From the Archives... Faith Alive, Nigeria

There always came that inevitable moment in every single med school interview (and every post-bacc interview before that) when the interviewer would stop, head slightly tilted to the side, and either give a slight smile or settle his features into an even more serious expression and ask it.

"So tell me... why do you want to be a doctor?"

My answer had to include acknowledgment of the fact that I had never intended to come down this road at all; not consciously, at least.  I think, if I am really honest with myself, that doctoring was always somewhere back in there, lurking in the shadows, but it was never something that I felt I actively wanted to try to do, nor did I ever feel sure that I was even capable of pursuing it.  

I moved to Africa after I graduated from college, and ended up having a very unsatisfying experience there.  So, a couple of years later, after moving back to the States and working for a while, with a few weeks of vacation on my hands and a connection at a clinic in Nigeria, I decided to go back and try for a different angle this time.  

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This is the really strange thing.  I guess I would describe myself as a somewhat spiritual person but not an especially mystical one or someone prone to direct experiences of the divine.  So I can only describe what I had as a vision, I guess - I have never experienced anything like it before or since, and I have no other explanation for it.  

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I remember sitting in church at one point, at home in Colorado, probably while I was in high school or early college, listening to someone talk about some time he spent in Nigeria, and thinking, "Yep, no thanks!  I'm good.  No way would I ever want to go to Africa."  

Some time later, again sitting in church, I had my eyes closed for a prayer, and just had this image, this vision, as vivid as anything I've ever experienced, come over me.  It was an awful vision; it was like something you would see on CNN, some scene from a terrible famine in a dry, burning desert in some unnamed part of Africa.  People everywhere were starving and dying and suffering.

The image stayed with me for a short while, and then vanished.  And somehow, I knew then that I was meant to go.

[Note: none of this was ever a part of my med-school-interview answer.]

Anyway, years later, I decided that I wanted to go back to Africa.  I wanted to spend my month or so of vacation in Nigeria, in the city of Jos, volunteering at a clinic called Faith Alive.  My dad surprised me by announcing that he wanted to go, too.  So we packed up large boxes of medications and supplies to take with us and set off together on this adventure.  

I had some vague idea of wanting to get a degree in public health at the time, and I was curious to learn about how this clinic was run, what kinds of services they offered, what their work in the local community was like, how they impacted local health.

Nothing could have prepared me for the way this trip impacted me. 

I'm not talking about the extreme poverty, or the pervasive HIV, or the adorable, orphaned children pouring out from everywhere, although that was all unquestionably significant.  But I had seen all of that before.  What happened in Nigeria was that, as I wandered around the clinic, following the doctors and the nurses and the techs and the pharmacists and the patients and the counselors and the outreach workers, it slowly began to sink in that this... this was what I wanted to do.  Not just on a removed, public health level, but on an intimate, medical one.

This made me feel alive and fulfilled and purpose-driven.  This was my calling.  I wanted to be the doctor, in the room with the patient, with my hands holding theirs, able to diagnose and treat and improve health and give hope.  

That is sort of the short and honest version of how I ended up in medical school.  Yeah, I want to help people, and yeah, I love medicine and all that stuff.  But the real, deep-down reason is that I never had a choice.  I do actually, really believe that.  

I was talking to a friend about this tonight - neither of us have ever been the kind of people that can only see themselves doing one thing and one thing only.  We never will be those kinds of people.  We can each imagine many, many iterations of our lives in which we could be happy.  But that doesn't change the fact that we know we are where we are supposed to be.

It is so good to look at the faces in these pictures again; it's been some time.  It is good to be reminded of why and how I got here.  I need it now and then.

New Chapter

One of the craziest and scariest and most totally awesome things about life - and one of the parts I love the best - is how, at any given point in time, I can look back at my life just a year earlier and realize that I could never have imagined that my life would now look like this, whatever this looks like at that given moment.  This has literally never not been true for me.

Izzy and I are moving to a new home in a week.  I am excited for the new and good things to come, but I will really miss the beautiful place I have been lucky enough to call home for the past year.  I will especially miss the abundant sunlight and the unbeatable view.  But, as in the rest of life, it is easy for me to think about all the good things that I will miss and the ones that have already passed and linger in nostalgia, or even regret, and not so easy to imagine the unforeseen blessings the future has in store, the ones that I can't even begin to fathom.  Impossible, actually.  Which I guess is what qualifies them as "unforeseen." 

