Shawn Khosla
Kansas City, Missouri, USA
Poet’s statement: My junior year in high school, I started to shadow a physician in an inner-city hospital. This poem illustrates my initial shock at the devastation caused by social evils like drugs and drunk driving. My experience showed me the importance of combining medicine and the humanities to create passionate physicians. This poem is a product of that feeling.
My first medical rotation
Thinking it would give me something to do and would be cool The neurologist started his hospital rounds from ICU bed fourteen He had taken the deadly combination of speed and cocaine They did not think he was going to survive and soon would die Unlike the drug prevention lectures which we were forced to take Few days later I saw a victim of a drunk driver in the same condition He did not say much to her but told me that Dad was hanging by the thread Sad face of that innocent girl announced the message loud and clear A person of my age came to neurology clinic and he was not even able to walk While waiting to be seen he bit his tongue and started to have violent jerking I was thankful for what I had, and my life had changed in many ways |
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SHAWN KHOSLA is a 19-year-old pre-med student with plans to become a neurologist. He volunteers to teach chemistry to underprivileged children in an inner-city school, as well as at a local hospital, shadowing a neurologist.
Highlighted in Frontispiece Winter 2013 – Volume 5, Issue 1
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