Hello dear readers! I apologize for the lengthy hiatus and I hope that there are still some of you out there checking this blog for updates. Your patience has been rewarded.
So I completed a month at Einstein Hospital in the Bronx which was literally a drink from the fire hydrant that is obstetrics. I think I averaged five hours of sleep each night and often went a whole day having consumed only dry cereal, tea, lots of coffee, and ice cream. No wonder I was constipated. Anyway aside from the toll on my sanity and personal well-being, I also got to do some pretty exciting stuff. By the end of the rotation I was delivering babies entirely on my own with the attending watching over my shoulder. It was an odd experience the first time I delivered a baby without anyone else's hands guiding mine - it was bizarre that I knew what to do without even really thinking about it. This culminated in a precipitous delivery which I ended up doing with only a nurse and a third year medical student to assist me. That was kind of a trip. Terrifying and thrilling at the same time. I rode on that adrenaline buzz for at least 48 hours after the fact.
Now I'm beginning a month at Beth Israel Medical Center in downtown Manhattan which is going to be a very different experience. The ob/gyn service isn't quite as chaotic for one, since women in Manhattan have a range of excellent hospitals at which to receive their care, whereas Einstein-Montefiore is really the best place in the Bronx to give birth, hence EVERY SINGLE PREGNANT WOMAN was there. Also, the residents are much more chill and not as tweaked out as the Einstein residents are. Don't get me wrong - I had a blast with the folks I worked with last month, and even made friends with one or two of them outside of work. But when I think about how I want to spend four years of my life in a rigorous training program, there are nuances which I have to consider.
New York City itself fits me like a glove. People here, contrary to popular belief, are not cranky and obnoxious. I have found New Yorkers to be content, down-to-earth people who don't put on airs and mire themselves in superficial bullshit. I also love the diversity of this place - I've never been someone who walks around feeling my "brown-ness" every second of every day, but when I'm put in a place with lots of other brown people, I feel myself becoming more relaxed and at ease involuntarily. All that being said, I will always be a Bostonian at heart. Go Sox.
In a lovely pause from the madness, I had the honor of reading a poem at Marisa and Ed's wedding in August. I chose my favorite love poem of all time, "Soneto XVII" by Pablo Neruda. The wedding was easily the most beautiful and enjoyable celebration I have ever attended and I am so lucky to know these two fabulous people and to be a part of their lives.
I am feeling quite burned out though. I will be glad when this rotation is over so that I can take a break from the intensity of impressing everyone and going the extra mile. As soon as I get home on October 20th, I plan on sleeping until my back aches from molding into the mattress. (But only after we celebrate Raju's 21st birthday, at long last.)
Monday, September 24, 2007
Sunday, July 29, 2007
It's going to be a good year
Today I am officially 26 years old so I would like to take this opportunity to reflect a bit, and share my thoughts about the next 12 months which will be a time of tremendous transition and discovery.
For the longest time, I had this idea, this vision, that my life would become complete by the time I graduated from medical school. I used to think that turning 25 would be like flipping a switch and all my dreams and goals would fall into place. By the time I started medical school, I was doggedly set on this notion, fully convinced that it was the best path for me, indeed, the path for which I was destined. In this spirit, I threw myself into a relationship with someone who was far from the ideal life partner I was certain he was meant to be. I told myself that if he wasn't "the one," then my perfect little plan would start crumbling. So I stuck it out for as long as I could - until our jokes about living together and getting married started to become less jocular and more serious. I realized at that point that if I was to adhere to my lifelong imagined future, then clearly I should marry this person. I also realized that if I did marry him, I was certain to be miserable and unfulfilled for the rest of my life. And that had not figured into my idealistic plan.
So, at the tender age of 23, I overhauled my entire approach to my future, my plans, my goals. To myself. It became clear to me that 25 was no magic number. Looking around me, I saw people my age who, like me, were making major life decisions on the basis of fear, uncertainty, and insecurity. I vowed that I would not let myself fall victim to the lure of the path of least resistance. Armed with this new resolution and self-assurance, I did something that the "old me" wouldn't have even considered doing. I took a year off after my third year of medical school. Since I had become more attuned to my innermost yearnings, I knew that I was not ready to graduate and start an internship in 2007. The very thought of it filled me with fear and anxiety, not excitement and anticipation. This major deviation from the beaten path was one of the best things I have ever done for myself. Over the course of my year off, I was able to examine my past, present, and future without the external pressures of school and my peers. I was also able to reaffirm all the reasons I went to medical school in the first place. I attended weddings of fellow classmates with nothing but peace in my heart, whereas the "old me" would have felt sadness and a sense of failure that I was not having a wedding of my own.
