Tiffany Chan shares how her journey from a small-town family optometry practice to high-intensity academic medicine at Johns Hopkins was transformed when her mother suffered a major brain bleed, drawing her back home to care for her family. Ultimately, her mother's recovery, later passing, and the deep relationships her parents built with their patients helped Tiffany realize that the meaningful, community-rooted life she truly valued was in Grass Valley, where she now continues the family practice and honors her mother's legacy.

Tiffany originally performed this story at Medicine Story: on the meanings of healing, a live storytelling event produced by Dr. Rebecca George from the Sierra Valley Health Center in Nevada City, CA in 2025. This event was generously funded by the California Health Care Foundation, as a part of our Satellites Program.

The Nocturnists is made possible by the California Medical Association and donations from listeners like you.

This episode of Stories from the World of Medicine is sponsored by The Physicians Foundation. and our friends at the podcast Unleashed: Redesigning Health Care.

Physician and writer Frances Southwick tells a deeply personal story about love and illness. Growing up queer in rural Colorado, Frances experiences mysterious episodes of sudden paralysis triggered by intense emotion, beginning in adolescence and persisting for decades without a diagnosis. After years of shame, misattribution, and near-abandonment of dreams, Frances falls in love with Judith, builds a life with her, and finally receives a diagnosis of type 1 narcolepsy with cataplexy—explaining why moments of beauty, joy, and love literally caused collapse.

Frances originally performed this story at Medicine Story: on the meanings of healing, a live storytelling event produced by Dr. Rebecca George from the Sierra Valley Health Center in Nevada City, CA in 2025. This event was generously funded by the California Health Care Foundation, as a part of our Satellites Program.

The Nocturnists is made possible by the California Medical Association and donations from listeners like you.

This episode of Stories from the World of Medicine is sponsored by The Physicians Foundation. and our friends at the podcast Unleashed: Redesigning Health Care.

Community health workers Alicia Ashorn and Anthony Thigpen share their personal stories—Alicia's journey through addiction and recovery, and Anthony's path through grief, transformation, and reentry work—and how these experiences shape their care for people returning from incarceration. In the conversation that follows, they reflect on the power of storytelling, the emotional complexity of supporting clients in crisis, and the wisdom required to balance compassion with boundaries. Through vivid anecdotes from the field, they illuminate the essential yet often unseen role of community health workers as bridges between the clinic and the community, offering trust, dignity, and hope to people navigating systems that routinely fail them.

Alicia and Anthony originally told their stories at Journeys of Healing: Stories of Resilience and Transformation, a storytelling event presented by Transitions Clinic Network in Los Angeles in 2025. The event was made possible by a generous grant from the California Health Care Foundation in support of our program, The Nocturnists Satellites.

The Nocturnists is made possible by the California Medical Association and donations from listeners like you.

This episode of Stories from the World of Medicine is sponsored by The Physicians Foundation. and our friends at the podcast Unleashed: Redesigning Health Care.