Hands That Heal

October 2025 | Vol. 69, No. 3
Written by Jina Park, PCOM OMS-II

Once,
a breath caught in my chest,
pain shooting between my ribs–
My classmate found a tender point,
Held it still through counterstrain–
Until the tension softened,
And my breath eased.

Later,
stress tightly clenched my jaw,
My TMJ grinding through restless nights–
I flipped through my textbook,
And tried a Muscle Energy Technique learned in lab–
Fingers guiding the hinge and release along my TMJ.
The ache softened,
Like a locked door that opened.

Look what I found

October 2025 | Vol. 69, No. 3
Written by Richard Donze, DO, MPH

Ron stopped by after cleaning
out his OR locker he’d gone
to 3 days a week 2 years ago
but his last case was today

“Look what I found” an older
logo’ed set of scrubs a dog-
eared Arnold Henry’s Extensile

Exposure from the orthopod’s
canon a tableside photo of his
first total joint in “my Dave

suit” the now stale reference
to the time-traveling whoosh-
breathing HAL-quieting pro-

tagonist’s outfit in 2001:A
Space Odyssey but at the 1972
Grant’s Atlas I twinned it with