final_thp_3rdedition

THIRD EDITION 

University of Southern California 

Fall2014 

PAGE | 01

Contents 

Dear Readers, 

Thank you for picking up a copy of 

the third volume of The Healing 

Process! In this edition we’ve 

included two new sections. The first 

is an interview section, in which I 

had the honor of conversing with 

Owen Bennett Jones, a BBC News 

Correspondent who has covered 

various health care issues all across 

the world. The second section is a list 

of suggested books that we hope each 

and every one of you decides to read. 

These books are thought provoking 

and have definitely altered the way we 

at The Healing Process view medicine. 

Each approaches medicine by telling 

stories that captivate the audience, and 

allows us to understand medicine from 

a different perspective. Literature, 

as witnessed in these books, has the 

ability to reach a wider audience 

than scientific analyses. Through art, 

literature, poetry, and prose, the most 

difficult subjects to discuss can be 

conveyed more meaningfully. 

FROM THE EDITOR 

With each progressive volume, we 

have tried to expand on those previous 

in terms of layout and content to 

make this a legitimate facet of USC. 

I feel that we’ve made great strides in 

accomplishing that, but there is still 

a great ways to go, and so I ask you 

readers for your help: please spread 

the word. By doing so, we can allow 

this to grow further and capture far 

greater attention. 

I wish the best to the new editorsin-chief, 

Nicole Lau and Janis Yue, 

whom I know will continue to foster 

its progress. I thank my staff for 

the past two years, the physicians 

and directors that have guided us, 

and most importantly all those that 

submitted. A special thank you goes to 

our advisor Dr. Erika Nanes. 

Best Regards, 

Kush Gaur 

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF 

Interview with Owen 

Bennett Jones 

Conducted by Kush Gaur 

09 

Manic Depression 

Non-fictional prose by 

Brendan J. Mauch 

Tanzania and 

Ecuador: Medlife 

Photographs by Nicole 

Lau and Edward Ng 

Second Hand 

Dementia / 

Mother-Father- 

Dementia...and Me 

Poems by William 

Brochinsky 

03 

Brain 

Painting by Kristen Chen 

13 

25 

29 

Frayed Ends 

Poem by Cody 

Kaneshiro 

23 

11 

Clinic Trip 

Day 3 

Photograph 

by Lizbeth 

Medina 

27 

WO/ANDER 

Artwork 

by Richelle 

Gribble 

33 35 

Jon Lee 

De novo 

by Loranna 

Grigoryan and 

Cover Art 

by Shreya Bansal 

Books We 

Recommend 

37 

Painting by Nicole 

PAGE | 01 Lau/ List 

PAGE 

of Editors 

| 02

OWEN 

BENNETT JONES 

A JOURNALIST’S PERSPECTIVE ON GLOBAL HEALTH 

INTERVIEW CONDUCTED BY KUSH GAUR 

Owen Bennett Jones is an award-winning British 

journalist and co-host of BBC Newshour. As a BBC 

Correspondent he has been based in 60 countries around 

the world, including those in the Middle East and South 

Asia, with many of his articles focusing on Pakistan. In 

terms of health care, he has covered polio vaccinations and 

mental health in Pakistan, and mortality rates in Iraq. I 

had the pleasure of meeting him at a USC Global Health 

event at the Keck School of Medicine. I interviewed him in 

March 2014 when Pakistan was in the midst of an antipolio 

campaign that was continually being challenged by 

the Taliban. Today, the situation seems to be just as dire. 

“ You need to be able 

to absorb creative 

material.” 

PAGE | 03 PAGE | 04

THE INTERVIEW 

KG: Do you believe that creativity has a place 

in medicine? 

OBJ: Doctors have an incredibly important 

role in society dealing with extremely acute 

human problems, and to equip them to do 

that they need to understand the full range of 

human emotion and the human condition. 

The best way to do that is to be open to 

literature, art, and creative output. 

KG: Does this translate into better doctors? 

OBJ:This would make for a much better 

doctor. Obviously the field now is all about 

the techniques, science, and knowledge that 

you have to have to cross so many different 

aspects of medicine. But at the end of the day 

you’re dealing with people, and if you want to 

understand people, then you need to be able 

to absorb creative material. 

KG: I’d like to discuss your career in Pakistan 

and the Middle East. You’ve been to so many 

places all across the world, but why is Pakistan 

your main focus? 

