Originally published at Perches in the Soul. You can comment here or there.

I can’t go home.

because there is no home.

There are moments in life where we become acutely aware of how we have grown.

Like putting on those pants you wore in high school….(or the pants you wore before shiny hips), you have grown, the pants don’t cover your ankles anymore ( Read more... )

Originally published at Perches in the Soul. You can comment here or there.

I am reading several excellent books on Poverty as part of my employment journey (This is something I have wanted to do for a while!).  Part of the one book involves a lot of reflection and some of it I am going to post.

The book argues that good intentions are not enough ( Read more... )

Originally published at Perches in the Soul. You can comment here or there.

Well the ICU is mostly what I expected.  I think my biggest problem in medicine is I am just over doing things I do not find super educational (there is learning to be had in the ICU but its hard to do when your role is to do paperwork and field pages for flush orders) and ( Read more... )

Originally published at Perches in the Soul. You can comment here or there.

My intern on nights with me this past week was a south spoken Syrian.  He spent two years working to get a visa to come and study pediatrics here. He wants to be a pediatric cardiologist. He will be one of the only in the entire nation and even surrounding nations when he ( Read more... )

Originally published at Perches in the Soul. You can comment here or there.

I gave my annual lecture at Wake Forest last week. It was a beautiful tapestry of beginnings and endings of my life.

Becoming a disabled physician is one of the greatest things I have done in my life but it also was among the most painful.  Being told that you have no right ( Read more... )

Originally published at Perches in the Soul. You can comment here or there.

Last Monday night I stood in the hallway between A and B buildings on the 5th floor and pondered the end of my career as I know it… The end of intern year.  It seemed like it was supposed to be momentous as if I should stand for a moment in the gulf between the future and ( Read more... )

Originally published at Perches in the Soul. You can comment here or there.

Its 4 AM.

I am so tired I can hardly move much less make a life altering decision for someone else’s baby.   I am so tired that despite my fleece, knee high socks and scrubs I am shivering. My body aches, my right hip feels like its going to burst and the muscles around the ( Read more... )

Originally published at Perches in the Soul. You can comment here or there.

yesterday I went to adoption clinic…and I think it gave me PTSD in reverse.

The smell of urine,  sunbeams through a barred window, the feeling of chapped hands, the smell of stale bread and boiled cabbage….  These are the things that take me back to being 19 yo, young, ( Read more... )

Originally published at Perches in the Soul. You can comment here or there.

I woke up this morning and pulled on my chacos and some leggings. Over the leggings I put my African Kanga.   I put on my Masai earrings and my special necklace made for me and given to me by a disabled woman in a small village in the valley.  Today was Global Health Day.  ( Read more... )

Originally published at Perches in the Soul. You can comment here or there.

Jan 6 will remain as one of the craziest most out control days of my life. I awoke at 6AM in Balitmore, at noon I was interviewing at Johns Hopkins and by midnight I was crossing the Irish Sea by air.  I wouldn’t recommend it honestly. By the time I got to London, I was ( Read more... )