I linked to it before, but I am finding this post about The Graciousness of Uncertainty so very perfect, again:

"To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, we do not know what a day may bring forth. This is generally said with a sigh of sadness; it should be rather an expression of breathless expectation... When we are rightly related to God, life is full of spontaneous, joyful uncertainty and expectancy. 

"Leave the whole thing to Him, it is gloriously uncertain how He will come in, but He will come."

Speaking of the passage of time... Izzy just three months ago, below, and then last week, in the same chair:

They grow up so fast!!  {sniff}

Help for Haiti, Again

I am going back to Haiti, and I need to ask for your help and support once again.

It was my great fortune last year to be able to join a team of doctors and fellow med students from Emory on two separate week-long medical mission trips to Haiti's Central Plateau with Project Medishare.  These experiences were transformative and incredibly affirming of my calling to be in medicine, in a way that nothing else quite has so far in medical school.  

You can read about those trips here, here and here.  

Project Medishare provides healthcare in Haiti to people without access to the most basic medical needs.  This organization takes groups of volunteer medical professionals and students to Haiti's Central Plateau to conduct health fairs and mobile clinics, in addition to  their ongoing community health programs, providing a consistent, sustainable, and community-focused mission in Haiti, and enabling better access to healthcare for Haitians in that region of the country. 

I have committed to raise $3000 to help pay for medicine, equipment, travel, and other expenses, and I would like to ask you for help reaching this goal. 

Project Medishare has set up an online donation system if you would like to donate to my personal or team page.  The link can be found at the upper right of this page, or you can click HERE.   

Thank you so much for your consideration.  I am truly grateful for your support!

Thomonde, Haiti.  June 2011.

Happy Birthday, Beautiful Sister!!

Dear Ellen,

I love how our relationship is growing as we both get older.  I wish we lived closer to each other, but I love the way we are always talking in some form - texts, pictures, emails, comments back and forth on each other's blogs.  It makes me feel like we are not so far apart.

It is so fun to know you as an adult.  You are totes awes!!  Seriously, I am so proud of the person you are becoming and I LOVE having you for a sister.  I could go on and on, but I know you are probably already crying anyway, and I love that about you.  I hope you got the little present I sent in the mail, too, but today this post is my way of saying HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

I love you so, so much.

FitWit and the GMFC

Let's talk about the reason - the only reason - I have not gained 50 pounds so far during med school.  Actually, over the past more-than-a-year, I am down a pound and a few inches all over.

I am not, and have never been, one of those people who lose weight when I get all stressed out and busy.  I do the opposite.  (I try not to intensely dislike people who do that, but it's really hard not to.)

Enter FitWit.

this is why you're [not] fat

There are approximately 10,582 different "boot camp" companies in Atlanta.  If you ever stroll by Piedmont Park around 5:30 pm on any weekday, you know what I'm talking about.  The place is swarming with clumps of people in brightly-colored workout clothes, representing all different fitness levels, sweating and slogging through pushups and lunges and other ridiculous-looking exercises.  I have tried one or two of them.  But FitWit is different.

I started going for the first time about a year and a half ago, when a good friend confessed, almost embarrassed, that she had been doing this boot-camp-thing.  Embarrassed by what, now, I am really not sure.  She has always been an athlete and looked amazing, but she said that her weeks working out with these people had gotten her in the best shape of her life.  She invited me to the next camp.

At the time, I was about five months into my first year, and going through an upswing in my weight, the kind that has come at regular intervals for as long as I can remember, just as regular and dependable as Seinfeld reruns, or taxes, or football season.   Anyway, I was feeling really bad about it, and, lured yet again by the promise (made up in my head) of some sort of "6 Weeks to a Better Body/Total Fitness/The Best You've Ever Looked Naked" totally nonsensical and unrealistic idea, I didn't hesitate a nanosecond to agree to go.  (Wow.  Did I really just put that on the internet??)

Obviously, that first 6-week camp did not totally change me or make me into a fitness superstar.  Actually, I got really busy and didn't do another camp until about a year ago.  Since then, with a few off-months and weeks, I have been a FitWit regular, and now I literally can't imagine working out any other way.  I also credit the FitWit team for saving me not only from obesity but craziness... I really go just as much for my mental health and sanity as for anything else.

