Slipping Beneath An Indigo Sea (reflections on the ICU)

I’ve read every published work by Dr. Rana Awdish: her scholarly articles, narrative medicine essays, and her book, In Shock.  Each piece causes a small ache in me.  I long to share her ability to view medicine through a different paradigm and to capture, with lyrical beauty and poignant reckoning, the failures of our healthcare system to extend kindness, empathy, and humanity to both caregivers and patients.  Her writing is shaped by her experiences – almost bleeding out on the surgical table from a ruptured liver adenoma, the loss of her baby, and her harrowing recovery as a patient in her own ICU.    

I’m most drawn to Awdish’s essay, The Shape Of The Shore, which describes her experiences caring for patients in a large inner-city hospital ICU during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.  Reading her essay feels like slipping beneath something dark and inky and heavy.    

After the recent publication of my essay, This Is Not A New Story, in the narrative medicine journal Intima, I received an invitation to submit an Intima blog post to bring my essay into dialogue with another piece previously published in the journal.  Even as I read the invitation, I knew which piece it would be –The Shape Of The Shore has stayed with me and lodged in my subconsciousness, exquisite in perception, crushing in gravity, and gripping in unrelenting power.  I’m humbled and thankful for the opportunity to interact with Awdish’s essay and bring my own obscure thoughts into dialogue with her acclaimed writing. You can read it here:  What I Learned about the ICU: A Reflection by Benjamin Rattray.