OBJ:Pakistan is a very complicated place, 

but it is also a very welcoming place for a 

journalist to work because people are very 

open. They’re very hospitable and willing to 

discuss politics, and it’s almost impossible 

not to discuss politics with Pakistanis. It’s 

simply a place where people gossip and talk 

the whole time, so it’s genuinely a place where 

people are willing to be open with you. It’s 

also an incredibly important place and a very 

complicated place, so it takes a while to get 

your head around it. 

KG: Pakistan is currently in the midst of a 

polio outbreak, and I just read about how 12 

people were killed by a Taliban militant bomb 

attack aimed at a polio vaccination team. 

Why is there this campaign against polio 

vaccinations in Pakistan? 

OBJ:First, there are differences between 

the Afghan and Pakistan Taliban, and what 

attitude they each take toward the polio 

vaccination. The Afghan Taliban has been 

much more sympathetic to people coming 

in to give the vaccine for polio. The Pakistan 

Taliban, on the other hand, actually discussed 

it for years and took a clear decision, I think 

in 2012, to say that it would oppose any 

vaccination campaigns. This was sparked 

by the assasination attempt of Bin Laden, 

which involved a Pakistani doctor pretending 

to be vaccinating the children in the Bin 

Laden household to get their DNA. That 

contributed to the Taliban hostility to polio 

vaccination, and the result now is that you 

have quite regularly, as you say, nurses and 

the police murdered as they try to give this 

vaccination out. The consequences of course 

are that there are cases where this campaign 

is spreading. One of the Jihadi fighters 

actually took it to Syria, and there was a case 

in Kabul as well. So the consequences of 

this Taliban action are beginning to be felt 

internationally. 

KG: Religious leaders also denounce the 

vaccinations as well. Is this due to the belief 

that it sterilizes males? 

OBJ: Before the Bin Laden issue, there is 

the question of whether vaccinations are a 

Western plot to undermine Islam, leading to 

doubt about polio vaccinations. Some of the 

religious leaders in the northwest of Pakistan 

do say that it is in fact an attempt to sterilize 

people so there will be a smaller population 

of Muslims in the future. When you hear stuff 

like that, you wonder whether they are just 

trying to stir something up with the issue. 

But in fact, there is quite significant evidence 

that they do think that that is true, and I’ve 

met some of these people and have talked to 

them. It’s really due to the fact that they are 

uneducated. It is quite possible that these 

people genuinely believe that it is a US plot to 

sterilize, rather than an attempt to save their 

children. 

KG: Do you think the West is doing a good 

job with the mass vaccination campaign, or is 

there a better way of doing it? 

OBJ: Oh, well no I don’t 

think that they are. It has 

gotten to a very difficult 

point now. The UN 

and many people very 

sympathetic to Pakistani 

culture are involved now. 

These people are actually 

trying to get this right. They 

are coming in without a 

colonial imperialistic attitude, and rather 

with a pretty sophisticated understanding on 

the ground, with knowledge of the different 

strands of opinions in the Taliban, and with 

an idea of which religious leaders they can 

talk to in order to try to change and shift 

the position. So this polio vaccine is a long 

running campaign and has reached a pretty 

sophisticated level of understanding. The 

problem is really not with the attitudes 

of the people trying to get these children 

vaccinated; the problem is with this religious 

movement. 

KG: Do you think this will change any time 

soon? 

OBJ: No, I actually think it might be going 

the other way. The Taliban are going to the 

northwest of Pakistan. There has just been a 

dialogue with the government, which ended 

“ You can’t just go 

in with your own 

ideas and believe 

that everyone else 

agrees with them 

and shares them.” 

up with the Taliban basically having an even 

stronger position. They’ve been terrifying 

journalists within the past few weeks and 

months, and more and more people are more 

reluctant to criticize them. In fact, I think this 

terrible incident, where these poor people 

died, will be more prevalent. As more nurses 

and police go out, more will be killed. 

KG: Do you think that the ceasefire will help 

any? 

OBJ:The policy against the polio vaccines is 

still in place. Frankly, there have been over 10 

ceasefires before and none of 

them have been honored, so 

there is no reason to believe 

that this one will be honored 

either. And even if it were 

honored, I don’t think it 

will solve anything. All that 

happens is that people get 

killed, and if the Taliban are 

embarrassed, then they will 

just say that someone else 

did it. 

