Aerial
Aerial Magazine is a platform for Student Expression We strive to bridge the arts and sciences. We seek diverse works that showcase the unique perspectives of budding medical professionals and scientists in the Pacific Northwest.
Science illuminates the universe around us and within us. As we progress through our education, Aerial Magazine offers a place to share our collective creativity.
Cover art by Vivian Nye, Pages: 26
A Note from the Editors
Ashealth care trainees and providers, we accompany and support patients, families, and communities between the sunrise and sunset of their lives. Bearing witness to the passage of time and its impact on the body brings into focus the cyclical nature of all things. Each birth, milestone, appointment, intervention, and death provides an opportunity to reflect upon the only thing that remains constant: change.
We welcome you into the 6th issue of the Aerial Arts magazine, which centers on themes of light and darkness, sunrise to sunset, and life and death. Our artists and writers hail from multiple backgrounds, disciplines, and degree programs to share stories in a variety of mediums.
Enjoy this collection that tells the story of life filtered through the distinctive lens of each creator. Each student’s work featured in this issue engages with these themes as uniquely as each of us celebrates, contemplates, and grieves change.
Signed,
The Aerial Editorial Team
Table of Contents
Tram to No here...............................Micha l Joh so O’Rabbit.............................................L k Whitcom
Sculpted y Science: A Collagen Spiral Imaged at the anoscale.................................................Sofia Vig olo
5. Inescapable Entropy...............................Ama a Wa Podocytes......................................................Vi ia Ny Once.....................................................Sha o Yo g
Abortion is Healthcare.................................. Kyla Smar Portrait of a First Year......................J lia a Mazziotti
11. 1 Steps................................................A br y Da son . “I hope this finds you well.”........................... Kyla Smar Kidney..........................................................Vi ia Ny Without your body ......................Molly Joyc Masa ga
Th r s a wa t t ll a st r ...................Shannon Yo n T a is m birth a .................................Jo ana Leo C m artm ntaliz ................................Allison Conno C Blu .................................................Viviane Cahe Or g n Blu s.....................................Eden VanderHoek
3. Rhin last ..........................................Elise Thompson
This was taken on a lucky day where I happened to bring my camera with me to work. It was shot on 120 medium format Kodak double-x black & white film and developed at home in my bathroom.
Tram to Nowhere
Michael Johnson, PhD program
O rabbit,
O’Rabbit
Luke Whitcomb, School of Medicine
Why do you wait until The last moment
Before making your brazen dash Across the asphalt?
Was something revealed On the other side of the highway Which ignites your desperation so?
Or is it the thrill which propels you, The intimacy with mortality Understood only as the tire Grazes your hind leg?
Did you lose your mind somewhere
In the night’s murky sameness?
Among sighing trees and gnarled stones Tangled up in the hillside?
Until those great yellow eyes Tore the veil shrouding some cosmic clock
To expose a simple choice:
Remain where you have been Or RUN,
Right now, To a territory unfamiliar, unexplored.
O wise and foolish rabbit,
In the heartbeats between
When the crisp borders of the road melt out of the night, And the car screams by in flash and fury,
Do you understand both death and life, Despair and hope?
In that moment,
Do you finally understand yourself?
Sculpted by Science: A Collagen Spiral Imaged
Sofia Vignolo, School of Medicine
Imaged at the Nanoscale
In a world where art and science are often seen as distant relatives, I like to think of myself as the family member who’s determined to bring everyone together for dinner. However, I’m not your typical artist.
My art studio is peculiar place with an intriguing fusion of scientific creativity and rigor, surrounded by cutting-edge technology and seasoned scientists who create a landscape ripe for exploration.
Discovered amidst my thesis research on fibrillar collagen's minuscule terrains, this charming spiral was a moment of serendipity. It seemed as though nature itself was softly whispering, “Look closer, and you’ll find beauty everywhere—even here, in the realm of the nanoscale.”
This work can be interpreted as a short narrative that bridges the gap between the seen and the unseen, urging us to find the extraordinary in the ordinary. It's an invitation to view the world through a different lens— one where every detail, no matter how small, holds an inherent beauty waiting to be discovered. I hope to spark some curiosity and wonder, encouraging viewers to appreciate the intricate beauty that lies amongst the world around us.
It seems an inevitability, the nature of decay, and I wonder if someday I’ll look down to find my left little toe slowly disappearing into the soil without so much as a goodbye.
Inescapable Entropy
We don’t get to choose our entropy, so specific to our DNA and yet so similar to the homo sapien sapiens who came before.
We only get to be there as it happens, and it may be that we don’t even notice except for the eyes that seem sad as they look at us, remembering more than we can the person we used to be.
Or will it be as if the thread
I followed through so many years of story came to an unexpected ending?
Or is there more of an unraveling in the way that my skin doesn’t snap back the way it used to or the spot I look towards to remember that the garbanzo beans are on aisle 14 is suddenly replaced with the black hole that might actually be the universe?
