Contributing Writer
University of Florida
Melissa went to medical school at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso. She is currently a PGY-1 at the University of Florida Pediatrics Residency Program. She is not quite sure where she will end up after residency but has thought a lot about pursuing fellowship training in infectious disease. In her spare time, Melissa enjoys going to local parks and farmer’s markets with her husband and baby. She also enjoys reading sci-fi, writing letters to her awesome pen pal (her 8-year-old nephew), and Facetiming friends and family.
For the baby who’s been battered and bruised and for the adolescent already multiple times abused. For the children whose lives are so full of pain that they think their days are lived in vain. For parents overwhelmed with grief over a precious life that was far too brief. For the siblings who grow up too soon, as they watch how their loved ones are consumed. For the gaping hole that can never be filled, …
Hello, come in, / and welcome to peds clinic! / My attention is on you / for the next 20 minutes.
Your mom gets tetanus (Tdap) / before you’re born, / Plus COVID and flu / are the norm.
When was it that the newest woke thing to do was to ask for pronouns? In the queer communities in which I have been a member, it has been fairly common parlance to do so — but in regular life, I can’t place when it happened.
“Every one of these patients should terrify you,” the fellow said. I thought he was just being dramatic.
Thinking back to January 2020, I recalled the whispers throughout the hospital of the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the United States, mere minutes from my home institution. Aside from my perspective as a pediatrician, I was also forced to confront my own anxieties regarding exposure to this virus as an adult living with repaired congenital heart disease.
They said to stop compressions. We all agreed. This baby had no life when she was born, and we had fought for twenty whole minutes with our arsenal of medicine to give her life.
My senior and I had been on night float together for a few weeks. That night, the dimmed lights of the hospital corridors spilled into the workroom which was lit only by my computer screen, but that was enough. Despite the few months that I had been there as an intern, I could describe each inch of this room with my eyes closed.
It was a busy Friday afternoon in the pediatric intensive care unit. The prior evening, he began having profuse lower gastrointestinal bleeding necessitating urgent transfer to the intensive care unit.
Here I am, come and get me! A playful provocation we have all used with much more than literal meaning as a mantra. But going through the rigors, chills and metaphorical bacteremia of medical education, I lost some of the pieces that made me confident to be myself.
I waited for nine months to meet you. / I know that one night I loved a woman and then you, a blackberry of cells, found your place in her fertile garden and you grew there
“Good morning, I’m Dr. Watt and I’m going to be taking care of you today.”
Peer Reviewer Emeritus
University of Tennessee Health Science Center
Melanie is a PGY-1 resident in internal medicine-pediatrics at the University of Tennessee in Memphis. She is a proud alumnus of Louisiana State University and LSU Health Shreveport School of Medicine, and yes, she does bleed purple and gold.