KG: So all this plays into a cultural competency 

situation, where journalists have to deal with 

different customs and beliefs in a place like 

Pakistan. There is naturally a correlation in 

medicine, especially in diverse cities like Los 

Angeles, where doctors have many people that 

lead their lives differently. So how do you as a 

journalist deal with this, and how do you think 

that doctors should deal with this? 

OBJ: It has to do with the correct attitude. 

You can’t just go in with your own ideas 

and believe that everyone else agrees with 

them and shares them. It does take a little 

bit of hard work to try to get journalists 

and doctors to actually understand what 

foreign cultures consist of. Too often 

Western journalists tend to go to developing 

countries with basically the UN Human 

Rights Charter in their back pocket and 

PAGE | 05 PAGE | 06

then when each country falls short of what 

they’ve read, they start yelling at the people 

for being inadequate and not matching the 

standards that they think is appropriate. I’ve 

never really liked that. It always seemed to 

me to be more productive for journalists to 

go abroad with an attitude of more to learn 

something rather than preach. If you do that, 

then you are actually going to have a more 

rewarding experience, and the work that you 

produce will be more interesting. I have seen 

journalists arrive in countries and completely 

misunderstand what is going on because 

they are seeing it basically through their own 

eyes. Similarly, and probably 

more importantly, doctors can 

go in and misread symptoms, 

and misread what people are 

going to do when you tell them 

to take a course of action to get 

themselves better. This could 

have a negative impact on their 

lives. It is very very important to 

be humble about this and have 

an open attitude about different 

countries. 

KG: Now I want to talk about healthcare 

systems. There have been studies that say the 

UK has one of the more efficient industrialized 

health care systems. As you know, the US is 

performing an overhaul of its health care 

system with ObamaCare. How would you 

compare the US and UK healthcare systems? 

OBJ: That’s quite a difficult question for an 

outsider to answer because the systems seem 

to be so different over different parts of the 

country. In the UK we have a unified system, 

the National Health Service, which was 

set up after the Second World War despite 

certain opposition from doctors. And as the 

minister who did it said, he showered the 

doctors with gold to get them to agree to 

it. The result is that we have a system that 

is taxpayer funded and completely free in 

terms of use. For instance, I had my son 

cut his hand and he needed a few stitches. 

When I took him in, no one even asked our 

names or address, and within an hour the 

stitches had been done and we were good to 

go. No questions asked, no forms filled, no 

fees paid. It is a remarkable system. There are 

problems with it though. Particularly with 

nursing standards at the moment, which 

are distressingly bad in some places. There 

are also other issues with the service. One 

of difficulties is that the politicians feel an 

obligation to have an exactly similar standard 

of care all over the country, which makes it 

really difficult to change anything because 

it has to change at the 

same speed everywhere. 

There are political 

problems managing 

it, but nonetheless it 

is something that no 

politician dares to attack 

in the UK. Mrs. Thatcher 

started nibbling away at 

its edges when she was 

in power and came up 

against a very strong 

resistance. Since then, any prime minister 

from any party has committed themselves to 

preserving the National Health Service and 

expanding its funding as much as they can. 

“ No questions 

asked, no forms 

filled, no fees paid. 

It is a remarkable 

system. ” 

KG: Do you think the US or UK can learn 

something from other nations’ health care 

systems? 

OBJ: Yes I think you can. I think you can 

learn to appreciate how lucky you are to 

have a system that works relatively well. In 

these systems that are less regulated and 

less formalized, for example in Pakistan and 

Egypt, it is my observation that hospitals 

are funded by the community, so you’ll 

have rich patients expected to give very 

substantial amounts of money for their 

treatment in order to pay for poorer patients. 

You have doctors working for very low 

salaries compared to what they could get in 

the private sector and other opportunities. 

There is a real sense of the public service of 

doctors; a community valuing what they do, 

supporting what they do, and paying for what 

they do. In that sense it is a rather inspiring 

thing to watch. These doctors are working 

in absolutely atrocious conditions, with 

inadequate facilities, and with the amount 

of people that they have to deal with. But 

still, there is something about it that these 

communities can be proud of. 