I am now 11 months away from becoming a physician. When I ponder that fact, I am still plagued with fear and anxiety. But those feelings give way to a greater sense of anticipation and fulfillment that I have come so far and am truly ready to take this next step in my career. As for my personal life, I have never felt more content and enriched by my relationships with my family and dearest friends. I feel complete at this moment, not because of any outward symbols of success, such as a graduate degree and a husband, but because I have decided to feel complete with what I have, since what I have is priceless. I don't know where I will go after graduation, or who I will meet, or what direction my career will take. But I know that, no matter what, I will be true to myself, so I have nothing to fear.
For the longest time, I had this idea, this vision, that my life would become complete by the time I graduated from medical school. I used to think that turning 25 would be like flipping a switch and all my dreams and goals would fall into place. By the time I started medical school, I was doggedly set on this notion, fully convinced that it was the best path for me, indeed, the path for which I was destined. In this spirit, I threw myself into a relationship with someone who was far from the ideal life partner I was certain he was meant to be. I told myself that if he wasn't "the one," then my perfect little plan would start crumbling. So I stuck it out for as long as I could - until our jokes about living together and getting married started to become less jocular and more serious. I realized at that point that if I was to adhere to my lifelong imagined future, then clearly I should marry this person. I also realized that if I did marry him, I was certain to be miserable and unfulfilled for the rest of my life. And that had not figured into my idealistic plan.
So, at the tender age of 23, I overhauled my entire approach to my future, my plans, my goals. To myself. It became clear to me that 25 was no magic number. Looking around me, I saw people my age who, like me, were making major life decisions on the basis of fear, uncertainty, and insecurity. I vowed that I would not let myself fall victim to the lure of the path of least resistance. Armed with this new resolution and self-assurance, I did something that the "old me" wouldn't have even considered doing. I took a year off after my third year of medical school. Since I had become more attuned to my innermost yearnings, I knew that I was not ready to graduate and start an internship in 2007. The very thought of it filled me with fear and anxiety, not excitement and anticipation. This major deviation from the beaten path was one of the best things I have ever done for myself. Over the course of my year off, I was able to examine my past, present, and future without the external pressures of school and my peers. I was also able to reaffirm all the reasons I went to medical school in the first place. I attended weddings of fellow classmates with nothing but peace in my heart, whereas the "old me" would have felt sadness and a sense of failure that I was not having a wedding of my own.
I am now 11 months away from becoming a physician. When I ponder that fact, I am still plagued with fear and anxiety. But those feelings give way to a greater sense of anticipation and fulfillment that I have come so far and am truly ready to take this next step in my career. As for my personal life, I have never felt more content and enriched by my relationships with my family and dearest friends. I feel complete at this moment, not because of any outward symbols of success, such as a graduate degree and a husband, but because I have decided to feel complete with what I have, since what I have is priceless. I don't know where I will go after graduation, or who I will meet, or what direction my career will take. But I know that, no matter what, I will be true to myself, so I have nothing to fear.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Home is where the heart is
Take this cool quiz to find the cities in the U.S. best suited to your individual preferences. Here's my list, with the cities I have already checked out in bold:
Baltimore, Maryland
Honolulu, Hawaii
Little Rock, Arkansas
Hartford, Connecticut
Boston, Massachusetts
Providence, Rhode Island
New Haven, Connecticut
Portland, Oregon
Las Vegas, Nevada
Charleston, West Virginia
Frederick, Maryland
San Francisco, California
San Jose, California
San Diego, California
Washington, District of Columbia
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Worcester, Massachusetts
Orange County, California
Oakland, California
Gaithersburg, Maryland
Cape Cod, Massachusetts
Shreveport-Bossier City, Louisiana
Alexandria, Louisiana
Not sure how Boston and Worcester both got on there, considering that I love the former and loathe the latter... But of the other cities I've visited on the list, I have to say I concur. Outside of the U.S., I could see myself living in London and San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Baltimore, Maryland
