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  • An Unconventional Christmas Gift

    On the frigid morning of Christmas day, I set out to a local assisted living to help organize activities for the residents like I always do. As I entered the inviting dining hall, the air was redolent with the tantalizing aroma of holiday dishes and the joyful tunes of 50’s Christmas songs. Christmas is a

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  • A Prescription of Bach Music

    Have you ever found yourself tossing and turning throughout the night? Maybe you have tried to search for a playlist of calming music. I certainly have. But what is it about this type of music that makes it effective for relaxation and cognitive function?  Research studies have shown that classical music has a positive effect

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  • Immortal Cells of the Mortal: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

    Many people have heard of the famous HeLa cells that helped advance medical research, from the development of the polio vaccine to research on zero gravity and cancer, but the story behind these cells is what is most fascinating to me. In general, a cell will die after a certain number of replications. Cancer cells,

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  • Dignified Butchers? The Butchering Art

    If you are curious about how medicine evolved alongside scientific discoveries, the eerie and illuminating book The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine by Lindsay Fitzharris is a must-read. It takes you, the curious readers, on a journey to a nineteenth-century hospital where you feel like you are experiencing the

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  • Youngest Stem Cell Donor at Johns Hopkins Hospital

    In a few hours, the tiny pink stem cells I donated were going to save another person’s life. For that, I, a 13-year-old, became the youngest stem cell donor at Johns Hopkins Hospital. For around six hours, I underwent a procedure called apheresis. For a fancy name, apheresis is actually pretty simple: blood is extracted

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