today i made a five year old boy cry as i was removing his stitches…it was inevitable that i would eventually inflict pain on some poor child with this whole medical career, so i guess i’m glad to have gotten that rite of passage done with! the procedure went smoothly, though, despite the one really tight knot that caused all of the pain. still, despite all of the obvious benefits, it’s still unnatural to knowingly make a little kid cry!
all in all, my first day of third year rotations was really wonderful. i’m working in a family practice clinic in North Philly, with a patient population that includes a lot of immigrant families. before i ran off for my Watson year, i always thought i would work with immigrant populations within the U.S. and travel on the side– the original premise of my Watson proposal actually stemmed in part from my experiences growing up as a first generation ethnic and religious minority within the U.S. There’s so much room for miscommunication between physicians and patients, and the potential for language and cultural barriers to exacerbate these difference is worrisome to me, especially as i witness my parents and relatives aging and relying increasingly on physicians. it’s good to be working in a clinic where i can focus on bridging the divide that can exist between physicians and patients of different ethnicities…and to see how the way all of these people’s families and lives intertwine and intersect within their North Philly neighborhood.
quote from one of my favorite books, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down:
“I have always felt that the action most worth watching is not at the center of things but where the edges meet. I like shorelines, weather fronts, and international borders. There are interesting frictions and incongruities in these places, and often, if you stand at the point of tangency, you can see both sides better than if you were in the middle of either one.”
sweet dreams….
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July 10th, 2006 at 7:07 pm
Too bad there aren’t any eProps or anything like that. I would give you 1,000.
August 16th, 2007 at 8:33 pm
I found that book during one of my rainy adventures to Barnes and Noble, and felt as if i’d been given a tiny secret gift, because no one i knew had ever heard of it, and it was beautiful. I am glad that, even though there are miles and years and spaces between us, we connected there, even unknowingly. I am glad you are updating this again; it makes me feel like i still know you, even if it’s only sometimes and in bits and pieces.