Integrative Medicine Commons^™

Compassionate Touch, Riddhi Daftary, Jessfor Baugh

Akesis

Artist Alex Rheault approached the College of Dental Medicine in the fall of 2015 about collaborating for UNE Interprofessional Art Exhibition: Wonder. Rheault’s idea was to create an artwork informed by CDM faculty and students that would explore the fear and anxiety many people associate with dental care. The artist connected with students Jessfor Baugh and Riddhi Daftary. Through meetings emphasizing free-form discussion—with Rheault often drawing as a part of the idea exchange—an interdisciplinary collaboration was born.

Baugh and Daftary identified five stages associated with anxious and fearful dental patients: Listen to Identify, Validation, Everyone has a Story, …

Facets Of Pain, Samantha J. Shepard

Akesis

Facets of Pain

By Samantha Shepard

This painting is a depiction of the emotions evoked by my journey with chronic pain. In the fall of 2009, I experienced an injury leaving me disabled for four years, I lost many things that day including my so-called identity as a young able bodied person. Though my journey with chronic pain was arduous, and at times, seemed endless, I continued to walk along my path to recovery, and today I am a successful premedical student at the University of New England working to pursue an education in osteopathy.

I often describe chronic pain …

Lifting Others, Kevin G. Budziszewski

Akesis

Medicine is full of paradoxes. As a species, we often need to take care of ourselves before we can take care of others. As humans, we become more energetic by the energy-intensive process of exercise. As physicians, we elevate ourselves by lifting others. Through all of the unexpected worries and complications that crop up in life – finances, illness, and indeed an understanding of our own mortality – it is through these three paradoxes of self-care that we survive the complications that life throws at us.

During my first year of medical school, I have grown to understand how important …

Making A Mountain Of A Mole Hill, Nihit N. Mehta

Akesis

There are times when students develop a certain amount of tunnel vision, which focuses their vision at the problem in front, making the proverbial "mountain out of a molehill.”

(Least) Complicated, Masina G. Wright

Akesis

The personal has always been a microcosm of the political.

Dear Mabel (Please Allow Me To Inhabit Your Pain Awhile), Jack C. Lewis

Akesis

This started as a note that I would have sent a patient I treated while working as a paramedic in Central Maine. Despite best intentions in caring for patients, we don't always walk away having "won." The practice of medicine is difficult for everyone, but it is necessarily a process and life-long endeavor.

Theoria, Sanjay Rau, Ryan Kollar

Akesis

I heal through meditation.

Upon turning 13 years old, I began the practice of meditation under the tutelage of Hindu priests in Chennai, India. The expectation of this experience was to learn to clear out all distractions, focus intently on breathing and recite certain passages of Scripture.

At the time, meditation involved sitting cross-legged and reciting certain phrases 1008 times. The hot, muggy weather and mosquitos that plagued summers in Chennai made this task even harder. While difficult and seemingly purposeless at first, I began to appreciate and better understand the power that meditative practices provided in the following summer …

Standstill, Ianna Hondros-Mccarthy

Akesis

This is a short story about a girl getting in touch with life at a concert.

I Lost You To What Eludes Me, Akesis Anonymous Author

Akesis

I wrote this in memory of someone I lost in my life to cancer. My own healing process is still ongoing, and his loss was one major reason I decided to go into medicine. Hopefully through my journey in medicine I can help heal others, and in the process, find my own healing.

Helpless In Healing, Stephanie Braunthal

Akesis

Inspired by a frustrating patient interaction, this piece delves into the the role of the physician-patient relationship throughout the healing process.

From Falx To Fingertips: An Exercise In Mind-Body Awareness Through Acupuncture, Aye Mon Win

Akesis

This is a subjective account of an acupuncture treatment that includes a brief scientific exploration of its mechanisms of action. Additionally, connections are made between acupuncture and osteopathic manual manipulation, yoga, and meditation.

Flow, Jenifer Van Deusen

Akesis

Within us and around us flows the power to heal ~ open through song, image, poetry & breath.

Bones, Polyxeni Gudis

Akesis

I heal in the absence of words with the quiet scratching of charcoal on paper, and with the familiar texture of my thumb blending and erasing shadows with dust. I push my boundaries with new mediums, like watercolors. I experiment often and usually fail. I put my anger into harsh lines, I choose colors based on an emotion and I fill a canvas with the things I cannot say. I heal in brush strokes and in the contours of a piece that says what I want it to say without having to ever say a word.

Medium: Charcoal and pen …

Written On By Experience, Akesis Anonymous Author

Akesis

This poem is about a conversation I had with a friend about beginnings, and how any given experience has no intrinsic good or bad qualities, but rather holds whatever we imbibe it with.

What Is My Beginning?, Stephanie Braunthal

Akesis

I find that when we ask about beginnings, we are really asking about the present. How did a person come to be who he or she is today? As I try to answer this question about myself, I am finding it easier to express myself in diagrams (pen on scratch paper) than in words. Perhaps this is a product of being a medical student; or perhaps it is because beginnings are a complex amalgam of static forces and fluid experiences that cannot be expressed linearly through prose...Enjoy!

To Care Is To Treat, Himanshu Malhotra

Akesis

To Care is to Treat is a reflection of a few experiences from my second and third year that have inspired me to become a palliative care physician.

The Narrative Of My Childhood, Nihit N. Mehta

Akesis

I was a weak child from early on, never able to run or play as much as the other kids in my block. Each month I'd visit doctors, trying my best to recover from common colds and coughs. Luckily, all this changed as I matured and in a way I almost began living a "normal life".

However, when it came to deciding what I wanted to be as an adult, I remembered the sick kid I was and how my doctors were always there for me, helping me "find health." This made me realize that I too, could someday be …

The Descent Down The Step One Rabbit Hole, Katelyn A. Hanson

Akesis

At the start of my second year of medical school I was ecstatic to move away from the study of the normal, healthy human body and to begin to immerse myself in the complex mechanisms behind the pathophysiology of disease. I drew this illustration to connect aspects of my personality with the aspects of medicine I was most excited about exploring deeper. This image was drawn with permanent markers on the cover of a binder dedicated solely to preparing for the first part of the medical licensing exam; I looked at this drawing every day as I drove myself closer …

Laurie's Greenhouse, Elizabeth G. Mcandrew, Kelsey Albert

Akesis

Pottery by: Elizabeth McAndrew

Photography by: Kelsey Albert and Elizabeth McAndrew

Modeling: Laurie the Bird

Materials: Wheel thrown pottery - Cone 10 white clay and dipped glaze (cobalt blue and mossy green). Philodendron Heartleaf Plant. Laurie is a parrotlet, which is the second smallest species of parrot. Photo editing was done directly on the iPhone photo application.

This photo represents beginnings because it includes many elements of my life that I drew toward me in the year that I began my medical career. Living alone for the first time, I bought plants so that I wasn't the only living thing …

Beginnings, Nehal J. Shah

Akesis

The beginning of one thing signifies the end of another – for one to start, another must end. With that said, under karmic and Hindu belief, we are constantly in a cycle of beginnings, and endings, until we achieve “moksha” – true oneness with God. Furthermore, within each cycle, there are four stages of life that one hopes to go through, carrying out the ideal goals and progress of each existence. Therefore, this life ultimately is a new beginning to an old soul – a soul that has traveled and journeyed upon eons of time to find happiness, spirituality, completeness …

Beginnings: A Letter From The Editors, Akesis Editors

Akesis

The editors would like to welcome you to the inaugural issue of Akesis.