The Telling
I recall my father sitting on a small stool in the kitchen / dialing friends and family, one by one, rippling outward
Poetry
Fellow Physician Contributing Writer
Rhode Island Hospital/Brown University
Becky is currently a fellow in pediatric hematology/oncology at Hasbro Children’s Hospital/Brown University in Providence, RI. She completed her residency in pediatrics and fellowship in hospice & palliative medicine at the same institution. She received her BA and MPH from Dartmouth College and her MD from Stony Brook University School of Medicine. Her work has been published in Pediatrics, Annals of Internal Medicine, Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, and The Huffington Post, as well as on the blogs Kevin, MD and Mothers in Medicine. Her personal blog is entitled The Growth Curve (www.thegrowthc.com). She lives in Rhode Island with her husband and two sons.
No Insurance
my patient does not have insurance / he asks me to address his concerns
Healing in Relationship Lies
Illness lies hidden in our ways / Influenced by the unconscious gaze.
T-Cell
“One” / It read. / Unassuming in black and white
A Second Home (2019)
Scared and frightened, we came in as interns / We had the knowledge, but we needed direction
I Seize
I seize. / With emotion, not motor.
Pondering the Human Experience: A Quartet of Poems
To help a soul / To heal a wound / To hold a hand / To walk again
A Story of Artistic Reclamation (2019)
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.
My Allegiance
Collide, Rip, Shred / Microthrombi ahead / Schistocytes I discover
Poodle Blue
Like most times on call, the day had been busy. / I’d been running in circles, my head in a tizzy.
Mastectomy Shadows
I used to joke that after having my twin girls, my breasts no longer belonged to me. / Forget about possession, let’s talk about existence.
Atrophied Dreams
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
Resident Physician Contributing Writer
Cambridge Health Alliance
Originally from Madison, Connecticut, I got to experience a dynamic college experience as a Literature major at American University in Washington D.C. I served as an editor for BleakHouse Publishing, a press dedicated to using the arts to showcase the humanity overlooked in the incarcerated population. As a volunteer in a pediatric cancer ward, I was intrigued by the sentiments of cancer patients and their caregivers, whose descriptions of isolation in the hospital echoed the loss of identity and entrapment within a prison cell. From this experience, I was fortunate to publish an original book of poetry, Enclosures: Reflections from the Prison Cell and the Hospital Bed, taking on the voices of those imprisoned in the justice system and in the shackles of illness. I returned to my home state to attend the University of Connecticut School of Medicine, and delved into my passion for the medical humanities through the Arnold P. Gold Humanism Honor Society, research in cancer screening and immunotherapy, and serving the homeless population of Hartford as a member of the Board of our school-run medical clinic. I’m honored to be a third year resident in Internal Medicine at Cambridge Health Alliance in Cambridge, MA and to work at an institution that values medicine as an avenue to promote social justice.