2023 Hope Babette Tang Humanism in Healthcare Essay Contest: Second-Place Medical Student Essay: I See You

“I see you,” I yearn to exclaim. “Do you see me?” Relationship is exchange. A fluidity of my spirit, my history, my ancestors mingling with yours. Gifting, as in relationship, carries a connotation of commitment. I am committed to you—to seeing you. “They aren’t talking to anyone.” This is frequently the first piece of information I am given about my Indigenous patients. “Difficult to engage,” the progress note reads. I’ve only been on the wards one year, but this is already the motif covering these patient’s charts. “Speak up,” they challenge them. “Tell me what happened.” How can they ask this in the context of yet another institution that has stolen everything? This building and its contents are complicit in the linguicide of sacred tongues. “têniki” I say instead. His countenance blossoms with giddy surprise. “têniki?! You’re Cree?” My heart pounds in the dance now livened. My features are fair like my mother’s, but I proudly tell him, “No, I’m Saulteaux … chi miigwetch.” “I’m Saulteaux,” he says as his eyes glisten. They smile in a hue of deep walnut brown, complimenting his slanted grin. “chi miigwetch,” I firmly press in earnest, hoping my words will extend like a warm hand and imprint on his heart. From then on, our exchanges in the adult psychiatric ward would involve more laughter, less pacing, deeper conversation. He knows. He sees me. He knows I know. That I know of the pain: emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual. It is not merely the sum of the DSM-5 criteria for schizophrenia or methamphetamine use disorder that plagues him. No, when I see his pain, I see the tan skin that also covers my father, simultaneously exposing him. When I see his pain, I see intergenerational trauma. I picture my loved one—a frightened small girl, fearful for her life. She will begin to shake, as I now do, and will never stop. Was there a particular epigenetic switch that flipped in them that remains flipped in us? The mind must be infinitely more complicated than that. Still, I can see the switch’s strand in the mess of a web that forever engulfs us as humans. Bio-psycho-social model, they stress in medical school. Three steps to achieving wellness for our patients. Yet wellness is also infinitely more complicated. “Speak up,” they demand, annoyed now. “Why won’t they answer?” They don’t see it, the resilience in him. To me, it is equally as clear as the pain I see. I’m in awe of the tragically beautiful determinedness that radiates from him. “aniin,” I will softly extend instead. My words will float through the air like the medicinal smoke of sage rises. I see you. I see you in all your pain but also in your mountainous strength. I see the endurance of your ancestors now manifest in your willful disposition toward recovery. I see you. Do you see me? The words will branch forward like the vines of Sky Woman’s strawberries once dove toward the earth. When I started my scientific undergraduate degree, I gently advised myself that humanities and arts would become a side gig—music on the weekends, fictional worlds over the holidays. My scientific aptitudes would be the key to my career as a physician. Obviously. Everybody knew this. Live, breathe, and sleep science. I did that. Then one day, science became medicine and medicine healing. When I first met psychiatry, truly and earnestly shook the hand of the vocation that had been beckoning to me, it began to click. Psychiatry was going to require all of me. It would require the resilience instilled in me by my ancestors. “You are a bridge,” my relatives encouraged me. “Our ancestors prayed that you would one day be here.” It would require sitting in the sharp and radiating pain of piano’s A-minor chord reverberating within me. It would require embracing the briefest apnea I experience at the end of immersion within a beautiful novel. It would require my creative brain composed of clay to join in concert with my methodical brain of steadfast stone. To see the human body as more than machine. Yes, the heart is a pump, and our neurons entangle one another in electrical circuits. Medicine, however, transcends the physiological being. What are bones without aspirations? What is the brain without dreaming? There must be a reason we experience the sound waves of “Good morning,” from a loved one as a soft symphony of belonging. Or that we experience the light waves of the setting sun as engrossing theater, alive with flaming tongues of fire. We are all connected. To one another. To creation and Creator. The Great Mystery. giche manidoo. This ancient truth long predates modern medicine with its fMRI scanners and histopathology tirelessly trying to unlock the puzzle of human consciousness. So “aniin,” my brother. My friend. My kindred spirit. I see you. Do you see me?2023 Hope Babette Tang Humanism in Healthcare Essay Contest The Arnold P. Gold Foundation holds an annual essay contest to encourage medical and nursing students to reflect on their experiences and engage in narrative writing. The contest began in 1999 open to medical students and expanded in 2018 to include nursing students. Students are asked to respond to a specific prompt in a 1,000-word essay. For the 2023 contest, students were asked to use the following quote as inspiration to illuminate how the human connection can make a meaningful difference in care. “I want to give you something, or I want to take something from you. But I want to feel the exchange, the warm hand on the shoulder, the song coming out and the ear holding onto it.” —Excerpt from the poem “How Far Away We Are” by Ada Limón, U.S. Poet Laureate More than 530 essays were submitted. A distinguished panel of judges, including esteemed healthcare professionals and notable authors, reviewed the submissions. Three winning essays from medical students and three winning essays from nursing students were selected, along with 11 honorable mentions. Academic Medicine partners with the Arnold P. Gold Foundation to publish selected essays, which exemplify the journal’s commitment to the value of humanism in healthcare. The winning essays will be published in consecutive issues of Academic Medicine and the Journal of Professional Nursing in the fall/winter of 2023. The contest is named for Hope Babette Tang-Goodwin, MD, who was an assistant professor of pediatrics and an exemplar of humanism in healthcare. Her approach to medicine combined a boundless enthusiasm for her work, intellectual rigor, and deep compassion for her patients. The Arnold P. Gold Foundation is a nonprofit organization that champions humanism in healthcare, defined as compassionate, collaborative, and scientifically excellent care. This Gold standard of care embraces all and targets barriers to such care. The Gold Foundation empowers experts, learners, and leaders to together create systems and cultures that support humanistic care for all. Learn more at www.gold-foundation.org.

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