Escape from the Beltway
There are a legion of advantages that we are lucky enough to have in training at the Hopkins / NIH joint fellowship program. Extraordinary cases, world-renowned mentors, access to the very furthest bleeding edge of biomedical research, and a ridiculous amount of technological and financial resources to support all of it. For a would-be physician scientist, combining the resources of the second largest NIH-funded American medical school, with all the resources of the NIH itself, is every bit as incredible as it sounds. It's not "kid in a candy store", it's Charlie Bucket with his Wonka Golden Ticket.
Everyone in Peds Heme/Onc works obscenely hard, no matter where in the country you are. The work hours are the same; the brutal emotional cost the same. Life is no easier at a "smaller" institution than it is at a place like Hopkins/NIH. The only difference is that the opportunities available are bigger in some places than others. And the opportunities at Hopkins/NIH stand with the very best the world has ever known. I was very, very lucky to have been given a chance; and found every bit of the enormous opportunity and learning I was advised I would find.
One of the very, very few minor disadvantages of the program here at Hopkins/NIH is the physical distance *between* Hopkins/NIH. Bethesda and Baltimore are, after all, 40 miles apart. Almost as far apart as Ann Arbor and Toledo, or Boston and Providence, or Palo Alto and San Francisco. And across some of the worst traffic in America, to boot. Given the need to spend time on both campuses, and the expectation of around-the-clock rapid availability to Hopkins (as described in Home Call), this usually means living near Hopkins, and swallowing the brutal, two-way commute back and forth to the north-west corner of DC.
But yet again, I got incredibly, incredibly lucky. Rather than having to fight that insane traffic back and forth every day across the Beltway and up I-95, I am instead spending my NIH months just a little north of the NIH campus, thanks to the enormous generosity of the parents of my dear friend Jesse. It was Jesse who had long ago cheerfully suggested that I crash with her parents in their spacious family home, when I came to interview for labs at Hopkins/NIH. It was her equally exuberant mother who insisted that I make more permanent residence at their home, during my four months on clinical duty at NIH. And so it was in August and September; and now in February and March, that instead of stewing in Beltway traffic for two hours a day, I am instead zipping to and from Jesse's family home, living in Jesse's old bedroom, enjoying her family's home cooking, and the occasional games and music night with her family and brothers. :-)
It is a wonderful arrangement, a sincerely appreciated gift from Jesse and her very generous parents. It is far, far less taxing than wasting hours upon hours a day in traffic on top of exhausting 90+ hrs weeks. Not to mention warm and inviting in a way no anonymous sublet could ever be. Anyone who knows Jesse, and knows Jesse's exuberant personality and merry touch in the kitchen -- well, once you meet her mother, you'll know where a lot of it all came from. :-) It is far, far more than a (blessed) convenience to live with Jesse's family -- it is a true delight. And that isn't even mentioning that Jesse's family is allowing me to stay with them entirely free of charge, instead of the thousands in sublet costs I would have had to pay.
And none of this would be possible, if it hadn't all ultimately begun eleven years ago with missysedai popping into my ICQ box to introduce herself and say hello.
I think all the time about just how ridiculously lucky I have been, and grateful. I was ridiculously lucky to have had the chance to come to Hopkins/NIH, the road that began in Senior Spring, continued through Ko and Sumiko, and led to here. But on top of that, comes the entirely seemingly unrelated series of events which began on a place called rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan. If it weren't for that place, I'd still be here at Hopkins/NIH... but I wouldn't know anyone here.
I would still be at Hopkins/NIH, because the same academic road would have led me from Michigan to Wash U to Hopkins, for all the same reasons of clinical, scientific, and academic opportunity. The big difference is, I would have come here not knowing anyone here outside of work. And I would *still* not know anyone here outside of work. The first year of clinical duty as a Peds Heme/Onc fellow is simply too brutal to allow *any* kind of time for a life, any time to spend on meeting new people and building new relationships. Not when you're doing 90 in the hospital and 20 to 30 outside of it.
Even for an extrovert with a capital E like me, it takes *time* to build friendships. Takes afternoons and evenings and days spend doing things with people. And that's exactly what I *don't* have. Hell, even writing this entry has been the project of tiny bits of time snatched over the last *five* months. The only people you see on a regular basis in this ridiculously busy fellowship are your fellow trainees. And, as is usual in medicine, none of them are geeks like us. None of them are interested in the same things I am. Some have families of their own already, and what time they do have is eked out to spend with them -- and I doing my best to cover so they can *get* that time. Those who are single, are more interested in drinks in Fell's Point than Pub Sing at Revel Grove. DC/Baltimore *is* rich -- extremely rich -- in geeks, between MDRF, Markland, Atlantia, and the deep Sci/Fi community here. But I haven't had any time to start following up on the copious leads I have. If I had to start from scratch trying to build new friendships among fellow geeks here in DC/Baltimore, I still wouldn't have any.
If it weren't for missysedai introducing herself, I wouldn't have ever met silmaril; and if it weren't for silmaril, I would have never met all the rest of the many, many Markland/MDRF/DC folks, with whom I already had almost ten years of adventures even before I actually *moved* here. Thanks to all of them -- all of you -- the very, very few times I've been able to escape work, I could spend them with many wonderful people who already cared about me as a friend. You can't build new, deep friendships on the pitiful handful of separated-by-months bits of time you get away from the brutal first clinical year. To my great fortune, I already *had* such friendships, coming here. And that has been precious to me in a way I hope my diary has captured, in the rather scant number of entries I have been able to write over this past year.
And it has been very important to me even on a strictly practical basis as well. If it weren't for missysedai -> silmaril -> bkleber, I wouldn't have had bkleber's help driving my U-Haul into Baltimore, or unloading it into my new apartment. If it weren't for missysedai -> silmaril -> vvalkyri, I would have never gotten vvalkyri's kind help in snagging an impossible-to-obtain inside ticket to Chort's Pirate Feast (for which an entry will come, when I get time). If it weren't for missysedai -> silmaril -> Jesse, I would be grimly making the exhausting crawl along I-95 and the Beltway every single morning, eighty miles back and forth a day, from Baltimore to Bethesda and back. Not to mention all the bright moments of escape my kind friends in DC have given me from a relentlessly brutal year. Or even the opportunities I had that I *could* have had, if it weren't for work -- like going to Hawaii with a dear lady friend, or fiddling at Faire this year. Or this coming February's trip back to St. Louis and Three Rivers, to celebrate with dozens of dear Calontir friends I would have never known if it weren't for the road to the SCA that began with friends missysedai introduced me to. Or Knowne World Dance, and all the dear friends from Cynnabar as well as Calontir, and everywhere else in the SCA, that I will celebrate the end of my first Hell-year with.
If missysedai had never introduced herself to me, eleven years ago, I'd still be here at Hopkins/NIH. I'd simply be an order of magnitude more miserable, and my life harder in literally measurable ways. The *academic* road would have been absolutely identical. My *life*, however, is far, far better. When I crawl home from duty at NIH, I'm having homemade scones for breakfast and sleeping in a cozy bedroom, instead of slagging eighty miles a day or squatting in some anonyous sublet. And my few moments off from duty are spent with dear friends who care about me, instead of strangers or no one at all.
None of this I could have ever possibly foreseen when this all began, eleven years ago. But life is funny in that way, sometimes. And I am more grateful for it all, than I can possibly say; and hope that, maybe someday, I can repay to the so many of you, just a little of all you have, in this brutal year, given me.