“Looking to the future, since I only froze one embryo and my ovary reserve is diminishing, we are hoping to go through another infertility treatment cycle. Although, once again, the medications are once again being denied. Infertility is just lik…
Category: Medical school
Residency interviews and the inner muse [PODCAST]
“Have you ever wondered how many times death has not come, but could have? On the corner of Church Street and Dubuque how close was I, pausing to assess an ice-sheeted puddle just before a woman turns, her head turned too, searching for what? A s…
A state of service — and how flow can get you there
In 6th grade, my humanities teacher wrote a prompt for our class final: What is the purpose of life? I immediately grabbed my pencil and thundered away without a second thought. Five minutes in, I was still the only one writing. Rachmaninoff, the famou…
Why did it feel like I failed my patient?
“Have you ever had feelings of depression?” I regretted asking that question the moment it slipped out of my mouth. In the span of what felt like 5 minutes but was probably 30 seconds, both the patient and I immediately became awkward. The patien…
Medicine won’t keep you warm at night
Life continues in medical school and residency. Engagements, marriages, and divorces. Becoming a parent to a child. Having a dog or cat. Love and loss. Life and death. Then there is the uniqueness and privilege of being in medical training combined wit…
International medical graduates ease the U.S. doctor shortage
Thousands of young doctors just learned where they’ll be spending the next few years of their lives in residency. A significant number of them will be U.S. citizens who completed medical school abroad. This corps of internationally educated docto…
Happy Doctor’s Day. What was this all for?
Happy Doctor’s Day. Every year, eager young pre-med students apply for medical school. When they don’t make it in and are quite determined, they apply to schools on a few Caribbean islands. They teach the same material, the same practical s…
Why this medical student tutors
Tutoring is the most selfish thing I do. This probably sounds counterintuitive, but let me explain. To state the obvious, medical school is hard. You spend four years pushing yourself to the limit of your comfort zone. For two years, you cram more info…
Why this medical school is doing it right
It’s been shown that patients can benefit from a satisfying medical experience and the actual clinical treatment. The satisfying medical experience in and of itself leads to trust, follow-through, and health improvements. Medical school is the op…
New medical students: Do not take yourself too seriously
When you are trapped in a locker room in only your underwear at 3 a.m., you realize how many things must have gone wrong for you to land in that spot. Within the first week of my clinical rotations, I managed to be bested by the scrub machine. It was a…
