In just a few weeks, I will officially be an MD. As a resident, I will provide medical care to sick patients, while supervised by senior physicians who will help hone my skills. It will be an interesting, challenging time in my life. It is one that gives me a little bit of anxiety,…
Author: Steve Server
Steve Server is an MD candidate at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. He is an incoming psychiatry resident at the University of California, Los Angeles. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago in History and the Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science in 2022. His dissertation, titled "A Test of Conscience: Navigating Mexico's Servicio Médico-Social (1935-1940)" explores the emotional dimensions of medical students' professional development while on rural service. His research interests include medicine and public health in modern Latin America; history, theory, and practice of psychiatry; history and theory of medical ethics and the medical humanities; medical education; medical epistemology.
Let’s teach doctors there are more ways of knowing
Almost three years ago exactly, I published an essay here on Synapsis titled “In Defense of Humoralism.” In it—to briefly summarize—I highlighted how common ways in which patients understand the etiology of their illnesses and formulate folk treatments can often be understood as humoralistic. Consequently, physicians dismiss these ideas as superstition, as they do not…
Finding Sick: Dispatches from the Emergency Department
Steve Server// At about 3:30 am during my first week in the Emergency Department, I realized that the space was different from anywhere else in the hospital. Though it was my second night shift in a row, I wasn’t tired. Or if I was tired, there were too many signals, too many sights and sounds and feelings…
Medicine’s martial metaphors: “Fighting the good fight”
Steve Server // In 1977’s Illness as Metaphor, Susan Sontag offered a prescription for the “most truthful way of regarding illness—and the healthiest way of being ill” (3). As Sontag noted, some of the ways in which humans make meaning on “the night-side of life” may hamper our ability to suffer in a “healthy” way (3). “As long…
Our Olympian Fables: On difficult personalities
Steve Server// The Perfectionist. The Eccentric. The Paranoiac. The Loner. The Mercurial Partner. The Serial Dater. The Sociopath. The Narcissist. The Coquette. The Milquetoast. Archetypes of difficult personalities populate our books, our movies, and our TV shows. Where do they come from? How do we understand their social function? It is worth considering the extent to which these archetypes are borne or at least informed…
Pain is complex. We should treat it that way.
Steve Server// “What sort of pain is it?” Often, when health care providers inquire after patients’ pain, we get a sort of flummoxed look. In response, we sometimes get a confused chuckle. As first year medical students, we are trained to differentiate sorts of pain: crampy vs. electrical/burning; dull vs. sharp; localized vs. radiating. As our medical…
Brave New World: Cyberpunk 2077’s novel depiction of mental illness
Steve Server // By now, many have heard of Cyberpunk 2077, even those not normally within the gamer-orbit. The early rollout of the game has been plagued by game-breaking glitches and unexpectedly poor graphics and performance. Beyond the controversial rollout—and underneath the typical blood and guts associated with violent role-playing games—Cyberpunk 2077 has something unique to say about mental…
Amphetamine and its discontents
Steve Server // Nicolas Rasmussen. On Speed: The Many Lives of Amphetamine (New York: New York University Press, 2008). It is a principle of pharmacology that one can never have on-target, desired effects without some off-target side effects. Amphetamine is no exception to that rule. The drug leads to higher levels of dopamine and norepinephrine…
There’s more to cancer treatment than survival.
Steve Server // Cancer is conceptually as well-circumscribed as a tumor feels when you palpate it under the skin during a routine exam. Its hardness imprints itself upon your sensorium, and then upon your psyche, as you feel the burden of the unpleasant truth that must soon make itself known. Dense, solid, almost like a…
“Without a patient for a text”: Medical Education in the Age of COVID
Steve Server // “The Hospital is the only proper College in which to rear a true disciple of Aesculapius” Dr. John Abernethy It had been a strange few days. I had been pulled from my original team in general neurology to join the stroke service for the sake of “social distancing.” The neurology work room—which…