In Karachi recently, I met a doctor in the 

emergency facility where the walls were 

covered in bullet holes. She said that a 

gunfight broke out, and a person who was 

meant to be killed by a gangster operation 

showed up in the hospital and was followed 

in by the gunmen. She’s had the most 

atrocious situations. For example, a big 

bombing took place where the whole place 

was stacked with people in very serious 

medical conditions, and there she was in the 

midst of all this. She is a genuinely heroic 

woman in my view, keeping some level of 

sanity to the whole thing and dealing with 

these people with humanity, kindness, and 

proper professional care. And you see a 

woman like that and what an enormous 

contribution she’s making to her city. She 

comes from a family that all live abroad and 

she could go live abroad with them, but she 

chose not to. She said, ‘this is my city, I’m 

going to live here, and I’m going to make my 

contribution.’ The complaints that patients 

make in our setup are so aggravatingly petty 

when you compare them to what most people 

in this world cope with. 

KG: Many undergraduates and medical 

students today want to go abroad and 

volunteer, so would you say it’s important to 

do such work in countries with such obvious 

health care inadequacies? 

OBJ:People will have different levels of 

tolerance for different situations. In general 

terms, it is my experience that the reason 

most people don’t go to interesting places in 

this world is because they are slightly underconfident, 

slightly nervous about it, and not 

quite sure what they will meet when they 

get there. Quite often they play it safe. That’s 

fine and there is nothing wrong with that, 

but the worries are normally exaggerated. 

Journalists obviously have to report on what 

goes wrong in these countries and what 

is newsworthy, which tends to give a false 

picture of what it is actually like to live in 

some of these countries. If you look at even 

the most difficult places at the moment, like 

Baghdad, where there are many bombings 

and where it is genuinely difficult, millions 

of people go about their daily business. Some 

places are indeed too dangerous to go to. 

Like I wouldn’t recommend anyone go to 

Syria at the moment. A lot of places, though, 

that you would think are quite difficult are 

actually fine. And especially if you were in a 

medical setup with all doctors looking after 

you, you can be confident enough that you 

are going to be safe for the period you are 

there. Don’t forget that if it gets too crazy, 

you can always leave. So I think there is 

great value in going to these places. You are 

contributing to people that desperately need 

medical attention, and you are also learning 

something about what the realities of the 

world are actually like. 

KG: Do you have any last advice for 

undergraduates or medical students at USC? 

OBJ: I don’t feel confident to give advice, 

but I was delighted to come to USC. They 

seem like a diligent and committed bunch of 

students, so all I can say to them is that they 

seem to be in a very good place and best of 

luck! 

A SPECIAL THANK YOU TO OWEN BENNETT JONES 

PAGE | 07 PAGE | 08

BRAIN 

A PAINTING BY 

KRISTEN CHEN 

“No experience is entirely isolated to one 

individual and it is because of this, that 

people fight for one another all the time.” 

PAGE | 09 PAGE | 10

frayed 

ends CODY 

KANESHIRO 

My anxiety took root 

Like weeds between concrete slabs— 

One by one 

did their leaves curl and unfold, 

their colonies blossomed 

like galaxies and supernovas 

and twinkling stars 

until one day 

those constellations became 

Stinging nettles 

That clung 

to every inch of my perception, 

so that the only color I saw 

was the angry scribbles 

of a ballpoint pen on paper 

drawn over and over 

and over 

and over again 

so that the lines were like 

tangled cords 

of an earphone set 

(God, how my heart pounded 

at that sight) 

My anxiety burned 

like a second-place trophy — 

annoying, 

pitiful, 

maddening 

with an ache that throbbed 

at the soft corners of my temples. 

That Anxiety 

became the itch on my back 

I couldn’t scratch, 

The leftover residue 

of a sticker that wouldn’t 

come off, 

My bloody fingers and the 

nubs of my fingernails 

always haunting me 

until I was nothing more than 

an ugly amalgam 

of disquieting woes— 

the test I failed 

my weight 

that text 

an essay 

which shirt 

those books 

the second hand 

that wouldn’t stop moving: 

Anxiety meant 

that the only thing I saw 

when I looked into that mirror 

was that goddamn bundle of tangled earphones 

staring back at me, 

God, 

how my 

heart 

pounded 

at 

that sight. 

PAGE | 11 

PAGE | 12

Manic 

DEPRESSION 

non-fictional prose 

by Brendan J. 

Mauch 

“THE MOST 

MENTALLY 

DERANGED 

PEOPLE ARE CERTAINLY THOSE WHO SEE 

IN OTHERS INDICATIONS OF INSANITY 

THEY DO NOT NOTICE IN THEMSELVES.” 

