My Childhood Friend 's House After A Dinner

The morning of October 8th, 2005 shook my world - both literally and figuratively. A major earthquake devastated the entire region of Northern Pakistan and changed my life forever. Little did I know, when I was woken up by the sound of shattering glass and falling trees, that the scale of destruction would be so catastrophic. As the death toll continued to rise, I changed my inertia and grief into action and altruism. I decided to volunteer at one of the largest hospitals in my city. While watching doctors working tirelessly to save lives, my passion for becoming a doctor grew stronger. The satisfaction and sense of fulfillment I achieved after easing the patient's pain and making them feel better was priceless. This indeed was a defining moment in my life and gave it new direction and purpose. With a new found vigour and determination I entered medical school the same year.

On the fourth Thursday of every November, we celebrate Thanksgiving at my grandma’s house. Thanksgiving is a day where we celebrate and get together and say thanks for everything we have and what we get to do that some people can’t. We make food and we talk and gather around and we also play around with each other.

Truthfully, as an undergraduate I knew very little about the osteopathic profession. In 2013, however, I began working as a medical scribe with Dr. Ghaffari-Greene, DO, in the Sibley ER and she opened my eyes to the beauty of osteopathic medicine. Thanks to Dr. Ghaffari-Greene, and a number of other osteopathic physicians in the ER, I have come to understand what osteopathic medicine is all about. Three years after my first exposure to the osteopathic profession, I continue to be motivated to become an osteopathic physician for many reasons. These include the following:

Recess had just ended when my stomach began to hurt. Soon, the pain was unbearable, and my teachers had to drag me into the atrium so my screams would not disrupt the other students. But I insisted to my teachers that my teeth hurt. Even at three and a half years old, I had been admitted to the hospital several times. I did everything in my power to avoid returning there. Of course, my teachers realized what was going on and called my parents. My medical problems have not gone away, but I have realized that as much as I hate living with pain, I don’t know if I can live without medicine. Each time I visit the hospital, I become more interested in procedures, research, and

As a child, you never had to think about what you were going to eat that night; you just knew there would be food on the table. You never once considered how much something cost; you just knew mom and dad could afford it. I never had that typical childhood where life seems like a breeze and you never had to worry about anything that went on around you. I was forced to grow up at a very young age in order to help my family pay for life’s inconveniences. I took on two jobs every year around my community trying to scrape up a few dollars to keep the lights on in the house for just one more week. I was lucky if I saw my parents every night before bed since they both worked from sunrise to sun set. As a result of my parent’s absences, I took it upon myself and stepped into my mother’s place. I learned how to cook, clean, and care for my siblings at the age of eight.

There were many vital decisions that needed to be made during this 3-month time frame that it took to see a specialist in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Unfortunately, the vital decisions that needed to be made in my recovery were put off until I saw a specialized physician that could properly make those decisions. Therefore, this prolonged my recovery and did not allow me to have the proper resources to get better. Once I was finally able to see different specialists in Albuquerque the care was still not at the level I needed for my injury. My injury was complex and was ultimately unable to be treated by doctors in New Mexico. In my desperation to get better, I began researching online for alternative treatments outside the state of New Mexico. I eventually discovered a Health Center in Dallas, Texas, which specializes in the treatment of traumatic brain injuries. There, I was fortunate to have a dedicated team of specialists effectively treat my post-concussive

Over the past four years I have seen more doctors than an average person would see in their lifetime. From endocrinologists to neurosurgeons, I have tirelessly sought medical help to overcome multiple traumatic brain injuries I incurred as an early teen. Prior to these head injuries I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to do with my life or what my future would encompass. The outlook I had on life prior to my head injuries has drastically changed through the course of my recovery. Although my road to recovery has been filled with hardships, disappointments, and pain, I have found a new direction filled with opportunity to advocate on behalf of others.

It is a warm summer evening at Grady Hospital. It is my first day as an emergency room volunteer. I’m nervous and eager, hoping to see something exciting. However, it is surreally quiet. Suddenly, there is word of an ambulance en route. Minutes later the paramedics burst into the trauma slot pushing a man on a stretcher. His head and face are covered with gauze that is soaked through with dark blood. It is a flurry of well-orchestrated movement as the attendings and residents start to resuscitate him. They pull back the bandages to reveal a deep gash that is bleeding profusely. With much effort his vital signs are stabilized and he begins to regain consciousness. Later, after the excitement had passed, I learned what brought him here. He is diabetic and couldn’t afford to properly manage his condition. He had fainted due to hypoglycemia and hit his head. He had almost lost his life because of the unfortunate financial realities of modern healthcare. In that moment, I came to appreciate the very real cost of disease and the incredible role physicians have in ameliorating it. This formative experience was the beginning of my path to medicine.

