An entry to the 2025 Irish Epilepsy League writing competition was from medical student Geneviève Belanger. Speaking about her poem Geneviève said:
I am an incoming third-year medical student at Trinity College Dublin with extensive family history of various neurological disorders, including epilepsy, Parkinson's disease and dementia. I wrote Where Medicine Begins to highlight the emotional dichotomy of being a caregiver and medical trainee.
This poem reflects the difficulty of witnessing a loved one’s seizure while grappling limitation of early clinical training. I hope to convey greater need for compassion in medicine and remembered that patients are not just cases but people. Thank you for your time in reading my submission, I hope you enjoy it.
You can read Geneviève's entry in full below...
Where Medicine Begins
I was cleaning the kitchen when I saw it
your neck twisted back,
eyes locked somewhere past me,
arms flailing like you were thrashing in the ocean
I ran.
Not as a medical student.
As someone who loves you
“Call 911!” I shout
but my training served me little here
The terminology spun in my head
tonic-clonic, focal with impaired awareness, lamotrigine
I’d listened attentively in class,
discussed patient cases like they were puzzles,
treatment, follow-up, discharge summaries
But nothing
no lecture,
no workshop,
no exam,
prepares you for
the violence of the body
when it forgets itself
That moment split our world in two.
Before: we had excitement, laughter and plans,
After:
no driving,
no swimming,
no spontaneous plans.
The clinical language I once found fascinating
now tasted bitter.
I didn’t see “epilepsy”
I saw your flailing body
I didn’t ask, “which drugs do we choose”
I thought of how you trembled
and cried
when they took your licence
This isn’t just a condition
It’s a life shattered into a million pieces
And now in every patient I see,
I carry you with me,
not as a case,
but as a reminder
that medicine begins
in the compassion of our hearts.
To others it may always be just a seizure
A medical diagnosis
But to us
It’s a silence we fight to break.