We Will Not Quit

When I met patient advocate Helen Haskell in 2007, I was a writer working with a production team late into the night on the Tears to Transparency educational documentary film The Lewis Blackman Story. Lewis was, is, Helen’s son who will forever be 15 years old. I had a day job on the business side of healthcare at the time, and was frequently freelance writing on health-related topics to build a writing portfolio. On that intimate set, in Dave and Cathy Mayer’s living room overlooking the west side of Chicago, I sat behind our director while he read the interview questions I had written prompting Helen to tell the details of her son Lewis’ death due to medical error. At one point, in the presence of her graceful grief, we all had to pause to collect ourselves. I remember that moment like it was yesterday, and it forever changed me. Lewis died in 2000 because those caring for him failed to recognize he was bleeding to death right in front of them. Because his care was not coordinated. Because when someone, a visiting nurse, recognized Lewis was in trouble, she was too afraid, too ensconced in the medical hierarchy to speak up on behalf of her patient. I knew I had to do more to help people like Helen, and would soon change my career path to do so.

This year has been one of reckoning for me. I, we, continue to tell stories of patient and provider harm in the face of medical error, health-system failures, and the lack of transparency that often follows these events. In 2019, medical error is the third leading cause of death in the United States, though it goes unrecognized by the Centers for Disease Control. Those of you reading this have a 25-33% chance of being harmed by medical care. Patient advocates like Helen, Jack and Teresa Gentry, Carole Hemmelgarn (included in this issue), Patty and David Skolnik, Armando and Victoria Nahum, Barb, Bob and Krissy Malizzo, Sorrel King, Beth Daley Ullem, and Steve and Margo Burrows have become friends, and I often watch as they recount their painful stories of loss and harm at national medical and patient-safety meetings, in hospital conference rooms, and at grand rounds—anywhere anyone will listen—to ensure no one else has to experience the same. They have to. It’s not a choice for them. And yet people continue to be hurt because the medical-legal culture puts itself above all else.

I launched Please See Me this year because I knew we had only been scratching the surface of the health-related stories that existed in the world. Giving people a place and equal opportunity to tell their stories creatively would be healing for them, as well as for those reading or viewing the work—something I knew not only because I had lived it, but also because research validates this fact. The community that continues to grow in and around this literary magazine reinforces and reinvigorates my commitment to this space. At a recent medical meeting, Teresa Gentry told me simply, “We can’t quit,” and I realized I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.

Everyone who has submitted a poem, a short story, a work of creative nonfiction, digital art, or photography is telling me places like the one we have created here, as well as the Center for Healthcare Narratives, are necessary. Writing and art in any form provide platforms for self-expression and catharsis. Out stories require and inspire empathy. There is a reason the medical humanities as a discipline is growing, and we at Please See Me are honored to be making an important contribution.

This last issue of 2019 was intended to be a supplement built around the interview with Kimberly J. Soenen, curator and creative director of the multidisciplinary group art and photography exhibition “SOME PEOPLE” (Every)Body, which explores the ethics, people, processes, and systems affecting the health of our society. Because of the volume and excellence of September submissions, however, we have chosen to make our December Issue a full issue: Pain Continued.

In this issue, you can again listen to poems read by our poets, such as David Porter, who reflects on aging in Paper Dragons. In Healthcare for a Thousand, Please, poet AT Hincapie writes about the pain and anxiety in caring for his wife, who is going through cancer treatment. In our fiction section, Denize Springer writes about a sister’s love for her brother in The Way We Say Goodbye. Patient advocate Carole Hemmelgarn stretches her creative wings while running from, and with, the grief of losing her daughter Alyssa, in the creative nonfiction piece Cadence of Life. In A Mother’s Dilemma, ER physician, Mary Chris Bailey recalls the choice she made to have her two young sons, six and four, visit their two-year-old brother as he lay connected to life-saving tubes and machines in the PICU. Finally, explore the centerpiece of this issue, and the “SOME PEOPLE” (Every)Body exhibition via the short video and the images embedded within the interview, and decide for yourself: Are we doing enough in this country to ensure all of us have the opportunity for a full, healthy life? What can we do better? We can’t quit until we do.

Happy holidays and best wishes for a happy, healthy new year from all of us at Please See Me.

Tracy Granzyk is the editor in chief of Please See Me.