Welcome from the Guest Editors

We are excited to help in welcoming our readers to the Spring 2021 issue ofAuxocardia. Our theme for this issue is “Recovery.” As recently graduated medical students, we have frequently experienced recovery in the context of patient care – whether we were taking care of a patient recovering from her most recent bout of chemotherapy, a veteran recovering from a heart failure exacerbation, or a child recovering from surgery.

However, the experience of recovery is far broader than physical illness; recovery can encompass the mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical dimensions of an individual’s hardship. It is often non-linear and at times, can be messy and challenging. Certainly, some of us may be in some state of recovery in the context of this current and ongoing pandemic. In all of this complexity, we believe that the works featured in this issue of Auxocardia have truly been able to capture and illuminate the experience of recovery.

We are humbled to be invited as guest-editors for this issue and grateful to be surrounded by a community of peers that treasure the value of the humanities in medicine. We are delighted for you to read the Spring 2021 issue of Auxocardia and hope that you enjoy it as much as we do!

Sangri Kim, MD

Gavisha Waidyaratne, MD