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Transformational Times
Words of Hope, Character & Resilience from our Virtual Community
Friday, June 17, 2022
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In This Special Global Health Issue: | |
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Editor's Corner
Global Health Perspective/Opinion
Visual Art
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Lauren Tostrud
- Rachel Weber
Poetry Corner
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Michael Esson: Blurred Lines
Additional Resources
World Refugee Celebration
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Your Turn
Upcoming Events/Announcements
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Editor's Corner
Read This Issue Slowly
By Bruce Campbell, MD, FACS
This issue of the Transformational Times is particularly compelling. Please take some time to better understand the journeys that the refugees among us have taken and commit to being a “glocal” caregiver …
This issue of the Transformational Times is unique. In concert with the United Nations’ World Refugee Day, celebrated internationally and annually on June 20, we are honored to hear the voices of local refugees whose lives have been shaped by the experience of fleeing their homeland. Melisa Hodzic, from the MCW Office of Global Health, shares her family’s challenges, having fled fighting in Sarajevo, Bosnia as a child, and how current events in Ukraine evoke painful memories as an adult. Community member Nurhayati Ali writes about her family’s challenges before and after fleeing religious and political persecution in Myanmar. I hope everyone reads their narratives.
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Global Health Perspective/Opinion
Bearing Witness to Trauma and Resilience at Fort McCoy
By Samantha L. Wilson, PhD
Dr. Wilson provides a reflection on a week providing mental health support to Afghan guests at Fort McCoy …
At the end of my third day of deployment, I collapsed onto my hotel bed thinking, "This is the most important thing I have done thus far with my training." Ten days prior, I had responded to a forwarded email from a global health colleague, urgently seeking mental health professionals to deploy to Fort McCoy, WI. Since late August that military training base in rural Wisconsin had welcomed roughly 12,500 Afghan nationals, quickly swelling to the largest city within fifteen miles (nearby Sparta and Tomah have populations of about 9,000).
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Global Health Perspective/Opinion
Reflection on Post-War Trauma Due to the Recent Conflict in Ukraine: Childhood Deja Vu
By Melisa Hodzic, BA – Office of Global Health Program Coordinator
Melisa shares her experience and feelings of fear and anxiety triggered by the conflict in Ukraine thirty years after conflict bestowed her native country of Bosnia. In reflection on the past, she discusses her hope and suggestions to support migratory populations ...
On March 4, 1992, the Siege of Sarajevo began. It was the longest siege of a capital city in the modern era. Thirty years have passed since and one may assume that no trace or remembrance would be left for a three-year-old girl who left her home country at that time. They would be wrong.
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Perspective/Opinion
Through the Eyes and Ears of an Immigrant
By Nurhayati Ali
Ms. Ali, a woman whose Rohingya family left Myanmar to escape religious persecution when she was an infant, tells the remarkable story of the trajectory of her life ...
Anticipation builds as I enter the room full of students from different cultures, backgrounds and schools, waiting for orientation to begin. I stick on my name tag printed, “Nurhayati Ali” and make my way towards an empty space awaiting my presence. Not a second after, a sound from the microphone catches everyone’s attention. The room goes quiet unlike my loud thoughts of confusion. They welcome us to the University of Wisconsin-Madison and give a brief introduction. They instruct us to form groups of ten for icebreakers.
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Global Health Perspective/Opinion
Refugee Care 101
By Bryan Johnston, MD
Dr. Johnston, a family physician who cares for refugees as part of his practice, shares some real-life examples of medical problems faced by refugees he has met …
“You take this and put it over the toilet, like this.”
(translation)
“Then, you sit down on top of it, and have a bowel movement.”
(translation)
(response)
“The patient wants to know if she should have the bowel movement in the cup?”
“Yes, have the bowel movement in the cup”
(translation)
“Open the tube—make sure to open the tube first—then take the scoop and scoop some into the tube. Enough to fill it to here. Screw the cap back on.”
(translation)
“You need to take the tube to the hospital laboratory the same day, or the next morning at the latest.”
(translation)
“Repeat this for 3 days in a row.”
(translation)
“Now, let’s make sure you have it. Tell me what you are going to do.”
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They are children who laugh and play and draw and create like any other | |
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As a medical student, I have volunteered with the International Institute of Wisconsin within their refugee resettlement department for the last three years. As a family mentor, I provide support to a newly resettled Burmese refugee family with the main purpose of assisting them with learning English and adapting to their life in the greater Milwaukee area.
To me, the impact of this experience has been priceless. I have learned about culture and the world through a different lens than I have ever been remotely exposed to prior. The world, to a refugee, what a confusing place. Both filled with a sense of home and also a lack thereof. Both the sense of a community and also a lack thereof.
To view this all through the lens of a child has presented a further dimension of interest. The children I work with, presented in this piece (with altered physical attributes to maintain privacy) are sponges. They are constantly absorbing pieces of their "home" that their parents and community expose them to, while also absorbing their current environment, also a "home." Simultaneously, they are children who laugh and play and draw and create like any other. To watch them grow and learn from them and their parents throughout the past three years has truly been an honor. To learn from their life experiences, their triumphs and struggles, has been eye-opening. I am fortunate that I have not been faced with the challenging decision to leave my country of origin. However, I am happy that my country of origin has become one of their homes.
