Author Archives: Rhodes Hambrick

A little over a week ago, I went for a walk near sunset with my friend Mohsin, a fellow third-year resident and one of my closest confidantes in the program. We walked around Jamaica Pond, a gorgeous water feature in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston, reflecting on our time in residency and the seemingContinue reading “What Right Do I Have to Be Happy?”

When reviewing the chart for a patient with a complex diagnosis or constellation of diagnoses, it is not uncommon to see, in the section labeled “Past Medical History”, a remark that the patient has “failed” a trial of other interventions. A patient with pain failed a trial of NSAIDs. A patient with Crohn disease failedContinue reading “Treatments Fail Patients, Patients Don’t Fail Treatments”

February 14, 2021 Over the past few weeks, as winter drags on and new COVID strains proliferate, I’ve spent more of my free time engaged in language learning, specifically Spanish and French. The former is more of a practicality, considering after years of classes in school and a summer working en un laboratorio de microbiologíaContinue reading “Language Learning and Habit Hobbling”

February 13, 2021 The following work was drafted as part of a writing retreat with my residency program, and was loosely in response to the following prompts: In the words of Andrew Solomon, “Any serious illness is a medical event, but it is lived in narrative terms.” Write about a physical space in the hospital.Continue reading “The Garden”

February 9, 2021 Late in medical school, I remember reading on several occasions that increased levels of social media use have been shown to correlate with adverse mood symptoms – chiefly anxiety and depression – in adolescents, with female-identifying youth experiencing stronger and more deleterious effects from prolonged use of social media. At the time,Continue reading “Antisocial Media”

February 4, 2021 I try to have patience when parents hesitate to vaccinate their children. I have to imagine that the hesitance comes from a place of love: all parents want their children to be happy, to be healthy, to thrive. And in fairness, particularly when considering diseases of presently low incidence in the USA,Continue reading “Vaccines, Viruses, and Vile Anti-Vaxxers”

February 2, 2021 While I can only speak for myself, common sense would suggest that those who go into medicine set out with the intent of bringing about positive change in others’ lives. At the intersection of science and humanism, we eagerly anticipate novel developments in diagnostics and therapeutics that will expand our arsenal toContinue reading “When We Can’t Help”

November 2019 Here we are, the end of 2019. Seventeen months into residency. 48 hours off in a row (not a “weekend”, but contiguous time off nevertheless) and feeling inspired to reflect on this crazy journey in some way. If residency has taught me one thing, it’s that our time is immensely valuable, and thatContinue reading “Emotional Equipment”

May 31, 2019 A few weeks ago I shared a stories of emotional exhaustion. Call it what you want: fatigue, burnout, depression, nonspecific cynicism, the take-away is the same – a whole lot of nothing where there was once light, once magic, once music, once creativity in its truest sense – a drive to create,Continue reading “Storytelling – Again”

April 2019 Feeling the sun beat down on me and waves crest over my body these past days, in the Caribbean, with one of the best friends I’ve ever had, I think I expected to feel. I’m not sure what exactly I expected to feel (for life is all expectation management, in any case) –Continue reading “On Completing Vacation #2 of Intern Year”