Honolulu, Hawaii
Little Rock, Arkansas
Hartford, Connecticut
Boston, Massachusetts
Providence, Rhode Island
New Haven, Connecticut
Portland, Oregon
Las Vegas, Nevada
Charleston, West Virginia
Frederick, Maryland
San Francisco, California
San Jose, California
San Diego, California
Washington, District of Columbia
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Worcester, Massachusetts
Orange County, California
Oakland, California
Gaithersburg, Maryland
Cape Cod, Massachusetts
Shreveport-Bossier City, Louisiana
Alexandria, Louisiana
Not sure how Boston and Worcester both got on there, considering that I love the former and loathe the latter... But of the other cities I've visited on the list, I have to say I concur. Outside of the U.S., I could see myself living in London and San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Friday, July 20, 2007
How I Spent My Summer Vacation
Yes, I realize it has been quite a while since I last updated my blog, and I apologize to my faithful readers. All three of them. :-) But, in my defense, quite a lot has happened in the last few weeks, such that blogging was relegated to the dusty corners of my brain, to be pulled out and cleaned up as time allowed. So I present for your consideration the main highlights of late:
I wrapped up my stint at MGH, which ended in a whirlwind of training the new staff, bidding farewells/see-you-laters to my co-workers and supervisors, and making sure all loose ends were addressed. It was a great year, but definitely confirmed my place in clinical medicine, and not in research.
Along the theme of whirlwinds, my mother and I traveled to India in the last week of June to deal with some ongoing family drama. We're trying to sell her family home and it would be a lot simpler if her brother wasn't the psychotic freak that he is. The whole thing has devolved into legalities and contracts, and my uncle refuses to communicate directly with my mother so they have two lawyers and a real estate broker relaying messages back and forth. Aside from that, the trip was great. Delhi is a lot cleaner than it was three years ago and the weather was quite pleasant since the monsoons have started. My aunt, Nandini, is a riot and it's always great to see her. And we got plenty of retail therapy amidst our stressful meetings and jet-lagged naps. Actually, the jetlag wasn't that bad because I took melatonin to put myself on IST and then back onto EST when we returned. Also, we took a direct flight on Continental from Newark to Delhi, which perhaps counterintuitively, was far more comfortable and stress-free than stopping in Paris or London. After a while you forget you're on a plane and you just nap, eat, watch movies, and walk around as if you were in a tiny house. Seriously.
I have re-entered the wards, working at Memorial Hospital in high-risk obstetrics. It has been incredible. I really missed being in the hospital so it feels great to be back and having real patient interaction. I also forgot how much fun the OR is! This past week I worked the night shift since students typically get to do more and there's more time for teaching. It was exhausting but a great experience. I had one difficult night during which I assisted in the delivery of a 24-week old baby who is currently in the NICU, the delivery of deceased twins who had died at 16 weeks in utero, and a very easy delivery of a perfect baby boy after which the placenta resolutely remained in the uterus, resulting in an OR procedure to remove it. I chose Ob/Gyn because it is on the whole a happy specialty: healthy women with healthy babies. This has been my first exposure to the small but intense area of obstetrics when things go wrong. And the reality is that when things go wrong in a place where things usually go right, it can be devastatingly sad.
Finally, I have begun the application process for residency! There's this whole online rigmarole called ERAS which is used to enter all your information and then you send it off to all the programs you're interested in. My goal is to have it sent off by September. The biggest hurdle is writing my personal statement. I have a rough draft but it's so hard writing something that isn't cheesy/trite/dumb. So I'm putting it aside for now and will come back to it with a fresh outlook in a bit.
Well, that's it in a nutshell. I have one more week of high-risk obstetrics and then I switch to gynecologic oncology which will be a very different patient population and workday. Hopefully I'll have more time to blog and catch up with friends in general. In the meantime, please accept my apologies for being incommunicado. I pray that things are on a downswing...
I wrapped up my stint at MGH, which ended in a whirlwind of training the new staff, bidding farewells/see-you-laters to my co-workers and supervisors, and making sure all loose ends were addressed. It was a great year, but definitely confirmed my place in clinical medicine, and not in research.
