Writer-in-Training
Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine
Sahr Yazdani is a fourth year medical student at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine in Maywood, Illinois, and is a member of the Class of 2022. In 2018, she graduated from University of Michigan with a Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience and Evolutionary Anthropology. She enjoys exploring new cities on foot, watching reality TV, and baking ginger cookies in her free time. After graduating medical school, Sahr would like to pursue a career in pediatrics.
As a high school volunteer in my local hospital’s oncology unit, I remember the sinking feeling in my stomach every time I saw the bright “Contact Precautions” sign on the door. I would begrudgingly don a flimsy plastic gown, fix a tight surgical mask around my ears, snap on a pair of gloves and proceed into the patient’s room.
In medicine, very little is black and white. Now, as a medical student who has begun to experience ethical dilemmas in the realm of patient care, I’ve discovered that the ethics of journalists and physicians are more similar than I expected.
There is something about lighting a match. / Such power and awe, / Something that might catch a stronghold
During our August delegation, we learned from Puerto Rican experts in their fields and acting first responders about implementing lasting social change since Hurricane María. Each expert’s lecture seemed to revolve around relief, recovery and resilience.
Her agitation was clearly apparent, plastered to her face like the smile she had worn moments ago. The phone was still clenched tightly in her hand as she paced the narrow hallway, muttering under her breath how travesties like this would not occur back in her native Ghana.
Outside apartment 13C the street is empty. It is early in the morning, and yet sounds echo from the metal shop beside the lake, roosters crow, and the children upstairs patter back and forth across the tiles. I roll up my yoga mat, shaking dead cockroaches from its rubbery bottom. Through the grated windows I catch a glimpse of Lake Victoria, shimmering out from the cluttered shore of shanties and deconstructed docks to eventually blend with the blue of the morning sky.
I recently returned from a medical outreach trip I went on with other students from my school. We traveled to the state of Gujrat in India and treated patients from a very rural population. Medical outreach trips are an excellent experience for medical students still in their pre-clinical years because they allow you to see firsthand the information you are learning and apply skills you have been taught.
One such opportunity was presented to me the same week of my acceptance phone call earlier this spring: a fully-funded trip to a previously unattended region of Nicaragua with a volunteer medical brigade. It was led by physicians from my institution looking to recruit our entering first-year medical school class to help lead the trip.
Ana and I sat at that table for a few hours, enjoying each other’s company and stories told in choppy combinations of Spanish and English, some laughs of word-finding frustration spattered throughout. We talked about her daughter and grandson who lived with her, the colorful birds that were caged in her open-air courtyard, and the fact that I had come to Antigua from North Dakota to work with the God’s Child Project. As fond as I am of this memory, now that eight years have passed, I look back on my time in Guatemala with some degree of uncertainty about my intentions. I was what many would call a ‘voluntourist.’
I was on a plane heading towards Santiago, the capital of the Dominican Republic. From there, I would take a two-hour bus ride to Mao Vallerde, where we would be working at for most of the week. I was going on a global health trip through Jose’s Hands, an organization that sponsors medical students interested in going on mission trips. For this particular trip, they had partnered with One to the Other Ministries, a Tulsa-based ministry that has been doing mission trips, both medical and non-medical, since 1986. This being my first global health trip, I had no idea what to expect other than the usual warnings of tropical diseases endemic to the area.
In medicine, there is a saying that the training is onerous but the rewards are many. More often than not, these rewards come coated in a myriad of shapes, including lucrative incentives, personal gratification, warm contentment and sated joy. For some physicians, a last wound-closure of the day, a smile on their patients’ faces, or warm, heartfelt regards from the people they care for carry immense significance. Yet, for many others, lucrative incentives seal their fate, becoming a bane to the integrity of the medical profession as a whole.
It’s okay that you forgot who I am. My name is David, and I was the student doctor that made the orthotic you wore on your leg for a year. Do you remember where we were when we met?
Contributing Writer
Louisiana State University Health and Sciences Center, New Orleans
David is a medical student at Louisiana State University Health and Sciences Center, New Orleans in the Class of 2019. He is originally from New Orleans, LA and did his undergrad at WashU studying Biomedical and Electrical Engineering. He's an advocate of mental health in the Asian American community and is into using technology to solve medical problems. In his free time, he writes, reads, and complains about the lack of good bubble tea in New Orleans.
