By Mia Gawith | Saturday, November 16, 2024
Inspiration
YUCH has come out with a new volunteer program, designed for the creative in mind and penmanship: “Hear Me, Heal Me.” Many hospice patients and families have a story they want to tell and remember. Even though we may only see patients once a week during our shifts, each one has a life as complex and vivid as our own.
When I first volunteered at the hospice, I quickly became close to one patient who stayed for many months. Every time I kept him company, he would talk to me for hours about stories which I found, to be frank, amazing. When he passed away, I decided to create a program where we could immortalize these types of stories. At the same time, hearing about his story gave me more passion and inspiration to continue on my pre-med journey. As such, I chose to name the program “Hear Me, Heal Me.” Hearing and healing is never just one direction–both patients and volunteers can grow together from sharing stories.
Details
Mission: We want to immortalize and hear the voices of patients, to empower their lifetime of stories, and to create the human connections essential for hospice care.
Volunteers will meet with patients and/or their families upon receiving a request for a life story. They will sit with them and listen to their story, crafting a unique narrative that will then be given to whomever the patients and their families wish. Volunteers may travel to the Connecticut Hospice, other hospice or nursing facilities, or to patient’s homes.
To learn more: If interested, please contact me at mia.gawith@yale.edu to receive more information and be added to the Teams.
Life Story: Michael Kashgarian
Below is a life story recently written by me for Dr. Michael Kashgarian, a truly inspiring professor emeritus and senior research scientist in pathology. This narrative, his identifying details, and the corresponding photograph have been published with his permission.
All of science is a story. Sometimes scientists sleuth around like detectives, knocking and hoping the universe answers. Other times, science feels magical, showcasing the wonders around us. It’s a story that’s confounding but simple, real but magnificent, and anything but ordinary. And for Dr. Michael Kashgarian, it’s the story of his life.
As a young child, Michael’s passion for science was nothing short of explosive. Sitting in front of his Gilbert Chemistry Set, his eyes gleamed as he poured vials of chemicals in test tubes. In the 1940s, the potential to change the world through chemistry was boundless. The DuPont Corporation’s slogan rang throughout his household: “better things for better living through chemistry.” He wanted to create things with his own hands, and chemistry seemed to be the perfect way to do so. Inspired, 12-year-old Michael sat in front of his chemistry set, diligently making black powder firecracker.
Several years later, Michael stood in front of a science classroom, facing the rest of the students as he sunk his hands into newspaper sludge. “This extra credit’s going to be a cakewalk,” he thought. He passed the sludge through solutions and funnels, waiting for it to be transformed into a string of rayon. But his eyes grew wide with shock as the thread kept snapping and cracking. It was only afterward that he realized he had accidentally synthesized dynamite.
There was something remarkable about transforming a handful of chemicals into something completely novel, and it was this curiosity that guided Michael’s future. When he went to NYU for college, he decided to double major in chemistry and philosophy. After all, they are as interdigitated as you can get. While one deals with the physical and the other with the metaphysical, both are about the “thinkers.” They force you to ponder about the world, to reach new and often surprising conclusions about life.
Even when Michael opted for medicine, he always returned to the cellular and molecular aspects of biology. It was never enough to just learn about a disease; it was always about understanding the mechanism behind it. Why do our bodies work the way we do? How does our internal chemistry transform us? As an undergraduate, he wanted to look at disease in new ways, understanding what we are made up of and how it works in our bodies. As an undergraduate, he worked with a professor to take ultra-magnified images of biological structures using electron microscopy. Later, with a degree from the Yale School of Medicine and a fellowship in Germany under his belt, Michael became a renal pathologist—someone who studies the chemistry and disease pathways of the kidneys.
Over the course of his career, Michael never lost the wonder and curiosity that had brought him into science. He has produced over 300 papers with his colleagues, but it is a never-ending learning game. “The more you observe, the more you learn, and the more inquisitive you get,” Michael told me with a chuckle. After Michael retired, he became an emeritus professor and taught a course at Yale where incoming freshmen could explore different fields of science. He loves to teach and interact with younger generations, watching their potential blossom as they explore the newest frontiers of science.
For future scientists, Michael’s advice is to never forget your beginnings. Science is about facing newer borders, some of which are easier to get past than others. You might do something 100 times over in search of an answer, but it’s discovering it on the 101st time that makes all the difference. It’s about having fun, being curious and possessing wonder. All of science is an incredible story about us, but after talking to Michael, I knew his was one-of-a-kind.