Along the theme of whirlwinds, my mother and I traveled to India in the last week of June to deal with some ongoing family drama. We're trying to sell her family home and it would be a lot simpler if her brother wasn't the psychotic freak that he is. The whole thing has devolved into legalities and contracts, and my uncle refuses to communicate directly with my mother so they have two lawyers and a real estate broker relaying messages back and forth. Aside from that, the trip was great. Delhi is a lot cleaner than it was three years ago and the weather was quite pleasant since the monsoons have started. My aunt, Nandini, is a riot and it's always great to see her. And we got plenty of retail therapy amidst our stressful meetings and jet-lagged naps. Actually, the jetlag wasn't that bad because I took melatonin to put myself on IST and then back onto EST when we returned. Also, we took a direct flight on Continental from Newark to Delhi, which perhaps counterintuitively, was far more comfortable and stress-free than stopping in Paris or London. After a while you forget you're on a plane and you just nap, eat, watch movies, and walk around as if you were in a tiny house. Seriously.
I have re-entered the wards, working at Memorial Hospital in high-risk obstetrics. It has been incredible. I really missed being in the hospital so it feels great to be back and having real patient interaction. I also forgot how much fun the OR is! This past week I worked the night shift since students typically get to do more and there's more time for teaching. It was exhausting but a great experience. I had one difficult night during which I assisted in the delivery of a 24-week old baby who is currently in the NICU, the delivery of deceased twins who had died at 16 weeks in utero, and a very easy delivery of a perfect baby boy after which the placenta resolutely remained in the uterus, resulting in an OR procedure to remove it. I chose Ob/Gyn because it is on the whole a happy specialty: healthy women with healthy babies. This has been my first exposure to the small but intense area of obstetrics when things go wrong. And the reality is that when things go wrong in a place where things usually go right, it can be devastatingly sad.
Finally, I have begun the application process for residency! There's this whole online rigmarole called ERAS which is used to enter all your information and then you send it off to all the programs you're interested in. My goal is to have it sent off by September. The biggest hurdle is writing my personal statement. I have a rough draft but it's so hard writing something that isn't cheesy/trite/dumb. So I'm putting it aside for now and will come back to it with a fresh outlook in a bit.
Well, that's it in a nutshell. I have one more week of high-risk obstetrics and then I switch to gynecologic oncology which will be a very different patient population and workday. Hopefully I'll have more time to blog and catch up with friends in general. In the meantime, please accept my apologies for being incommunicado. I pray that things are on a downswing...
Monday, June 11, 2007
Something in the water?
Is it just me, or is everyone and their mother getting engaged or married of late? I say "and their mother" in all seriousness because given the exponentially expanding group of friends I have who are declaring their eternal love for their partners, I wouldn't even bat an eye if among them, one of their mothers did indeed decide to jump on that bandwagon herself.
Don't get me wrong. I love weddings. This past weekend I had a wonderful time at the very beautiful wedding of my dear friend, Matt, to his lovely longtime girlfriend, Michelle. I had never been to a Catholic ceremony, and I must say, it was truly a spiritual experience. I am of the mind that weddings should be quite ceremonious and spiritual so that the couple can truly experience the intensity of the promise they are making to one another. No offense to my Atheist/Agnostic friends, but I can't imagine getting married in a completely secular ceremony, simply because to me, love itself is a miracle and a gift for which the universe should be thanked. On a more practical note, I think I'm going to have to start a Wedding Guest Fund or something because these people will put me in the poorhouse, what with the gift, the dress, the shoes, the hotel, etc... I'm complaining, but all in good humor. I am honored to be able to attend so many beautiful weddings and witness true love and romance. For those keeping score at home, in the past year I have attended two weddings (merely drops in the vast ocean of weddings flooding the UMass Medical School Class of 2007 in the last few weeks), and could have gone to a third, had that pesky USMLE Step 2 nonsense not gotten in the way last autumn.
All right, enough of that mushy hippie mumbo-jumbo. Mazel tov to my dear friend, Lisa, from college on her engagement! I've never met the lucky man, but he better know how lucky he is!
Behold, the updated 2007-08 Tie-the-Knot Tour:
September 8, 2007 - Marisa and Ed
June 2008 - Lisa and Stew
October 2008 - Laura and Alex
Anyone else? Speak now or forever hold your peace.
