RSS Feed

November, 2005

  1. Sara

    November 30, 2005 by elenamary

    I’ve wanted to write about Sara for a few days now but haven’t known exactly what to say and really I still don’t.

    This past weekend my loving friend Sara passed away. She went to sleep Saturday and never woke-up. It was sudden and completely unexpected.

    It is with profound sorrow that I inform you of the death of Sara Medwid, MD on 11/26/05. Sara, a 2004 graduate of the OSUCOM&PH, was a PGY-2 resident in the combined Internal Medicine-Pediatrics residency. The coroner today identified the cause of death as cerebral herniation due to a large astrocytoma. Sara had complained of feeling ill on the night before she died; she went to sleep and was found the next morning by her husband of three weeks, Rob Gorsline, MD. Dr. Gorsline is a resident in the OSU Orthopedics program.

    The Internal Medicine Residency Program and our colleagues in Pediatrics are all devastated by this tragedy. Sara was beloved by her friends for her gentle nature, ready smile and selflessness. Her colleagues will remember her as a model of the patient centered physician, one for whom compassion and empathy came naturally. She could be counted on to do whatever was necessary to ensure that her patients received the best of care and that her colleagues had the support they needed.

    Sara was the doctor I wanted to be. Only 3 years older than me she had just finished her first year of residency. I meet Sara the free clinic, La Clinica Latina. She volunteered more than any student I’ve ever met. She learned Spanish at the clinic in order to better help her patients. She traveled to the Dominican Republic and Mexico to do medical work. She was the one who gave me the best life plan ever…I stole her idea…she told me that she wanted to move to Mexico and charge cruise ship tourists American prices to see her as a doctor and then the rest of her time spend it working for free in impoverished parts of Mexico. Sara introduced me to baseball, and baseball players. She taught me to never fear a patient or their illness. Sara loved people like no doctor I ever met.

    Category personal | Tags: | No Comments

  2. No, really, the men do go first

    November 27, 2005 by elenamary

    I drive like a Mexican. I can parallel park a car in spot tighter than…well never you mind that, I can fit in a tight spot. I move in and out of lanes, and am aggressive in making myself fit. This past week I was driving with my special friend when I got a phone call that the champurrado I’d asked for was ready and was I going to come by and pick it up. I was stopped at a red light when I got the call and did one of the things I know best, I made a U-turn. My special friend was upset because he hates it when I drive like that.

    We get to the house of the family that has the champurrado and I ask him if he wants to come in and he refuses. I go inside and find all the men of the house and some of the neighbor men seated at the table eating tamales and drinking champurrado. The women ask me to sit with the men and eat and drink with them. I don’t like this. I hate being served by the women and eating before them. I hate sitting with only the men, it is uncomfortable. I excuse myself and go back to the car to try and convince my special friend once more to come in and plee that I am the only woman at the table will he please come sit with me. Again he refuses.

    I head back in and tell the women that he doesn’t want to come in. One of the women, my age, grabs her niece age 14. The woman my age tells me to sit down and eat, she is going to get my special friend.

    With their persuasion he does come in and joins us for champurrado (he isn’t a fan of green tamales). However, at this point all the men are done eating and have left and it is the women’s turn to eat. Only one other man is left at the table. My special friend is still upset with me. He think I lied to him. He thinks there weren’t any men at the table (since there were mostly women when he arrived) and he thinks that I sent the women after him. I guess this is one of those cultural differences huh?

    Everywhere in Mexico that I have been (not that I’ve been everywhere) when there are too many people the men eat first with the guests. The women serve the men until the men are full and the women are sure that the men are completely satisfied. It is then that the women serve themselves, eat and gossip.

    I am not surprised the women went out to get him. I should’ve gone with them and tried to stop them. But what Mexican women wouldn’t go out and try to bring in a guest?! Oh I wish my special friend knew I wasn’t lying or trying to trick him.

