All About Me: A Timeline

{From Graduate to Practitioner}

This little timeline was created while I wrote my story Love at First Spike. I thought it might become a prelude to the story, illustrating how chaotic life was for me around the time that I went to UNC (and met Dianne). However, that became part of the problem—it was all about me, when the story was meant to be all about my future wife, Dianne.

So I removed this background information from the love story, where it had no proper place, even as a sidebar or an appendix. Instead I put it here for those of you who might be interested in my meanderings after graduation from NC State with a degree in Zoology, a degree which prepared me for little else but to apply for a more advanced degree. You’ll see that my wanderings took me all over tarnation, mostly as a resident or a transient in someone else’s house or apartment (or on-call bed). Somehow I emerged as a respectable, employable young man in a noble profession. Maybe someday I’ll write about it all.

Ripon (Summer 1986)

After graduating from NCSU, I go on a work exchange program to work at Lightwater Valley Amusement Park — preparing English lads and lasses for borderline dangerous rides, drinking dark malty ale in pubs, eating at kebab and fish ‘n’ chip stands, and living in Ripon, North Yorkshire, in England. I hitchhike through the Yorkshire Dales, the Lake District, and Scotland, before traveling from Edinburgh to Paris, and then Amsterdam for a flight home.

Raleigh (Fall 1986 - Winter 1987)

I return home to Raleigh, but live in an apartment with Srini Iyengar and his wife and stepdaughter. (Srini is my best friend from Alexander Dorm at NC State, and he has married while I was away.) My mom has sold our house on Wayland Drive, and moved to Stanley, Virginia, to take care of her parents. My brother is busy attending the NC State College of Veterinary Medicine. I work in the deli department of the Harris Teeter in Glenwood Village, while completing my application to medical school. Later I move to a room that I rent on Daisy Street, which provides greater privacy.

Raleigh (Summer 1987)

I am (surprisingly) hired to work as a pool manager at Biltmore Pool in Raleigh, while I’m on waiting lists for three medical schools (Duke, U. Va., and Emory) but I haven’t been accepted by any of them at the time of my fifth NCSSM reunion (July of 1987). Things are not going according to plan, and I feel like a bit of a failure, for an alumnus of the first class of such a prestigious school.

Durham (1987-1988)

I breathe a sigh of relief when I am accepted by Duke University Medical School, and begin the first year of basic science classes that include Anatomy, Physiology, Pathology, and Pharmacology. Most of my time is spent taking notes in a dark auditorium. Everyone is smart and ambitious. My love life is nonexistent. I am living with two other male students (who I never see) in a house near Morreene Road in Durham, within biking distance of the hospitals.

Durham (1988-1989)

After frighteningly brief instruction in how to perform a complete physical exam and create a differential diagnosis, we are let loose on the wards in our second year. Clinical rotations include Internal Medicine (at the Durham VA), Surgery (holding retractors), OB-GYN (cervical checks and no sleep), Psychiatry & Child Psychiatry (with oppositional-defiant adolescents), Family Medicine, and Pediatrics (subjecting me to repeated URIs.). My brother was diagnosed with manic depression during this year, and I also go to therapy, myself. It is a year of caffeine-fueled hospital rounds at an inhuman pace, learning to give the perfect nutshell patient presentation on rounds, after pre-rounding at 5 or 6 in the morning, going to bed well after midnight, after completing exhaustively researched medical notes in the patient chart that no one ever reads, and being under constant stress.

Chapel Hill (1989–1990)

I opt to apply for the dual MD/MPH program, so that I can spend the year at UNC instead of at Duke. It’s a little bit like going on a Study Abroad program, leaving Durham for a sabbatical in Chapel Hill. I almost instantly regret the decision because we are writing paper after academic paper, and doing team projects where my independent spirit is quashed. But there are good things too. I enjoy the focus on healthcare policy and implementation. I enjoy Chapel Hill and Carrboro. I have time for volleyball and a life, and I meet people, who find me both interesting and even attractive. I am living with my cat, Salinger, in a room on McAuley Street, only a block from Rosenau Hall. I also spend some time working at Vine Vet on Franklin Street as a vet/kennel assistant.

Tempe (Summer 1990)

I go to Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona, to work on my Maternal and Child Health Master’s paper with a preceptor, who is researching the primary prevention of childhood psychopathology. My paper, on the history of research on the psychological vulnerability of children who have lost a parent, is little more than a summary regurgitation of the research that has been done to date. Both my UNC advisor and I agree that it is unacceptable. My master’s degree is still incomplete. On the plus side, I have spent the summer listening to NPR for the first time, because it was constantly playing overhead at the house of the room I was renting in Tempe.

Durham (Fall 1990)

I must complete a semester of basic sciences at Duke, before resuming clinical rotations. I take a class in Medical History, which is an apprenticeship deep in the bowels of the Searle Center basement, where rare and dusty books are gathered under the purview of a crusty modern day monk with a penchant for primary sources. Another class, on Epidemiology, gives me firsthand experience with clinical research using modern technology (computers) to perform secondary analyses of data using SAS. Although I have a private room in west Durham to keep my stuff, mostly I’m driving back and forth to Carrboro, to see Dianne during this time.

Durham (1991)

I take my senior-year clinical rotations which include Cardiology, Gastroenterology, Emergency Medicine, and more Family Medicine rotations, but my memories of these rotations are hazy. Somehow I got married in Falls Church, Virginia, in the middle of the year, and in the middle of rotations. I move in with Dianne (and Scooby) in a duplex in Woodcroft, in south Durham — a real home, at last! Somehow I graduate from Duke University Medical School in December, 1991.

Durham (Spring 1992)

I have roughly six months of gloriously free time to complete my master’s paper (second attempt), for the department of Maternal and Child Health at the UNC School of Public Health. It is a paper on the potential benefit of secondary analysis of emergency room data. I don’t remember anything else, but my Epidemiology course at Duke laid the foundation for the topic, and helped me close the deal. My paper is approved, and I am granted a master’s degree. Dianne also graduates with a master’s degree in Biostatistics.

Pittsburgh (1992-1993)

At the medical residency match in June, I am offered a spot in the Transitional Year residency at Montefiore Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Dianne also finds a job at the Biostatistics Department of the University of Pittsburgh. We are awestruck as we drive through the Fort Pitt Tunnel, below Mount Washington, and over the Monongahela River toward the lights of downtown Pittsburgh. We move into the middle floor of a three-story house on Beechwood Boulevard in the Shadyside neighborhood, near Squirrel Hill and Frick Park. A year later we are moving again, but we have fond memories of our year in Pittsburgh.

Columbia (1993-1995)

After interviews in Pittsburgh, PA; Worcester, MA; and Albuquerque, NM, I fail to match to any of the residency programs—mostly due to my indecision on whether to pursue a career in emergency medicine or family practice. Ultimately, I accept an offer to join the family practice residency at Richland Memorial Hospital in Columbia, South Carolina (where my mother was born and raised), and we move back to the South. We are living so close to Fort Jackson that we can hear the artillery exercises. In 1994, we discover that we are having twins on an early ultrasound. They are delivered in November, and our lives are changed forever. Six months later, we are moving back to North Carolina with two toddlers. I begin my career in Family Medicine at Sanford Medical Group, while Dianne works first for UNC and then for Duke at the Duke Clinical Research Institute (DCRI).