{"id":139,"date":"2021-10-27T15:15:13","date_gmt":"2021-10-27T14:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/medicalhumanities\/?page_id=139"},"modified":"2021-12-15T16:03:47","modified_gmt":"2021-12-15T16:03:47","slug":"creative-writing","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/medicalhumanities\/creative-writing\/","title":{"rendered":"Creative Writing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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“I read George Eliot\u2019s Middlemarch<\/em> and was thrilled to find masses of medical humanities insight through the trials and tribulations of Dr Tertius Lydgate. George Eliot herself was not a medic and yet with Lydgate\u2019s story, the story of a rural Georgian physician, she expressed so much that was human and identifiable \u2013 even to a twenty-first century nurse such as myself. Sharing this kind of insight and enthusiasm for writing and literature, and combining it with my own clinical experience, is something which is a real pleasure that has been rewarded with great engagement. My overall aim being, that in stimulating the students\u2019 thoughts on what it is to be human and a doctor, their medical careers might fare a little more easily than that of poor Dr Lydgate.”<\/sub><\/p>Simon Holliday, Creative Writing Tutor<\/sub><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Ward Round<\/strong>\n  \n The bike is parked in its usual spot:\n Just in from the left, not so close to pathology but by the tree.\n By the tree, russet-gold in Autumn, burgundy in Spring.\n The spokes glisten, gleam, shine in the light of the breaking dawn.\n I turn to see. \n  \n Orange, burning orange it rises, infatuating.\n Deep, piercing rays streak across the heavens\n The harbinger kisses the night sky and at the confluence \n It melts into day.\n  \n The city dons its tranquil, luminous shawl, \n With its towers, its homes, its spires and its domes\n Lying bright and glittering beneath the smokeless sky.\n  \n And for a moment or two,\n Just for a moment or two, \n I bask.\n  \n Now turn, turn to the entrance, \n The portal to my world, to my work.\n It welcomes me with open doors\n As it does each morning.\n  \n As it does each \u2018morning!\u2019\n Says Emmanuel the cleaner\n A lovely bloke as I am reminded, apparently not long here \u2013 \n He recounts the intricacies of his journey\n \u2018No worries mate, that speed cam\u2019s never on\u2019.\n  \n Now upstairs, \n And now halfway up the stairs \u2018Sarah!\u2019\n Her mum has improved, she is managing well - \n \u2018It\u2019s all one can do in the face of it\u2019 \n Ofcourseofcourse, lots of love to her.\n  \n \u2018Jericho Ward\u2019 my sign reads, just to open the door and\n \u2018He-llo!\u2019 carries across the linoleum\n Lola\u2019s voice like a bell as ever\n \u2018Not so bad my dear, not so bad\u2019\n A folder of notes stuffed into my hands.\n  \n I pore over these runes on the walk to the office and\n \u2018Who needs some tea just now?\u2019\n I pour over these runes in the office, surrounded by the family\n A catch-up with Dan \n A brief chat with Natalie.\n  \n Throughout these corridors, these sterile, messy, \n Charming, familiar corridors\n I walk and I greet some more. \n Feeling the energy, and the connection -  \n Palpable, yet invisible.\n  \n The handover meeting draws to a close.\n My ward round ends,\n And my Ward Round begins.\n  \n  - Adam Rimmer -<\/em> <\/pre>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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INTERMISSION<\/strong>\n Dear Dismembered Heart,\n Do you mind awfully when we come to stare?\n Would you still have agreed to end up there?\n When you signed up for this were you made aware?\n Fat fingers through your Great Vessels.\n \nI wonder whose love you used to hold\n I wonder what secrets you left untold\n I wonder how it felt when your blood ran cold\n Loose thread beneath your Ascending Arch.\n\n It hardly seems fair I get to admire your hue\n In awe of your beauty and blemishes too\n Marvel at where you made rich blood from blue\n Sticky notes in your Upper Chambers.\n\n Please know that whilst my hands are clumsy\n I promise always to think of you tenderly\n To honour you in my own imperfect memory\n A whispered prayer at night.\n \nFIRST, DO NO HARM<\/strong>\n Fresh faced, unsuspecting, like children at role-play\n Naive but pretentious we march all through the night\n Hoping to somehow diagnose it away\n We cannulate through hesitant, sleep-starved sight.\n John mightn\u2019t see tomorrow. Did Ally get the right meds?\n Other names jostle in long lists, anxiously awaiting care\n Only to find \"sorry love, we haven't anymore beds\n Our hands are tied you see, goodbye, please do hang in there.\u201d\n\n Bleep! BLEEP! Quick, pager! \u2013 An ecstasy of fumbling\n Superhero cape and pants a-ready\n Left through the corridor, skidding, stumbling\n Each fading minute his pulse more unsteady. \u2014\n My first corpse: what if I told you he was first of many?\n God rest the souls lost to my blundering.\n\n But this is no time for inefficient self-pity,\n Tears on a doctor are most unbecoming.\n \nIf in some smothering dreams, you too could pace\n The waiting lounge of the soon to be departed,\n And observe the quiet anguish behind each face,\n Knowing this mess might have been avoided;\n If you were there when we snatched the wrong kidney\n\n That time we stuck a tube through a man\u2019s lung\n When we stole from the dying their last breath of dignity\n With all the grim grace of a criminal hung, \u2014\n My friend perhaps you would not tell with such high zest\n clinging to remnants of imagined glory\n That tired old lie: Primum non nocere.\n\n - Ruqayyah Karim -<\/em><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
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“I read George Eliot\u2019s Middlemarch and was thrilled to find masses of medical humanities insight through the trials and tribulations of Dr Tertius Lydgate. George Eliot herself was not a medic and yet with Lydgate\u2019s story, the story of a rural Georgian physician, she expressed so much that was human and identifiable \u2013 even to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5013,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-templates\/full-width-page.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-139","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/medicalhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/medicalhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/medicalhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/medicalhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5013"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/medicalhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/medicalhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":766,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/medicalhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/139\/revisions\/766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/medicalhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}