After beginning medical school, I quickly realized that for every one question we could answer there were about a dozen that could not be answered. I delved even deeper into my studies, determined to learn all I could to help my patients to the best of my ability. Suddenly, two of my close family members died, and with this my determination to find answers increased again. Something else awoke within me during the morning of these loved ones, as well. I truly understood what families were going through while watching their loved ones suffering, and my empathy, compassion, and bedside manner became even stronger.

When I first began my college career in 2011, I was a first generation college student. I entered into college with only a vague goal of becoming a Physician’s Assistant. The most common question I was asked was why? Why a Physicians Assistant? And I my answer was always the simple standard answer of: “I want to help people”. I, undeniably, still want to help others but it was not until the Christmas of my sophomore year, that I truly understood what it meant and took to be a successful Physician’s Assistant. A few days after Christmas my mother was hospitalized for two and a half weeks with a continuous blood clot in her leg and a small blood clot in her lungs. She spent the first 3 days in ICU, required multiple blood and iron transfusions, and eventually surgery. For me, the worst part of the entire experience was being awakened in the middle of the night by nothing more than the faint whisper of my name. Till this day, I don’t know how I heard it. My mom had collapsed on the stairs in excruciating pain. She was extremely weak and unable to move. I thought I was watching my mother die, and the immediate fear and panic that I felt, still haunts me sometimes. I didn’t know what to do or what was

My subsequent concussion diagnosis marked the beginning of a long road of disenchantment and rediscovery of both the medical practice and myself. My reasons for pursuing medicine started when I was young. I always had an early spark, which left me obsessed with obscure diseases. After reading “The Hot Zone,” my family threatened to disown me if I would not stop describing hemorrhagic fevers and black bile during meals. When I started college, I knew that the human body was all that I was interested in, and medicine felt like a calling that I could not ignore. The beginnings of my frustrations lay with maintaining my academic record while concussed. This required a level of skill and patience that I had not been asked to exercise up to this point. I have always been a “good” student; learning had

As a patient, I felt profoundly vulnerable having to relinquish control over my ability to function to the practitioners responsible for overseeing my treatment. The feeling of having to completely surrender, as I had to do on the numerous occasions over the past week and a half, as doctors performed procedures ranging from lumbar punctures, plasma transfusions and blood component therapy, has made it clear that trust is the linchpin of relationships. The experience has also taught me that faith in others is an essential part of life and that relying on others is not a sign of weakness, but in many respects can represent a strength. Being admitted to the hospital has also helped me to recognize things that I use to take for granted—freedoms and privileges that went ignored—and has also helped me come into the present moment and appreciate the things that I can experience, enjoy and control. While my condition has improved considerably, I recognize that the full road to recovery will be a difficult one, wrought with toggles, setbacks and frustrations. But, despite this and the unpredictability associated with my condition, I am confident that I will take the positive lessons learned from my two threatening conditions and the discovery of my dormant inner strength with me in the future. I intend on taking my newfound perspectives with me into Law School, tackling challenges head on, with an

Hi Christine, your female patient’s story inspired me too. It was hard to recover from an injury, and most people did not

On July 21, 2001 my mother was in an accident at work and she had to have her leg amputated. I was just three years old, and my older brother was four. It took roughly 2 years, and more than 16 surgeries for her to have the ability to walk again. As a child this situation impacted my life traumatically and ever since I was old enough to understand what happened to her I have been inspired to help people who suffer from similar circumstances. Due to poor judgment and amateur choices made by my mothers’ doctors, she still to this day continuously has problems with her leg, which could have easily been avoided. If my mother would have had access to extraordinary or even adequate doctors she would have been able to return to my brother and I much

Elena's eyes fluttered open, looking up at the ceiling as images flashed through her head. Fragments of the dream fading away yet the memory burned deep into her mind. She leisurely turned her head towards the nightstand, then to the window, a heavy blanket of frost hovering around her window. A deathlike silence lingers in the air, she's home. The concept of home seeming all so foreign, as this wasn’t exactly what she would call home. When her grandparents dropped the suitcases in the house, everything felt so empty. Elena had expected to see her mom in the kitchen, her dad in the living room with his face stuffed into a new book. Yet no one was there, they weren’t going to be. A flood of panic surged through her, feeling complete and utterly immersed in the darkness. This was Evasmos, Thessaloniki. She slept in the same bedroom for years. The floor boards creaked in all the same places, a dent in the closet where Mike had slammed into after trying to sneak out the window. Everything had been in place, just the way it always was. Yet for some odd reason she feels out of place, like she doesn’t belong here. Her thoughts were cutoff, followed by ear-piercing screams that filled the house. She restrains herself from getting up to check on her great grandfather, the doctors had strictly told her not to wake him during the nightmares, because he can inflict danger upon himself. Elena was never used to it though, the past three months he'd driven her insane with the constant