Ad Anima embarks on its maiden voyage at a unique time in medical history. In the shadow of a global pandemic, medicine welcomes distance in a manner and to a degree that it never has before. From routine healthcare visits conducted with miles between patients to online lectures leaving classrooms empty and beyond, space is an evolving aspect of our work and lives.

We founded Ad Anima because we wanted to explore the spaces we don’t always get to see ourselves. We wanted to give healthcare practitioners and trainees the opportunity to tell the stories that aren’t always told. We wanted to listen, and we weren’t disappointed.

Many more stories than we could put on paper landed before our eyes,written by dedicated physicians, nurses, medical trainees, and others from across the nation. This volume holds just four of these stories which moved us: we could not be more excited to share them with you.

I could not have anticipated the immense engagement that followed my proposal for Ad Anima just over a year ago. It is the first free-to-access, free-to-publish, nonfiction literary medical journal affiliated with a university. I merely assumed that supply was low because demand was low. But as the dedicated authors, editors, designers, and media contributors for Ad Anima often reminded me, there is something delightful in being wrong, in overlooking a hidden gem only to have your gaze redirected—re-centered—to what was always there.

All My Best,

Rajeev DuttaEditor-in-Chief

Acknowledgements: We are grateful to the many supporters at the University of California, Irvine who have made Ad Anima a reality, including (but not limited to) Juliet McMullin, Kathleen Powers, Sarah O’Dell, Clifford Danza, Jennifer Tan, Aaron Frank, and Leonora Naser-Saravia, all of whom played a role in the inception of Ad Anima.