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Lauren Tostrud is a fourth-year medical student at the Medical College of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is interested in obstetrics and gynecology, women's health, global health, health equity, as well as "the art of medicine." She has degrees in Neurobiology and Studio Art and looks forward to incorporating principles from both of these practices into her future career as an obstetrician and gynecologist..
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Whoever. Wherever. Whenever. | |
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Rachel Weber is a Medical Student at MCW-Milwaukee.
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Blurred Lines
By Michael Esson
As you read each vowel and consonant in this line,
Feel the emotions made possible by the line of migrants and refugees before me,
and those in line and ready to succeed me.
Line by line ensure that our perspectives are aligned,
if you get lost, get back in line because this perspective is a real one,
and it aligns with how my people and their experiences have been defined.
Definitions so pervasive it blurs the line between truth and lies.
Whether or not my story is in line with your expectations,
Save your attempts to realign,
And accept that within these lines lies definitions.
With that in mind, here is the first line.
Bags packed, road paved but no directions ahead, faith. When you uproot your family and plant it in a foreign land, migration. When your culture, dreams, hopes and tongue are too foreign, alien. When your arrival is marked by camps, detentions, and asylums, refugee. When you are not wanted, illegal. The immigration crisis, scare tactics. Go back where you came from, ignorance. When you change your name for their sake, acculturation. Melting in the pot, assimilation. A minivan and a white picket fence, the American Dream. Navigating cultures and learning a foreign tongue, intelligence. At the end of your misery, sleep deprivation, and healing, you will find wonder and beauty.
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Michael Esson is a medical student in the MCW-Milwaukee Class of 2025.
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Readers share their responses to last week's reflection prompt:
Are you a city, a country or a beach person and why?
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I am all three making Milwaukee the perfect place to live. I grew up in a marvelous, very big city. The dynamism and diversity of people, places and experiences and the freedom (mostly due to great public transportation!) to travel about as a young teenager- are in my bones. Cities are endlessly fascinating. The country is inspiring, but really noisy compared to the city! All those beautiful birds who sing their early morning songs. I was a Girl Scout. I learned to hike, backpack and camp at an early age and have been drawn to the outdoors ever since. The ocean, now there is an awesome thing; the horizon, the breeze, the roar, the sand between your toes. Why do we have to choose?
—Adina Kalet, MD, MPH, Faculty
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CITY! I love to bike and walk and my absolute fav is when someone else (like a subway conductor) takes me where I need to be. I love the density of the city and the action and energy of people on the move. I also love the arts and culture and the city provides both the institutional versions and the wonderfully surprising actions of independent creatives - like a tree wrapped in knitting or a good old fashioned stencil or wheat-paste. I sleep better with city sounds than nature sounds, sorry camping, I prefer a hotel bed and shower!
—Joelle Worm, Staff
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The weekend comes and the gang’s all here, city life will draw me near.
Introspective, alone with my thoughts, the country’s butterflies and bees are dear.
The sun, the sand, and the cry of gulls makes the water’s edge truly dear.
—Charlotte Ricker, Staff
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For this week's reflection prompt, please answer the following question:
If you could travel anywhere in the world this summer, where would you go?
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2022 Resident and Fellow Research & Alumni Day
Resident and Fellow Research and Alumni Day is an annual event where our residents and graduating fellow present their clinical, translational science, and educational research results within their residency and fellowship in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
Featuring the Roland S. Cron Lectureship Guest Speaker, Kristyn Melissa Brandi, MD, MPH, Board Chair, Physicians for Reproductive Health.
June 22, 2022
Bolger Auditorium or via Zoom
7:45 am - 12:30 pm CT
register by June 15, 2022
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Let Me Ask You Something Podcast
Listen to Dr. Adina Kalet as an interviewer as the group discusses "Because We Care: A Philosophical Investigation into the Spirit of Medical Education" by Camillo Coccia and Mario Veen. You can download it here.
This is the 8th installment of the series on philosophy in medical education of Mario Veen and Anna Cianciolo, which appears in Teaching and Learning in Medicine: An International Journal -- it will also appear as a book chapter in our upcoming book Helping a Field See Itself: Envisioning a Philosophy of Medical Education (Springer, forthcoming 2022).
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The Transformational Times publishes weekly, delivering stories of hope, character and resilience to our virtual community. | |
Editorial Board: Kathlyn Fletcher, MD, Adina Kalet, MD, Wendy Peltier, MD, Erin Weileder, Nabil Attlassy, Julia Bosco, Ana Istrate, Scott Lamm, Sophia Neman, Wolf Pulsiano, Eileen Peterson, Neehal Shukla, Sarah Torres, Anna Visser, James Wu, Serena Zacharias & Emelyn Zaworski
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