Amanda Wade, School of Medicine
It seems fitting that the world could only hold us together for so long, could only keep our atoms so aligned such that we might have rearranged another’s into a smile for a twinkling, chaotic moment.
Podocytes
Vivian Nye, School
of Medicine
Once
Shannon Young, School of Medicine
Once
There was a thinning
Of the space between the sacred and the ordinary
A slice into a womb
A birth
Once
There was a thinning
Of the space between the sacred and the ordinary
The hum of monitors
A death
Once…
It wasn’t just once.
Was it?
But again and again.
The interstitium between sacred and ordinary
Made gossamer.
We walk with stories etched into our bones
And stretch our restless roots
Rummaging for something
For everything
A birth
A death
51 Steps
Aubrey Dawson, School
of Medicine
How there was no one else in the main hallway of the main floor of the biggest hospital in the state that morning is beyond me. I noticed a woman half-standing half-kneeling on a chair, hand
supporting herself on the windowsill, eyes squinting shut in pain. The worried-looking man accompanying her approached me, “Where can I get a wheelchair??” Nonchalantly I answered, “Okay so just keep going down this hallway, keep going past the elevators, and then the main lobby will be on your right and you can get one there.” Immediately he departed.
Cue my personal diatribe: “I’m on my sub-internship, I am so busy right now...if something is really wrong, they’re in a hospital full of doctors...someone will help them...is it possible this is all just a little over-dramatized...did I really just think that...before he went to get that wheelchair he looked back at her so full of worry and so torn to be leaving...I wonder what’s wrong?”
By the end of my inner monologue I had walked fifty-one steps—I know because I walk this walk at least 10 times a day. I’ve clocked it many times since then. When my fingers reached the stairway door handle I could not take another step. “Stop. Turn around. Go back and see what is wrong. Do not leave her alone.” Immediately I obeyed.
How could I have been so stupid? So self-absorbed? Me, a med student, doing something important? Too busy to help someone in pain? I rushed back and asked her what was wrong. Still in the same keeled-over position, she barely managed to say, “Ahhhhh...I can feel the head...she’s coming...”
WHAAAAT?!?! Eyebrows hit the ceiling, jaw hit the floor. She’s having a baby?!?! I opened my phone and frantically searched for the rapid response team number I certainly remembered saving. Security...integrity hotline...ombudsman...how had I saved every other number during med school orientation besides this one?! “AHHHH she’s coming she’s coming I feel her head!”
I’m not sure if I couldn’t quite believe it because of the wild circumstances or because my own labor experience involved over 4 hours of active pushing. There was no way that baby was coming out so fast. But I had also witnessed various births take less than 4 pushes and 5 minutes so...crap. There was a way.
Finally someone in scrubs walked by laughing while he talked on the telephone. “Call a rapid response! Right now!” He looked like a deer in headlights. I think he tried to call it, but I wasn’t sure. The man with the wheelchair came rushing back. “Sit down, sit down!” She replied, “I can’t! She’s coming out!!”
Just then two RNs walked by and I yelled out again for a rapid response. They were on it immediately. Meanwhile we got the woman to sit down. I didn’t know where to go, but the RNs turned around and seemed to be leading us toward the emergency department.
As soon as we reached the main lobby, her groans escalated, “AHHHHH! AHHHH! She’s coming!!” I can’t remember if the RNs kept walking, but I told the man, “We need to get her on the floor right now.” Me on one side and he on the other, we lowered her to the ground. Barely reaching the threshold between the carpet and tile, thankfully her head was on the carpet. Her pants were soaked through and I could see blood. I could also see a rather baby-head-sized bulge between her thighs.
Realizing where we were, in the main lobby, by the main elevators, next to the concierge desk, right at the intersection of the main hospital, the VA and the Children’s hospital where everyone walks, I told the woman, “I am so sorry. I have to take your pants off right now.” She was losing steam, “Just do whatever...you have to do.” So right there, in front of everyone, and still somehow without the assistance of the thousand doctors in that hospital, I ripped off her pants...almost. Why were her shoes on so tight? After getting the shoes off, then I successfully removed her pants. To my memory her baby was out past the shoulders. What was I going to do? I took my jacket off in case I needed to wrap the baby in it, but just then a very competentlooking angel of a resident rushed to my side with gloves on and supported the baby as she gently came out.
A pediatric anesthesiologist quickly came to help, then a NICU nurse, then an OBGYN. The responsibility started to slide off my back. She was in good hands now. Hands that actually knew what they were doing. Somewhat in shock, I started to tear up. Perhaps because of the immediate relief of stress combined with the spiritual experience that always seems to accompany the birth of a child, I was overcome with emotion. Thinking back again on my delivery and the trauma of my son’s shoulder dystocia, the episiotomy, being seconds away from converting to a c-section, I was filled with gratitude. Knowing the many things that could have gone wrong, this birth truly had been a miracle.
I put my hand on the mom’s shoulder and let her know how amazing she had been. I looked at the dad by my side and let him know the same. “You did everything right.” I didn’t say those words to try to make him feel better, but because they were true. He had when I hadn’t. I felt I had let him down when I left his wife standing there in pain by the window.
