Full Disclosure

I am now nearing that time where it is inevitable that residency programs will google me and likely find this blog, so I think it is in everyone's best interest that I preface what you will find here with some brief context.

"Skipping Through the Old City Fountain" chronicles my experiences during medical school, from year 1 to now, year 4, after my graduation from Harvard in 2008. It is a labour of love... not really a labour, maybe just love. It has provided opportunity for me to develop my writing, which I will happily say has progressed nicely over the years. It has also been a forum for the expression of my deepest reflections on the various steps involved in the transformation from lay-student to medical professional. My passions, my frustrations, insights and even more personal, non-medical revelations and evolving philosophies are contained herein.

I didn't always know I wanted to be an Obstetrician-Gynecologist -this realization came with time and experience. I originally thought I wanted to be a family physician, while focusing on women's health, deliveries, sexual health, as well as primary care psychiatry and palliative care. But as I discovered how I loved the OR, how I loved the bread and butter of Obstetrics & Gynecology, and could not tolerate some other aspects of family practice, I changed my mind. Medical school allows us to do this, especially as it changes even who we are, right through to our souls. The training of future physicians is a fully transformative experience, full of beauty, trauma, ideals shattering in complex realities, allowing us to form a new vision and concept of who we are and what our role will be in truly making this world a better place.

I have detailed my experiences in the classroom setting, as a clerk rotating through various specialities, and most importantly, the touching stories of patients who mirror our own existential dilemmas. Our love for them and our love for the profession facilitates our own metamorphosis.

I have done my utmost to protect the confidentiality of patients -I do not say in which hospitals I was working, nor the names or particulars of patients. Sometimes, I have even modified context or details to ensure their protection. Any frustrations or generalities that I have expressed regarding the less palatable personalities or approaches that we see in medicine, I realize full-well are not actually particular to this field (saints and demons abound in any profession, and all kinds in between!). I have allowed myself a position of vulnerability and imperfection, because that is in fact the true nature of the human condition.

I feel that I have learned so much through medical school and I can say with full sincerity that I am very grateful to McGill for giving me the opportunity to become a doctor. To practice medicine is an honour and a privilege -our training cannot be perfect because human institutions are bound to be fallible. I can appreciate all the good that was there, and the good that it did me. The challenges probably did me an even greater service, so I am grateful for those as well. My greatest hope, perhaps too lofty, was that in sharing these experiences with solely family and friends initially and now the vast, diverse population that may have surfed their way onto these shores, others could learn from my experiences as well. Or at least feel that they are not alone in these fundamentally human struggles.