—LEO TOLSTOY, THE DEVIL 

PAGE | 13 PAGE | 14

The doctor, whom I would 

be shadowing on Fridays 

over the course of three 

months, greeted me that psychiatric hospital. This 

first day, and we went to austerity was contrasted 

work without hesitation. with a façade of ivy-covered 

There was a stale air within brick walls and 

the confines of this 

immaculately groomed 

gardens and 

THERE 

greenbelts. We went 

outside where there 

was a long, serpentine 

pathway flanked by tall 

trees-whose benign 

ambience was akin to that 

of a country club. As the 

doctor gave me a brief 

history of the hospital, 

which was one of 

the longest-standing 

psychiatric facilities west 

of the Mississippi, we soon 

arrived at one of the locked 

units at the end of the 

pathway. A security camera 

hung above the chain-link 

fence and below was a 

sign that read: “High Risk of 

AWOL.” 

WAS A STALE AIR WITHIN THE CONFINES OF THIS PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL. 

PAGE | 15 PAGE | 16

PATIENT A 

The doctor gave 

me a compendious 

background on the 

patient: on flight 

from Los Angeles to 

Denver, the patient 

had a premonition 

that the plane was 

going to crash; 

pandemonium 

ensued, and they 

were unable to 

placate the man, 

so the pilots had 

no choice but to 

land the plane 

prematurely at 

another site. He 

was immured in 

the hospital by 

court order. They 

described the 

patient as having a 

“textbook” case of 

mania. The doctor 

THEY 

and I entered 

his room just as 

the patient had 

received a strong 

dose of lithium. 

The patient was 

a middle-aged 

homosexual man. 

He also was a 

self-proclaimed 

psychologist and 

psychic. After 

quizzing the doctor 

incessantly and 

trying to outwit 

him, he demanded 

that the doctor 

leave the room. 

This left him with 

me, one-on-one, 

and it was at this 

point I realized 

how comfortable 

I felt in any 

company, 

even 

amongst 

those many 

would presume to 

be “off their meds.” 

The patient was 

fond of me for 

some reason, and I 

was willing to listen 

to his delusional, 

glib babbling. For 

some ineffable 

reason, and having 

been reticent about 

my personal life, he 

was able to cognize 

that I was my 

mom’s favorite child 

and that she had 

died when I was a 

teenager. However, 

the patient soon 

convinced himself 

that I was Tom 

Cruise, and naturally 

surmised 

that I would know 

when Katie Holmes 

would be landing 

DESCRIBED THE PATIENT AS 

HAVING A “TEXTBOOK” CASE 

OF MANIA. 

her helicopter in 

the backyard. He 

asked to hold my 

hand and read 

my palm, which 

I allowed despite 

my reluctance. In 

his mercurial state, 

it didn’t take long 

before he refused 

to let go of my 

hand and tried to 

break my wrist. I 

had no choice but 

to forcefully remove 

him and calmly 

let myself out of 

the room. The 

patient obstinately 

followed me and 

was restrained 

against the wall by 

security guards and 

reprimanded by the 

staff. 

PAGE | 17 PAGE | 18

She was another middleaged 

patient with bipolar 

disorder and had been in a 

deep, debilitating state of 

depression as an inpatient 

at the hospital for about six 

months. She divorced her 

husband and had been cut 

off from her own children 

in the wake of a 

SHE 

manic episode in which she 

had been self-medicating, 

binge drinking and 

cheating on her husband. I 

have never seen a woman 

so full of regret. She was 

bed-ridden and prostrate 

with despair. In her 

thoughts and speech, and 

with every moment she 

spent in that bed in that 

room, she carried with 

her the weight of the past. 

I met with her for about 

an hour every week over 

the course of two months. 

Something about her—in 

her flashing yet unwinking 

stare—beckoned me to 

help. She looked at me in 

the same way my mom did 

in her months in a hospital 

bed. 

CARRIED WITH HER THE WEIGHT OF 

THE PAST. 

PATIENT B 

PAGE | 19 PAGE | 20

MY MOM 

My mom spent two days 

at this very hospital-the 

worst two days of her 

life, as she told me. This 

was in the same year 

that two patients died 

from overdose, 

BUT 

one bipolar patient 

committed suicide, and 

a 14-year old girl was 

raped in this hospital. 