Anyway, this is not an ad for FitWit (although if they want to pay to promote them, I will!!) but I said that it is different, and here is why: it is actually the for-profit supporting branch of a nonprofit organization that helps provide fitness programs to kids and teens in underserved Metro Atlanta public schools.  Check them out here: FitWit Foundation.  Awesome stuff.

We do all the same ridiculous-looking exercises that all the other bootcamps do.  But the other big thing that makes FitWit different is that they intentionally emphasize community in their camps.  I think it really works - at least half the reason I keep going back, and the reason I will never leave, is that I have been working out with largely the same group of people for a year now, and I love the feeling of being part of a little community group.  We have suffered and sweated and fallen on our butts and laughed and learned and eaten chips and salsa and thrown back margaritas together, and you know what?  It boils down to this: it is just so much more fun to go work out with your buddies than alone or with a bunch of strangers.  

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Yesterday afternoon, the last patient I saw in clinic has a BMI of over 50 (I don't remember the exact numbers, but she is somewhere around 5'6" and 450 pounds.)  This is after losing 90 pounds following gastric bypass in December.  She is only 24 and has a young daughter.  At that size, she is severely impaired in her daily life.  And here's the thing- she is so nice and fun and lively and funny.  The whole time I spent with her, I kept thinking two things; one, that I would totally want to be friends with this person.  And two, that I could not believe how positive and upbeat she was despite multiple major health issues, not to mention the challenges of just having to navigate life with that much extra weight.  I can get down if I gain weight in the single digits; sometimes I can feel unattractive or self-conscious at my healthy-range BMI.  It was a reality-check.  I can't imagine myself dealing with circumstances like hers half as gracefully; it made me feel pretty humbled.

I went straight from work to boot camp, where I busted my ass, just because I could.  This might be a minor but definitely not insignificant benefit from working in medicine - I often come home at night feeling so grateful for my health and my abilities.

My arms are not slender, nor are they super-defined.  But they can do some good push-ups.  Lots of them, actually.  I may not love the size of my thighs every day, but they can run fast and far, they can jump and climb and squat and push.  Boot camp - it is hard.  I don't always (or even usually) feel like going.  But every single day that I do, I recognized how blessed I am to be able to do it at all.  It makes me even more appreciative of being alive.

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My family can be hilariously competitive, which probably comes as a shock to very few of you.

We have been trying to get my dad on a regular diet and exercise routine for a while now, and inspired by a few different things (including my week on palliative care, seeing way too many 60-year-olds at the ends of their lives), we decided to try a new tactic.  A family fitness competition! Yeah, that's right. The Great McDermott Fitness Competition (or GMFC), to be exact.  The competition involves getting credit for workouts and nutrition and reaching fitness goals, and we are all ponying up for it.  We even have an awesome spreadsheet in a shared Google Doc where we keep track of everything (and because I am a huge nerd, I added boxes with formulas that automatically calculate your BMI when you enter your current weight.)

In full disclosure, the timing of this particular post is partially because I sorta fell - hard - off the bandwagon last week and am in need of a small fire lit under my butt again.  So now that I am being all public about this, keep me accountable!  And for those of you who read this and know my dad - if you run into the good reverend, ask him how his workouts are going.  :)  I might even have some before and after pictures for you in a couple of months (Ha! As long as the after pictures look better, obviously!!)

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P.S. My 30 Before 30 list?  My best friend from home suggested that I go a month without spending any money at Target.  I read her text and my very first thought was, "Um, no, I don't think that's even remotely possible."  Haha... yikes.  But I added it to the list and I'm gonna try!  I mean, it's already the 3rd and I haven't spent any money there this month yet!  (I really wish I were kidding about this...)  I was just in there on Sunday, actually, looking at a nice big, wide glass vase and thinking it would make a very pretty new home for Lucy and Ethel, whose fish tank has gotten to be less than ideal, poor things.  I uncharacteristically decided against buying it on the spot and thought I would just wait until anther weekend in the very near future.  Siiigh...

This might actually be one of the hardest things I have on that list.  (Again, really wish I were kidding, but I am definitely not, especially given the fact that I am about to move directly behind a Target in about two weeks...)