The Distilled Point

I distinctly recall the night before I started medical school. In fact, I immortalized those feelings into a blog post, which you can find here. I called it “The Still Point” and I spoke of many things, like “leaving Southern California for the first time, meeting new people, and getting oriented to my new surroundings . . . stretching my mind and soul to prepare for the changes that are still to come . . . becoming a medical student, handling the workload, creating a work-life balance, and carving out a home for myself in Northern California.“

I remember the feeling of newness, uncertainty and excitement. It was sweet in the way that beginnings are sweet with the promise of new adventure. It is remarkable to look back and realize that I have done the very things I had set out to do, and then some. To realize the unfamiliar landscape of Northern California has become a home I can trace as well as the back of my hand. To think of my experience here in medical school with more familiarity than that of college or my gap year. To comprehend the medical topics I intimately interacted with. To consider the friends and mentors I’ve made in medical school, and wonder how they’ve not been in my life forever even though it sure feels like it.

The world is quite different from when I started medical school. If I had known then what I know now about just how much things were going to change in my personal life, academic life and even on a global scale, I honestly don’t even pretend to know what I would’ve said. I guess, the good news is that I have changed. I have done the human thing and reacted, then adapted, to my changing environment. Then, I emerged out the other side a different human who is also still very much the same.

As graduation approaches, I feel consumed with nostalgia. I find myself going back through old photos, old texts and old posts from 2018, trying to remember the person I was then. Perhaps I do this so that I may fully understand my own growth. To distill four years of stretching, squirming, dancing, laughing, crying, whispering, shouting, and changing into a moment that I can feel. I suppose it’s like putting on a pair of worn old sneakers for the first time in a while after you’ve long tossed them aside for a pair of newer sneakers. You feel the places in the sole where you wore it down more. It still fits you, but it feels a little unfamiliar. I ramble, but I mean to say that I don’t want this moment to go by without my acknowledgement of its magnitude.

In “The Still Point,” I wrote: “It is fascinating to think about all the changes that have happened and all the new variables that have entered my life in the past week. But — this is my favorite part — we haven’t even started yet. What a joy it is to have a day like today, where I can take the time to look backwards and forwards simultaneously, and feel gratitude for both dimensions.” Perhaps today, as I am poised to enter my graduation week and then start residency shortly thereafter, one thing still absolutely still rings true. We haven’t even started yet.