My mom was sent there 

after receiving a number 

of surgeries and being 

dismissed by manifold 

doctors and specialists 

over the course of a year 

and a half. She was at 

this hospital because 

the consensus 

judgment amongst 

her doctors and family 

members was that she 

must be addicted to the 

narcotics (i.e. Dilaudid) 

she was receiving for 

her “psychosomatic” 

pain; in response, my 

mom indefatigably 

refused the Dilaudid 

and internalized the 

pain. This was the 

penultimate hospital 

she would be admitted 

to. I lost my mom soon 

after-but my faith in 

her never wavered. My 

mom was diagnosed 

post mortem with 

polyarteritis nodosa, 

a rare autoimmune 

disease that runs in 

my family. Her ability 

to endure, for me, 

was nothing short of 

martyrdom. 

MY FAITH IN HER NEVER WAVERED. 

Within a few weeks 

of visiting with 

Patient B, she walked 

out the doors of 

the hospital in a 

much more stable 

condition. I did 

likewise. 

PAGE | 21 PAGE | 22

Esmeraldas, Ecuador 

photograph by Lizbeth Medina 

USC Medlife’s Spring Break 2014 Trip. Rural small community living 

amidst nature. Impoverished, but happily living in their captivating 

and exuberant homeland. 

PAGE | 23 PAGE | 24

MEDLIFE TANZANIA & 

ECUADOR 

STUDENTS PARTICIPATED 

IN TRIAGE, DENTISTRY, 

EDUCATION, AND 

PHARMACY STATIONS WHILE 

SHADOWING HEALTH CARE 

PROFESSIONALS ABROAD. 

Photographs provided by USC 

Medlife 

PAGE | 25 PAGE | 26

I 

create artwork 

inspired by concepts of 

virality, biology, networks, 

group dynamics, and social 

trends that connect us all. My work is 

welded together by scientific inquiries, 

both intentionally and inevitably, 

because science is in everything. To 

neglect science in art removes a 

crucial aspect of our common 

human experience, which is 

typically what art aims to 

unify and promote. 

2014 

WO/ANDER 

explores the interplay 

of science and reality, both 

physical and psychological, 

by means of wandering and 

wondering. This whimsical collage 

depicts a fertile landscape, both 

real and imagined, to promote 

the limitlessness of 

exploration. 

“The 

universe is 

a self-organizing, 

intelligent, creative, 

trial-and-error learning, 

participatory, interactive, 

non-locally interconnected 

and evolving system.” - 

Edgar Mitchell, NASA 

Astronaut 

I 

do not believe 

that art is a tool to directly 

communicate scientific information, 

but rather, it can fill in the gaps that 

science leaves out. Unlike scientific 

theories, which tend to be linear, art can 

be divergent and expanding, which can 

inspire wonder about the world we live in. 

My creative process mimics the scientific 

method; I propose a question, generate 

visuals to ponder or test the question, 

and hopefully create a personal 

breakthrough or provide a new 

insight to viewers. 

Merging 

art and science 

can change us, 

maybe all of us. 

WO/ANDER 

Artwork by Richelle Gribble 

PAGE | 27 PAGE | 28

Second 

Hand 

Dementia 

BY 

WILLIAM 

BROCHINSKY 

Tell me. Is THIS all just an Atripla dream? 

Vivid recall of nocturnal screams, 

lingering traces of incontinence in my nares, 

physical toll of caregiving, 

on a body, a mind, spirit, a soul. 

The loss of choice. The erosion of a heart. 

Desire for release. Waiting for the end. 

Some days, are as easy as pie. 

Some days, she prays, “God, please let me die.” 

The costs of longevity. 

Healing scarified skin, MRSA invades my home. 

The stench of C-Diff, too. 

Her sensorial losses, 

overload for me. 

Dreams to nightmares, then back to dreams. 

When did swallowing become a risk? 

Monitoring viscosities. 

Attempting to undo, a kyphotic stance. 

Parkinson’s crept in. 

Shuffling, shuffling. 

Rigid and stiff. 

S- for scoliosis. 

The self-proclaimed, “Crooked Lady”. 

My home, where skill is love and love is skill. 

My life, my dreams on hold. My reality. 

PAGE | 29 PAGE | 30

Mother 

What a wonderful word. 

One never stops using it once learned. 

One can never quite release her. 

Time proves the bond, is ever so varied. 

Ma. 

The embodiment of benevolence, most years. 

Never to be replaced in heart, in soul. 

That is not the true objective of lovers, spouses and 

dates. 

Yet, is what is sought. 

Father. 