Don't get me wrong. I love weddings. This past weekend I had a wonderful time at the very beautiful wedding of my dear friend, Matt, to his lovely longtime girlfriend, Michelle. I had never been to a Catholic ceremony, and I must say, it was truly a spiritual experience. I am of the mind that weddings should be quite ceremonious and spiritual so that the couple can truly experience the intensity of the promise they are making to one another. No offense to my Atheist/Agnostic friends, but I can't imagine getting married in a completely secular ceremony, simply because to me, love itself is a miracle and a gift for which the universe should be thanked. On a more practical note, I think I'm going to have to start a Wedding Guest Fund or something because these people will put me in the poorhouse, what with the gift, the dress, the shoes, the hotel, etc... I'm complaining, but all in good humor. I am honored to be able to attend so many beautiful weddings and witness true love and romance. For those keeping score at home, in the past year I have attended two weddings (merely drops in the vast ocean of weddings flooding the UMass Medical School Class of 2007 in the last few weeks), and could have gone to a third, had that pesky USMLE Step 2 nonsense not gotten in the way last autumn.
All right, enough of that mushy hippie mumbo-jumbo. Mazel tov to my dear friend, Lisa, from college on her engagement! I've never met the lucky man, but he better know how lucky he is!
Behold, the updated 2007-08 Tie-the-Knot Tour:
September 8, 2007 - Marisa and Ed
June 2008 - Lisa and Stew
October 2008 - Laura and Alex
Anyone else? Speak now or forever hold your peace.
Thursday, June 7, 2007
The American "justice" system
Okay, so explain to me how a multi-gajillionaire heiress - let's call her Madrid Marriott, for argument's sake - whose major endeavors in life include collecting and discarding small animals, not wearing the same outfit in 365 days or more, and generally acting like a spoiled, self-centered airhead manages to wriggle out of a 45-day sentence for drunk driving, settles for 23 days in "jail," and within 48 hours manages to be released under house arrest for "medical reasons?" Oh, I'm sorry. Did her skin suddenly start breaking out without tons of over-priced products to slather on it? Did her limbs shrivel up in the absence of a new outfit? ¡Pobrecita! I'm sure she'll learn her lesson and never, ever drink and drive again. I'm more than satisfied that she has finally learned to acknowledge there is a whole planet of human beings beyond her own little entourage, and that those human beings can be severely injured or killed by intoxicated drivers. She definitely gets it now.
Meanwhile, a crooked politician who lied about some things he may or may not have said, about people nobody has ever heard of, related to a war that nobody cares about and which should have never been started in the first place, lands himself a 30-month jail sentence. Whew. Now I can sleep at night.
You see now why my decision to become an American citizen was far from easy?
Meanwhile, a crooked politician who lied about some things he may or may not have said, about people nobody has ever heard of, related to a war that nobody cares about and which should have never been started in the first place, lands himself a 30-month jail sentence. Whew. Now I can sleep at night.
You see now why my decision to become an American citizen was far from easy?
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Noo Yawk
It's official - I will be spending September and October in the fair city of New York, first in the Bronx at Weiler Hospital, and then in Manhattan at Beth Israel. I am excited and apprehensive, the same way you become anxious about dumb details like where will I eat lunch? who will I hang out with? what if I can't figure out the subway system? The crazy part is, I'm not that anxious about the actual rotations themselves. At the risk of sounding pompous, that's the easy part - simply because it's the most predictable. There are certain unversalities in the practice of medicine, and especially in Ob/Gyn, that one can rely on. So I bite my nails down to the cuticle worrying about being well-liked and not looking like a tourist. It will also be hard to be in NYC in the midst of MLB play-off madness... I will go armed with my Red Sox hat to ward off evil!
In unrelated news, my friend Amy (who happens to live in Brooklyn, so it's kind of related) has resumed her blogging habit, which is now displayed in my list of links on the right. And speaking of the Web, I recently rediscovered The Political Compass, which I remember doing in college. It does change with the times, so the questions are very relevant. Despite that, I continue to fall in the same quadrant that I belonged to in college: Libertarian left. I coulda told you that.
In unrelated news, my friend Amy (who happens to live in Brooklyn, so it's kind of related) has resumed her blogging habit, which is now displayed in my list of links on the right. And speaking of the Web, I recently rediscovered The Political Compass, which I remember doing in college. It does change with the times, so the questions are very relevant. Despite that, I continue to fall in the same quadrant that I belonged to in college: Libertarian left. I coulda told you that.
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