When Medicine Gets Personal: 5 Narratives That Moved Us This Year

"For nearly 20 years, I was living in the throes of an opioid addiction on the streets of New York City. Somewhere along the line, someone saw in me what I couldn't. When I finally went into long-term treatment at Project Return in the Bronx — unfortunately no longer in operation — my counselor, a woman named Alvera, told me, 'You are a human being who is loved, and until you learn to love yourself, I will love you.' She and many others built me up to a place where I felt confident enough to go on and maintain my sobriety at whatever length I had to.

I’ve never forgotten her, and I try to be an Alvera to the people who come to see me."

"My aunt was such a fighter. Throughout her life, she was able to work, travel, and see the world. Before she passed, she was on oxygen 24/7. She had lost eyesight in both of her eyes. She had hip surgery. She would get a common cold and be hospitalized for two weeks. And then she'd get leg sores from being bedridden for so long…

As tough as it was for her, just her faith and her fight throughout her journey was definitely inspiration for Devin and me. Not only to do the work in sickle cell, but just continue to live our lives and not take things for granted and be grateful."

"What ended up working really well for our staff at Boston Medical Center was the buddy system. The buddy system is a model adopted from the military field: "the battle buddy system." We aimed to get workers in the crisis settings to have a daily buddy (a peer/co-worker) with whom they could check in with throughout or at the end of the day to share, if desired, their experience in the high-stress work environment. Rev. Jennie Gould, PhD, BCC, director of Clinical Pastoral Education, was often my buddy, and having her there to talk about the kinds of traumatic and challenging encounters we each had was relieving. It tackled the sense of loneliness and disconnect that we can feel being alone with traumatic encounters and created a human connection with someone who is experiencing the crisis in the same setting.

Overall, it allowed frontline workers to lean on each other while they sift through the emotionally and mentally taxing realities of crisis intervention work."

"My experience with Section 35 is deeply personal. I had to petition for a Section 35 commitment for my own father after his issues with mental health and substance use grew out of control. As a family, we faced the stigma of sending their loved one into captivity against their will, a stigma faced by others in the African American community who want to get help for their family.

Filing that petition for my father was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. In the courtroom, I remember looking at him as he experienced shame, bewilderment, and nothingness at the same time, knowing involuntary commitment to prison was not the answer. He was supposed to be there for treatment, but instead, my father, a 65-year-old Army veteran, lived in a cell under the supervision of prison guards. He even had to spend a large piece of his Social Security check to make expensive phone calls. He was not treated like a patient. He was treated like he was guilty of a crime. Being treated that way did not help him. He relapsed in two days."

 “Emergency medical services (EMS) is interesting because you have one foot in the public safety (fire & police) realm, and the other foot in the healthcare system. Not only do we as emergency medical technicians (EMTs) bring people to the emergency department, but we transfer people off admission floors, we take people to dialysis, we're in skilled-nursing facilities, in patients' homes — we're everywhere. We have a bird's eye view, and through that I saw the little ways we made life harder or easier for the people we encountered.”