A less wonderful word, to me. 

Antithesis. 

He the original love. 

What is this son to do? 

Time has revealed parental struggles, efforts and 

scraps. 

The Y donor, Dad. 

Checked out early. 12-25-96 

A Christmas gift to us all. 

Dementia 

What a horrible word. 

We never forget it once learned. 

The devastation it creates. 

A shared void. 

Her vacant stares. 

The losses. 

What malice, 

in our pursuit of longevity. 

Pursued no more. 

Mother- Father –Dementia and ME 

Slow fading of a family. 

Who takes care of me? 

Mother-– 

Father- 

Dementia... 

and Me 

BY 

WILLIAM 

BROCHINSKY 

PAGE | 31 PAGE | 32

De Novo 

by Loranna Grigoryan and Jon Lee 

development, and the 

biochemical machinery 

responsible for this 

coordination. Dr. Segil told 

us this: “We are engaged in 

identifying and manipulating 

sensory progenitors/stem 

cells as potential targets 

for therapeutic approaches 

to hearing loss through 

regeneration. We have 

developed tools, in the form of 

cell-type specific markers and 

purification techniques, as well 

as cell culture methods 

for studying the behavior of 

sensory cell progenitors. We 

are currently using these tools 

to characterize the lineage 

and regenerative potential of 

specific cell populations within 

the postnatal inner ear.” 

Based on this, we decided 

to create a piece that reflects 

all of the above. Hence, we 

have the base/structure look 

like the DNA double helix, 

which holds the ears that are 

arranged like inner ear hair 

cells. 

We spoke with Dr. Segil from 

the Broad/CIRM Center 

for Regenerative Medicine 

and Stem Cell Research. Dr. 

Segil explained to us that 

their research is on embryonic 

development of the inner ear. 

The researchers are exploring 

the proliferation of cells, their 

growth and 

USC Roski + Stem Cell 

Stem cell research through the lens of art 

PAGE | 33 PAGE | 34

BOOKS WE RECOMMEND 

When the past catches up to him The book reads like a literary thriller 

At the center of Mountains Beyond What would you say about a woman 

— nearly destroying him — Marion with cancer as the protagonist. From Mountains stands Paul Farmer. 

who, despite stroke-induced paralysis 

must entrust his life to the two men he the Persian Queen Atossa, whose 

Doctor, Harvard professor, renowned crippling the entire left side of her 

thought he trusted least in the world: Greek slave cut off her malignant 

infectious-disease specialist, 

body, insists that she is whole and 

the surgeon father who abandoned breast, to the nineteenth-century 

anthropologist, the recipient of a strong--who even sees her left hand 

him and the brother who betrayed recipients of primitive radiation 

MacArthur “genius” grant, world-class reach out to grasp objects? Freud 

him. An unforgettable journey into one and chemotherapy to Mukherjee’s Robin Hood, Farmer was brought up in called it “denial”; neurologists call it 

man’s remarkable life, and an epic own leukemia patient, Carla, The 

a bus and on a boat, and in medical “anosognosia.” However it may be 

story about the power, intimacy, and Emperor of All Maladies is about the school found his life’s calling: to 

labeled, this phenomenon and others 

curious beauty of the work of healing people who have soldiered through diagnose and cure infectious diseases like it allow us peeks into other mental 

others. -Random Houce, Inc. 

fiercely demanding regimens in 

and to bring the lifesaving tools of worlds and afford us considerable 

order to survive—and to increase our modern medicine to those who need insight into our own. - Amazon Review 

PAGE | 35 

understanding of this iconic disease. them most. -Random House, Inc. 

-Scribner 

PAGE | 36

THE EDITORS 

KUSH GAUR 

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF 

ALISON YU 

PRODUCTION EDITOR 

JANIS YUE 

LAYOUT & DESIGN EDITOR 

MELISSA PORTILLO 

LAYOUT & DESIGN CONSULTANT 

LIZZIE JONES 

COPY & ACQUISITIONS EDITOR 

ANISH PAREKH 


SARTAAJ WALIA 


NICOLE LAU 

MARKETING EDITOR 

PAGE | 37 ART BY NICOLE LAU 

PAGE | 38

SUBMIT YOUR STORY AT 

USCHEALINGPROCESS.COM FOR OUR 4TH EDITION 

coming out spring 2014 

Contact us at uschealingprocess@gmail.com 

Produced with the support of 

PAGE | 39

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