Tiffany Bystra, MS, OTR/L is a faculty instructor in Occupational Therapy at The University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences in Austin, TX. She graduated from Western Michigan University, where she received her BS in Interdisciplinary Health Services and an MS in Occupational Therapy. While practicing at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, she earned a Certificate of Professional Achievement in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University. Her passions and research interests reside in psychosocial oncology and cancer survivorship, pathographies of complex medical care (namely critical care), health humanities, and mental health advocacy. Through this poem, she hopes to illuminate how respite and healing can be found in the cadence of a poem, in the tenderness of a musical phrase, and in the nuanced brushstrokes of a canvas, for patients and providers alike.
Tiffany Bystra reflects on the peculiar path of her illness journey, which has led to a trail of recovery that feels both disappointing and thrilling. In this powerful and humbling poem, she provides rich insight into how it feels to taste both the sweetness and the tartness of life in the same moment.