    Category Ohio, personal | Tags: | No Comments

  3. Thanksgiving

    November 25, 2005 by elenamary

    Yesterday, was the first Thanksgiving that my siblings and mother and I have spent together in at least 6 years. One of us is always traveling or with their significant other but this year we all managed to be together. My baby brother Patrick flew in from Japan on Monday, my baby sister Cristina flew in from Austin, Texas on Wednesday and on Thursday we all ate Tofurky.

    I leg wrestled my sisters ex-boyfriend and although he cheated (he used two legs I only used one) I still won one of the three matches. I played Bughouse with two players rated twice my rating, and one rated three times my rating (I’m only about a 600). I played poker and lost. I saw friends. I drank wine and ate until I fell asleep in a chair.

    Category personal | Tags: | No Comments

  4. mi gente everywhere

    November 16, 2005 by elenamary

    I am in San Antonio right now for the Hispanic Dental Conference. No, I am not going to be a dentist but I do work with the Dental Clinic for Spanish speaking people without health insurance in Columbus. I am really looking forward to the presentations.

    It has been amazing for me here. As a Xicana of the North seeing Xicanos in the South is always an experience. There are raza t-shirts everywhere for sale, “Viva Zapata” “Hecho en Mexico” etc. There are Chicanos everywhere, people speaking in Spanish and Spanglish. Our taxi cab driver today was from El Valle (“The valle includes cities like McAllen, Harlingen, and Brownsville” ). The driver was telling our group about El Valle when one of my friends I am traveling with asked what the population of El Valle is. My friend having never heard of el Valle thought it was a city…quite understandable. To me it is very exciting because the only experience or connection I’ve ever had to el Valle was when I was unionizing migrant farm workers and they would tell me about it. Of course are cab driver had also been a migrant farm worker in Iowa.

    To me el Valle is, as I explained to my “special gentlemen friend“, is where you find the true Chicano. The Chicano who struggles with both “borders”, constantly crossing an imaginary line. And then my special gentleman friend questioned me “Does a Chicano of the North not also have a struggle? Are they not a true Chicano? Don’t they also struggle between cultures?” He was absolutely right. I should have never said “true Chicano“. This is one of the things that I adore about my special gentleman friend. He questions me. He forces me to evaluate statements I make, defend them, analyze them, and does it all with patience and knowledge. El Oso asked me if there was anyone whose politics I do agree with. No, there isn’t, no one 100%, which is fine by me. But my special friend challenges me like I’ve never been challenged. Our politics often don’t agree but he is educated in his arguments, willing to learn, and accepting of other views. Dear lord I’ve fallen hard.

    Category Latinos, Ohio, personal | Tags: , | No Comments

  5. No me tardare

    November 16, 2005 by elenamary

    Este semana no voy a “blogear”. Andare en Texas. A ver si escribo desde alla…

    This week I won’t be blogging. I’ll be in Texas. We shall see if I write from there…

    Category personal | Tags: | No Comments

  6. Get The Pill

    November 14, 2005 by elenamary

    Getthepill.com “on-line prescriptions for emergency contraception (the morning after pill).

    I just found out about this at Salon.com. It is amazing!

    In 2000, Dr. Matt Wise launched the Web site Getthepill.com — which provides prescriptions for emergency contraception — as a short-term end run around the obstacles women face who are trying to get the drug.

    Getthepill.com logs 30 to 50 prescription requests or inquiries per day, most from women who have found the site via a search engine or a public health Web site; some college health services also recommend the site for use on weekends, when they’re closed. Women seeking a prescription are asked to fill out a questionnaire designed, in part, to confirm that they are at risk of pregnancy — but not already pregnant. (Plan B will not harm an existing pregnancy, says Wise, but it is a waste of time for a pregnant patient to use the drug.) “If patients get confused about when their last period was, I’ll get on the phone with them and pull out my calendar and we’ll try to do the best math we can to figure it out,” says Wise. When a patient’s need is confirmed, a prescription is called or sent in to the pharmacy of her choice. If a pharmacy or pharmacist turns out to be hostile to dispensing emergency contraception — which happens once every other day or so, Wise says — his staff goes back through their extensive database, which lists pharmacies across the country that they have used successfully, until they find a friendlier one.

    Category personal | Tags: | No Comments

Older Entries