This remarkable compilation includes patient stories as told through the eyes of pre-medical students, medical students, and some faculty tasked with truly understanding those who are seeking medical care. The sites of these interactions vary from small town clinics to a locked hospital psychiatry unit and afforded a rare unhurried interview where the patient could just respond to What do your doctors need to know about you to take good care of you? and simply Tell me about your life and What's next for you?

Using a 55- word piece or a longer essay, the writers worked to determine the meaning of each story. Perhaps equally important, they considered how just serving as witness to the telling moved them along their path to being the physician they aspire to become. The works span the time before, during and after the COVID pandemic. The writers considered the fear of medical workers for their own safety, the anxiety obvious on the masked faces of the patients, and how the doctor-patient relationship was forced to adapt. Political divisions about masking and vaccination crept into the exam room, and the students occasionally expressed feelings of separateness from those patients at the far ends of that spectrum.



No reader can leave this experience without a visceral connection to the depths of human misery or a renewed appreciation for the resilience of the human spirit, although not always expressed in conventional ways. This book is good reading for anyone interested in the richness of daily human life.

A Savannah native approaching retirement from a medical career returns home to write his sabbatical book. An encounter with Mae, a mysterious Gullah woman, takes him into magical adventures covering almost 3 centuries based in the landmarks of his hometown. The sights, sounds, history, and smells of Savannah are irresistible, and qualify the town as a full-fledged character in this story. He ventures to partake of some of Mae's root doctor tea and is propelled into dreamscapes that blur time and reality. During one of these walkabouts, he meets the biracial healer Ann on the grounds of the Bethesda orphanage on the Savannah coast in 1757. When he is faced with saving the Habersham family from a raging fever, Ann leads him to an understanding of her particular blend of healing. She is a product of her mother's Gullah hoodoo system brought from West Africa and her Indigenous American father's skills using the Great Spirit's natural gifts.

The urgency to save the Habersham family in the big house is then compounded by the realization that there is a large infirmary full of orphaned children with the fever. Ann holds the key to treating them, but to accept her truths he must first fully embrace the West African healing tradition, including the fire ritual. His way is further narrowed by the need to appease the spirit of each living thing as explained to Ann by her father. This leads to an internal journey guided by the doctor's experiences of the power of empathy with his patients and his own father. He wanders among stories from practice and childhood experiences, and finally Ann provides the needed direction. His traditional training as a family doctor might qualify him as a hoodoo doctor and his Catholic upbringing provides the needed convergence for these two colleagues to connect on a spiritual level. Their collaboration starts slowly and builds to a surprising climax with the intertwining of all 3 healing traditions.

A Savannah native approaching retirement from a medical career returns home to write his sabbatical book about how some physicians find resilience and avoid burnout. An encounter with Mae, a mysterious Gullah woman, takes him into magical adventures covering almost 3 centuries based in the marshes and historic landmarks of his hometown. The sights, sounds, history, and smells of Savannah are irresistible, and qualify the town as a full-fledged character in this story. He ventures to partake of some of Mae's root doctor tea and is propelled into dreamscapes that blur time and reality. During one of these walkabouts, he meets Jock who is working as a Haitian vodou healer during the Siege of Savannah, one of the bloodiest battles of the American Revolution.

He discovers that the modern understanding of voodoo is an inaccurate, twisted view of the rich West African vodou rituals that share some symbolism with his Catholic tradition. In the assault on the British occupiers by a multinational force led by the French, so many are killed and wounded that the French appear prepared to withdraw from their alliance with the colonists. Knowing that this would doom the quest for a new American nation, the narrator joins with Jock to seek the key healing element. Gender conformity is a central theme of this book, and a remarkable encounter with General Casimir Pulaski provides a truly startling discovery, setting the stage for this capstone of the Healing Savannah trilogy. Resilience is found in the most surprising places.

An accomplished physician and medical educator looks back across his professional life, realizing that finding meaning was the key to happiness. Using his poetry, essays, and technical medical reports as mileposts along the journey, he makes the case that a true generalist takes on each new challenge with a search for meaning. From the start of family centered obstetrics through design of the international space station and covering rural practices producing remarkable stories, opportunities found him that provided meaning at every turn.

His perspectives on medical practice and the importance of faith, hope, empathy and curiosity are truly timeless. His essays written early in this century still ring true, and contain important lessons for those making health systems decisions today. From the setting of a free clinic to an inpatient locked psychiatry unit, his patients both provide and accept forgiveness. This book is good reading for anyone seeking meaning in work.

A Savannah native approaching retirement from a medical career returns home to write his sabbatical book about how some physicians find resilience and avoid burnout. Instead, he discovers echoes of the most disruptive of modern cultural divides in Savannah's past. An encounter with Mae, a mysterious Gullah woman, takes him into magical adventures covering almost 3 centuries based in the historic landmarks of his hometown. The sights, sounds, history, and smells of Savannah are irresistible, and qualify the town as a full-fledged character in this story. He ventures to partake of some of Mae's root doctor tea and is propelled into dreamscapes that blur time and reality. During one of these walkabouts, he meets the Irish immigrant builder of the Bay Street retaining wall that allowed Savannah to develop into one of the busiest Atlantic seaports in the 1860s.

The narrator discovers that the daily life and livelihood of the new Irish immigrants are intricately interwoven with those of the West Africans, both enslaved and newly freed, who share the same neighborhoods. As his epic task materializes, he must mend a major rift between these two groups to allow them to work together. Failure would destroy Savannah's potential to flourish as a key Southern port city. He is reminded that understanding the beliefs that define evil and provide for management of societal fear is fundamental to overcome the sense of the other that permeates cultural divides even to modern times. This results in fantastic encounters with Irish fairies and changelings and Hoodoo talismen and curses that frame how the two cultures cope with the fevers taking their children. Guided by a multiracial lay nurse with roots in each culture, he charts a path of resolution that has much to teach about modern culture war issues.

A Savannah native approaching retirement from a medical career returns home to write his sabbatical book. An encounter with Mae, a mysterious Gullah woman, takes him into magical adventures covering almost 3 centuries based in the landmarks of his hometown. The sights, sounds, history, and smells of Savannah are irresistible, and qualify the town as a full-fledged character in this story. He ventures to partake of some of Mae's root doctor tea and is propelled into dreamscapes that blur time and reality. During one of these walkabouts he meets Mary, the biracial healer sitting at a campfire outside the downtown hotel serving as a hospital for Sherman's troops in 1864. When he is forced to participate in the horrors of unnecessary amputations inside, Mary leads him to an understanding of her particular blend of healing. She is a product of the hoodoo system brought from west Africa that flourished in the coastal islands' Gullah settlements while she also incorporates Indigenous American skills using the Great Spirit's natural gifts.

The apparent urgency to save the soldiers inside the hotel turned hospital causes this doctor to question everything about the European tradition of healing which has molded him into a modern practitioner. This leads to an internal journey seeking forgiveness for perceived missed opportunities with his patients. He wanders among stories from practice and teenage experiences that formed him prior to medical training, and finally Mary provides the needed direction. His traditional training as a family doctor might qualify him as a hoodoo doctor and his Catholic upbringing provides the needed convergence for these two colleagues to connect on a spiritual level. Their collaboration starts slowly and builds to a surprising climax with the intertwining of all 3 healing traditions. Ultimately, this journey provides some sense of closure for the unfinished business hidden within this modern hoodoo practitioner.