Goodbye Grandpa

My grandfather passed away on April 8, 2006 at 11:20pm just hours after I saw him for the last time in the hospital. Although it was sad to see him go, I would say that most of the time I feel really glad that he lived a full life, had people at the end to be with him and take care of his business. Most of all, I feel grateful to him because I truly believe that he hung on at the end because he knew I would come from the US to see him. It was a small miracle that after deciding to leave last Monday, I was able to arrange and get a visa, book a flight and be in Shanghai within 5 days in time to see my grandfather for the last time.

Yeh Yeh Zai Jian! We will all miss you.

Going to Shanghai

Bad news, grandpa is in a coma, I am going to Shanghai

My sick grandfather

Last week, my grandfather got quite sick and we thought we were going to lose him. He appears stable now but apparently his lungs, heart and kidneys are failing and the transition back to home care is going to be tough. So here I am, thousands of miles away from him, with little or no knowledge of practical medicine feeling helpless. I have been thinking about taking a week off from med school to go visit him but keep going around in indecisive circles.

First, my dad is over there, there is little to nothing I can do for my gramps besides giving him moral support if I go. Going for 1 week is not going to magically cure him.

Second, he would not want me to miss a week of med school to see him if he is okay and being a week behind may put additional pressure on me this term.

Third, I am going to China in June anyway, perhaps that is a better time I could go to visit him.

I have wavered back and forth, but I am now leaning toward not going, staying here and focusing on my studies.

But I have been back and forth about it all day.

Happy 28th to ME???

Would someone who’s pushing 30 be covered in silly string on their birthday? Surely I’m not THAT old yet!

going going BaCk bAcK to CALI CALI

Finals are FINALLY OVER! Going to Cali tomorrow! Whoo hoo!

Summer planning

After lots of thought, I am pretty clear sure I want to do either of the following

Plan A – get an offer from McKinsey, work in their healthcare group in Jersey, get paid and finally see what’s on the other side of that golden door of opportunity – ha!

Plan B – Silk road or bust! Gonna go to the border of Xinjiang and Krygyzstan from Shanghai by bus

Plan C – Two week trip to Uzbekistan, visiting family and studying for boards

Good to relax

Its a non quiz weekend, whew! And no trips to Boston, skiing or rabid partying . . . I’m definitely getting old. Its nice though to just catch up on work, knock a few things off of my to do list and just relax. Had a little hot pot gathering on Friday with some friends and played Cranium. That’s about how extreme I get these days . . . hahaha.

A couple more weeks until Spring break whoo hoo!

Feelin good

Great day at my preceptorship today. I felt confident for the first time ever. Saw some interesting cases, kid with mono (maybe), GI infection, depression case. Overall it was just great to feel like I knew what I was doing for once. This combined with a good result on the last set of quizzes have got me feeling really great. And when you feel great, all the little things seem to go more smoothly. You notice the sun shining, you hold open doors for people, you don’t escape to your own little shell as much. Anyway, this weekend is Winter Carnival at Darmouth, $1 skiing, human dogsled races, polar bear swims here I come!

Daily Rambles: My summer

A piece of good news and then some ideas I wanted to jot down.

First, the good news, I honored two out of the three quizzes we just got back including a perfect score in Anatomy! Even better news is that the low score was well above passing so I’m stoked! My new study strategy of “study earlier, study more” is really paying off. Hopefully I can keep it up!

In other news, I have just come to realize two things about what I want to do this summer. First, on the profiteering-business-Tuck side of me, I would like to give McKinsey another shot (I tried and failed to get a job there back in Undergrad). The reason and my reservations are pretty simple. The reason: I still dunno what I want to do yet and if it does turn out to be business, McKinsey is THE brand name I can tack on while doing fairly interesting work and inflating my ego and pretending to be important.

The other idea for the summer is to work in some health or service related endeavor. I have been talking for some time about the intersection of microfinance/medicine. The talk today further reinforced to me why these should be mentioned in the same breath. 60% of mortality below age five happens as a result of malnutrition which is directly attributed to the lack of a stable income that reaches the mother. Microfinance has been proven time and again to empower the poorest and most silenced in society, mothers in developing countries by giving them an income and a voice. In addition, the infrastructure used to deliver health care and loans is the same: motor vehicles, community meetings, locally trained “helpers”.

So what to do about this? According to Nils Daulaire, both MFIs and health care NGOs would benefit from a conference to talk about common interests and partnerships. They have every reason to work together, no counter reasons (no funding conflicts) and simply have not done so. This potentially could be an exciting and very productive discussion. One particular firm seems to have gotten the equation right and I think would really benefit from the discussion. Brac in Bangladesh does health care and microfinance and really listens and serves the “comprehensive” needs of the people they help. How great would it be to get people together for such a conference? This is definitely worth exploring further.

So to get back on topic, my summer, perhaps it would be good to work for an MFI like BRAC (unfortunately I don’t speak Bengali) and learn about all of this. That would certainly be something worth working on. However, as usual I always try to balance everything. I want to be able to see/learn something new, resume build, travel, relax, visit family. So what I would really like to do is work in China, preferably in Shanghai. One topic for doing that is to finance myself through Dartmouth and do a health needs assessment of migrant “silenced” population of Shanghai, the migrant workers and ask the question: what are their health and economic needs? One thing I will definitely need to keep in mind. Nils reminded me today that as western health care workers, we go to a needy place but we inevitably leave, the real people who impact life for the poor are those who are from the area and GO BACK. Perhaps that is why I want to return to Shanghai someday and help those people because that is where I envision my life to be ultimately.

Anyway, enough for the philosophizing and daydreams, back to the library!

A couple of great websites that are worthy of exploration and future reference:

http://www.brac.net/index2.htm

http://www.globalhealth.org/

PS Duke UNC tonight, GO DUKE GO!!!

Happy Chinese New Year!

I just had a fabulous weekend, went to Boston with VP, Narin and Jane, bought lots of Chinese food, saw Ron Artest’s first game with the Kings and ate dessert at the Top of the Hub. Then on Saturday, slept in, cooked dinner (nian gao) and had some classmates over for dinner and Cranium (fun game). I had a blast.

It was a great way to kick off the year of the Dog. Happy New Year y’all!