A deaf girl’s guide to medical school

1. Get really lucky and make amazing friends at orientation — you will spend the next four years in a group text with them and the advice, support, and memes will be top notch.
2. Register with your institution’s office of accessible education, disability services program or whatever other euphemism they may use as soon as possible, or even sooner than possible. This is the place that can help provide you with any services you may need, be it note taking, extra time on tests, physical accommodations, and more.
3. Watch a few hours of inspirational deaf doctors on YouTube. Realize there is a whole network of deaf providers out there, looking out for each other and paving the road for you. Cold email some of these people and get linked up with some of the most supportive and knowledgeable people out there. Find some of them here and here.
4. Find a stethoscope that works for you! I really loved the Thinklabs One Bluetooth stethoscope, which I used to stream the sounds directly to my hearing aid and cochlear implant. Prepare yourself to have at least a 2-5 minute conversation with every patient ever about how cool that is and how you can hear almost 100x louder than the normal stethoscope.
5. Do not faint when you see the price of said stethoscope. Instead, consider asking your medical school if they will help subsidize the cost since they bought stethoscopes for all the other medical students.
6. Be prepared to spell out your reasons for needing things like a Bluetooth stethoscope. It may be a no-brainer to you but good communication is essential!
7. Do not forget to charge your Bluetooth stethoscope. It is awkward when it dies mid-cardiac exam and you have no idea if your patient is in afib or sinus rhythm.
8. You will attempt to watch lectures at 2x speed. You will take 2x longer to listen to the entire lecture because you spent just as much time rewinding (because you couldn’t hear) as you did speeding forward.
9. In fact, you may as well go to class. But you may be confused when you realize you cannot actually pause a real lecture and rewind. Well, you can try.
10. Your friends probably didn’t hear what the professor/TA/patient said either. Even if they did hear, they may not have understood. So ask the d*mn questions and don’t feel bad about it!
11. It is ok to shuffle your position on rounds to hear the patient or the attending better.
12. It is ok to turn up the volume on the iPad translator louder to hear better.
13. Everyone hates how N95s muffle sound. Do not be afraid to ask people to repeat themselves. Odds are, they will understand.
14. Use SketchyMedical for all things micro and pharm. Download .pdfs and annotate — active listening is better than passive listening. And well, because you’re deaf, you can’t passively listen.
15. You will need to know where all the nearest delicious Pho restaurants are. It’s for science.
16. Study with friends. Plan for about half of those “study sessions” to be 80% hanging out because they’re awesome people, so plan your studies accordingly.
17. Go to the office hours.
18. Take all the cool electives.
19. Panic about your schedule because you were busy taking cool electives. Regroup. Take only some of the cool electives.
20. Set two alarms for test day. Make sure your vibrating, flashing light alarm clock is backed up with battery power, in case there is a power outage.
21. Set an alarm on your AppleWatch that vibrates too, just in case.
22. Take really cool weekend trips after block exams or on switch weekends. You don’t have to go far to feel mentally reset.
23. Don’t forget to call/text/FaceTime/carrier pigeon your family. Maybe visit them once or twice a quarter.
24. Foster your relationships outside of medical school. Realize that somehow, you’ve become more fluent in medical-ese than you realized as you watch their blank expressions. Check yourself and re-enter the rest of the world.
25. Your handwriting will slowly deteriorate. Don’t fight it, it’s part of the process.
26. You may find yourself trying to command-F a physical copy of a textbook, or pinch to zoom in. At least one person will see you do this. You will leave the library immediately to find a new study space where you can be alone with your embarrassment.
27. Find a really good mentor or two. Make sure at least one of the mentors is a research mentor, if that applies to your interest/field of interest.
28. Remember, your enthusiasm and preferred deadlines may far outpace the progress of research. Have realistic expectations, and maybe take on another project to keep you from becoming impatient. Observational, chart review studies tend to go faster, but may be as, if not more, tedious than benchwork.
29. Send screenshots and links to your entire family of your first, first-author publication.
30. Be prepared for, “What’s this?” or “what does this mean?” in response.
31. There may be a pandemic in the middle of medical school. I’m not not speaking from real life experience, just be prepared.
32. Feel extremely grateful for your cochlear implant as mask use becomes widespread. Without your cochlear implant, you are not sure what you would’ve done to get by in social/work settings during the pandemic.
33. Practice suturing and knot throwing ad nauseum. Practice on your left hand. Practice with your boyfriend’s drawstrings.
34. Apologize to boyfriend that he is now securely tied into his pants.
35. Some practice physical exam maneuvers may become off limits to your boyfriend. I won’t say here which ones, but explore with your partner and see where those limits may lie…
36. Always have questions.
37. Ask them at the appropriate times.
38. Always have a “rescue” kit of extra ear molds, extra hearing aid and cochlear implant batteries, cochlear implant microphone covers, and extra hearing aid / cochlear implant ear hooks on you and ready to go with you at all times. It will not be useful to you when you are in the OR and the equipment is back at your apartment/house.
39. Consider disclosing your hearing loss to your colleagues by way of introduction/interest in medicine/the specific field you have chosen to go into (if it applies). Most will respond with avid interest.
40. Take up hobbies to refine your hand-eye coordination if you’re into surgery, like myself. Knit some terrible scarves, then knit some mediocre ones, then start feeling pretty nifty about your knitting skills.
41. When asked, “teach me something” on the residency interview trail, teach a room full of male surgical chiefs how to knit.
42. Use your Mini Mic (or whatever brand equivalent or other Bluetooth streaming device you have) on the interview trail, if your interviews are on Zoom. The audio caliber will be leaps and bounds better than your computer’s speakers alone.
43. Do not plan two interviews in one day if your interviews are on zoom.
44. Don’t forget about time zones if your interviews are on zoom.
45. Keep up with your hobbies outside of medicine. If not for your own personal enrichment, then at least for an interesting answer to an interview question. In fact, you find yourself showing many attendings at prestigious institutions across the country the painting of your boyfriend’s dog you gave to him for Christmas.
46. Stay in touch with mentors, near and far.
47. Remember to breathe on Match day. And take lots of photos/videos.
48. Soak up the time you have with friends who may be traveling to other coasts for residency.
49. When people tell you to take time off and relax, don’t question it, just do it.
50. Brace yourself — graduation, and residency, is coming! Stay tuned…