Within minutes we were surrounded. Nurses taking over and assigning roles, the doctor showing the dad how to cut the cord, strangers clapping and yelling, “Good job, mama!!” Again remembering the vulnerability of my own birth experience, I tried to make a barrier with a blanket. Still completely exposed in the middle of the main lobby, a nurse and I did our best to provide what little privacy we could for this sweet family.
The whole OB team arrived, a bed for the baby, a stretcher for the mom. It really was all good now. As quickly as they arrived, they left. And I was left standing in shock next to the clean up crew trying to get the blood out of the carpet. I didn’t know anyone I had just been around. Who could I talk to about this?
At the same time I was being paged by nurses and questioned by my attending, “Where are you?” The hilarity of the situation started to sink in as I imagined what I’d say. In reality I’m not sure whose eyes were wider: mine when the mom told me she could feel the head, or my attending’s when I told him where I had been the last 10 minutes. As I went about my day I couldn’t shake those 51 steps. The more I retraced them during the day the more ashamed I became. How had I gone so far without turning around?
I mustered up the courage to go visit the family a few hours later. They remembered me. They thanked me. They looked incredible and so did their baby. I apologized for walking away and they didn’t seem to think anything of it—just so grateful I had stopped to help at all.
I initially felt bad about those 51 steps, but that temporary guilt was productive. Shame? Useless, paralyzing. Though it felt like an eternity, I quickly corrected my course. I went back. I did not know what to do, but I did what little I could. I did not freeze. I made decisions. I will treasure this experience for the rest of my life, knowing I could easily live 20 lifetimes and never know anything like it.
I just cannot believe there was no one else in the hallway.
“I hope this finds you well.”
Kyla Smart School of Medicine
Kidney
Vivian Nye, School of Medicine
when I first saw your body
I had hardly encountered death before the lifelessness was so loud I thought of all the lives you led before I was sad and I said a prayer then my classmate took the scalpel I could hardly breath as tears trickled down my cheek a human before me how could this be
I had to step out thinking of my class a bunch of psychopaths all alone, I sat in the hall I tackled death like I never had before I tackled failure I tackled fear I thought maybe I was done with a medical career
Without your body
It took some time at first I couldn’t cut I watched my classmates begin then my curiosity leaned in
without your body
I would not have known how much I love the intricacies of the heart I would not have been awestruck with your heart in my hand
without your body
I would not have held your brain and spent hours trying to understand the part of you that made you...you
Molly Joyce Masanga School of Medicine
one day, maybe I will be a donation for students to learn just like you were for me
thank you for your donation your body will live on in my clinical practice those I treat those I teach and beyond
as I traveled along your anatomy block after block I learned about my smile and who’s responsible for all the silly faces I make or the way I lift a weight the way I run and jump the way I breath the way I speak the way I think all within you in front of me
without your body
I would not have been so close to death before being out in the wards I would not have realized how fragile a human life could be you gave me pause as I pondered my own mortality
Compartmentalize
An overhead voice
As loud as can be
Adult code blue Across the hall from me
Stand up and run to see Suddenly I freeze, I forget my ABCs Where is my chief?
Up down, up down
To the rhythm of staying alive A song with a tempo And a meaning too
White as a dove
Circulation has clearly ceased Panic arises inside me And sets in with grief
What did we miss?
What didn’t we see?
Just an hour before? They were talking to me
But where is my chief?
The team is finally here But I know it’s too late The tempo was never reached I see it in all our eyes, out body language
We do “everything” we can
But the time ahs come
Viviane
Cahen, School of Medicine CODE BLUE
An hour has passed, yet it all feels so fast 9:01 AM; the dove’s wings have officially flown
The news to the family, Screams that cannot be unheard
Like the overhead call Forever engraved in me
Debrief happens, as quick as can be
Our jobs resume, rounds notes, and discharge summaries
But when do we get to breathe? And when do we get to be human, too?
Oregon Blues
Eden VanderHoek, School of Medicine
“This ring setting showcases a piece of Oregon green scenic jasper, known for its captivating spectrum of colors, which span from rich shades of green to deep sea blues like the stone shown here. There is great reprieve from academia in creating with materials sourced from home.”
An 11-day-old carton of half-and-half presents to her med student’s fridge for her BID rhinoplasty. The waiting room is nearly empty. A roommate opens the freezer and calls for Trader Joe’s fried rice. The door shuts behind them. Miso two rows up is humming Jumpin’, Jumpin’. Carton softly harmonizes. She tosses in a little shimmy. Suddenly, the door opens. A hand beckons her. Carton flies out the fridge. Her medical student is a scribble of sweatpants, hood up, pillow creases. Carton plops down on her rolling stool and says, “now I just gave you a lot of information. What questions do you have for me?
Elise Thompson School of Medicine
Aerial Editing Team
Rand Kaller
Carolyn Green
Vivian Nye
Iksha Kumar
Emily Modlin