Pharmacology is over. I sit in my house with the post-test buzz still ringing in my ear amid a rhythmic background of raindrops striking windowsills and cars sliding past outside. I doze, and the rain conjures afternoons in Borgne when the clinic visitors had slowed to a drip after the morning hubbub. The end of summer happened fast. At times I have to catch myself to remember that I am back in Rochester since the …

Something had happened. The hospital lies on the main stretch of road before the town of Borgne, right across from the high school, so there is always a lot of activity going on: cars going in and out of the hospital, motorbikes dropping off and picking up students, vendors selling food and cell phone credit. But this was different. The cries were not those typical of school-aged children. Plus, it was already 8 p.m., way …

So as I wrap up a great weekend with some old friends, I finally have a minute to reflect on my first few days in Haiti, looking at the past and possibilities for the future. Being back in Haiti is always a shock to the senses. The second you leave the airport your senses are put on overdrive: the cacophony of cars and people; the hot, wet air; the smell of dust, trash and cane; …

Let’s face it: practicing medicine overseas is pretty sexy. Whether it’s images of Angelina Jolie and Clive Owen in Cambodia, young French physicians working with Doctors Without Borders, or Paul Farmer in Russian prisons that make you think of international medicine, it all seems pretty cool. Oh yeah, we all have an altruistic motive in trying to help solve the perennial ills of tropical disease, unnecessary trauma and emergency cesarean sections, but there is something …