Writing is Medicine When I was a girl, I dreamed of becoming a physician. Maybe, because of my frequent ills and maladies, the smells and rhythms of the hospital became familiar, comforting, even intoxicating to me. I wanted to become a surgeon. My admiration became a kind of secret kinship to these men who cut me and excavated my young body and healed me until the next episode. I gave them my love along with my organs. By my graduation from college, I knew that the relentles