September 6, 2021
Look we were so young
Times simple so much fun
Energy we felt so free
Anything in our destiny
Now have crinkles near my eyes
Smiling and a bit more wise
Older in body but not in mind
A child at heart I am designed
Jenelle Jindal, MD
“Picture from a recent visit to my alma mater Stanford π²π€”
Jenelle Jindal writes poems the way a physician works toward a diagnosis: through close attention to what presents itself. Her work uses the compressed lyric to examine the craft of medicine, asking how we describe, teach, and measure what resists easy instrumentation in care. At its deepest, that attention becomes presence, a quality both poetry and medicine demand but cannot fully teach. She studied biological sciences and linguistics at Stanford before training in medicine and neurology at Yale and at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital.
The Poet Doctor