
Certified Listener Poet,
Cohort 1 Fall 2021
Mindy Shah grew up near the shores of Lake Erie, in Ohio, and spent much of her childhood tramping around the woods and writing stories she seldom finished. After starting a career in creative writing, an experience of being a patient herself led her to change direction; she completed a postbaccalaureate premedical program at Bryn Mawr College and went on to study medicine, ultimately training in internal medicine, geriatrics, and hospice and palliative medicine.
Mindy lives in Wisconsin with her spouse and daughter. She works full time in medicine alongside her work with TGLP.
“The fact of my life is a miracle,” she told me. Living with multiple chronic illnesses, this patient spoke to me of her journey with alopecia. Of how, in witnessing her body transformed by the condition, she continues to move at once through grief and reclamation.
“I can’t see a future outside of our relationship,” she tells me, “but I also can’t see a future outside of residency.”
“I always believe, no matter what the doctor says, that I will be cured,” she says as her sister sits next to her.