as companions for those living with disability
Crisis-Point
A home-visit to elderly man provides an unexpected chink of connection through spirituality
Mark
A wheel-chair user’s lived experience is ignored by her GP while a man-to-man chat ensues with her companion
Depression
A personal account of depression – family and peer response and stigma around revealing mental health issues
Paint my Canvas
A student chooses to minutely absorb and process a deeply shared patient experience around terminal illness using poetry as method of learning from this privileged gift
An Excerpt From The Diary Of A Patient
Personal account of patient as undisclosed medic hearing her devastating diagnosis unwittingly revealed in clinical shorthand
The Constant Carer
An insight into caring within marriage
False Hope
The complexities of diagnosis and prognosis following a sudden bereavement
Distance
Poignant musings about the student’s younger sister and potentially diminishing bonds
Some Kind of Miracle
Narrative from the perspective of a child about her terminally-ill mother coming home from hospital for Xmas, then remaining in remission for several years
I Can Only Hope
The desire to maintain heart-felt life-values across time
Unpredictable
‘There will always be shadows on the land ..’ the dynamic balance between health and illness
My First Patient
Soldier confronted by desperate parents giving his water bottle to their child
The Truth
After visiting a children’s cancer-ward in Malaysia – the author speculates about ‘the gateway between life and death’
My Experience of the Dissection Room
A searingly honest account of a student’s attempts to make the transition from individuals to educational cadavers
Life in the Glasshouse
A terminally ill patient bodily connected to various machinery processes being on the threshold between life and death
Homonymous Hemianopia
Humorous poem about the impact of a stroke and the daily challenges of living with only seeing half of your immediate environment
Trapped
Prose from the viewpoint of young girl with her mother in consultation -unable to get word in edgewise
Disabled Mind
A teenager with a cleanliness phobia, perpetual hand-cleaning, turns inwards
Old Addicts
Poem about the precariousness of drug addiction
Postnatal Depression
Powerful image and poem describing the agonizing physical and emotional impact of a traumatic childbirth
It’s all in the genes
A family’s challenges around the acceptance and perceptions of their daughter living with Downs Syndrome
No one
A poetic processing of living with OCD
Face Value
Prose about a young medic feeling he had connected with a patient yet finding her case-notes revealed a very different story
Lady With Pink Hair
Young mother tragically contracting severe neurological condition during clinical treatment and deteriorating rapidly
Beyond Appearances
A student’s observation of a surgeon establishing clinical boundaries
How Can I Ever Forgive Myself?
Prose about a patient’s unbearable grief and guilt and a doctor’s support
Real Symptoms
A challenging consultation with a dissatisfied, distraught patient
Waking
Poignant narrative about a wife waking up next to frail and incapacitated husband
The Patient
A bleak experience visiting a hospitalized friend – the complexities of mental health care
Pants
Poem about ‘strange privileges’ of doctors from the banal to the poignant clinical episodes
David
Challenging patient in residential care and student’s sense of failure in everyday interactions
New Glasses
Tough recognition of a grandparent’s emotional abuse, and perspectives around death and dying
Chasing the Bismarck
A narrative inspired by a sailor-patient’s adventures: then creative writing in medicine under scrutiny
Pandora’s Box
Auto-immune disorder wreaks emotional havoc for both the clinician-patient and his family
I am Like an Onion
Meeting an elderly lady with depression – haunted by her horrific childhood experiences in wartime Germany