Category: Uncategorized
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Mom Guilt
My toddlers cries are piercing their way through my closed bedroom door. She’s with a babysitter at the moment, and a very good one by my first impression. Cue severe Mom-Guilt. “You should be tending to her,” it says. BG’s cry tells me that she’s and in need of some snacks and a nap. We…
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“New Green”
My internal narrator has been compelling me to write since the beginning of summer, when the fresh leaves decorated the tips of lonely branches with a new, fresh, green that makes its appearance only once a year. In Japanese, this is called “shinryoku” or “new green.” We have no such word in English. Now the…
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A Typical Sunday
It’s Sunday afternoon and the afternoon sun is filtering through the the closed shades of my bedroom. BG is snuggling up against me and craning to look at my laptop screen. She just woke up from a nap. We move to the living room as she’ll want to start moving around soon and my “office”…
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Dipping a Toe in Dermatology
Nearly a month into my dermatology residency. Why did I think this would somehow be easier? What I’ve gained back in weekends, I seem to of lost in confidence. And complexity. As of an entire new world has opened up to me, and I barely knew any of it. We’re at once I would see…
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Personal Statement – Dermatology
Watercolor is becoming my favorite medium for painting in its ability to ignite the senses while simultaneously capturing a moment in time. Acrylics are much “safer” paints as they dry quickly, layer easily, and can hide any mistake in a stiff coat of titanium white. Watercolor is unforgiving in that every touch to the canvas is…
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“I’m Healthy”
On the way home from the hospital I wait for the bus. My day was longer than I would have liked and it’s dark. My fatigue is stacking and somehow this blunts the paranoia that normally would have me avoid public transport after hours. Not ideal, but it can’t be helped tonight. A stranger approaches…
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Happy Mother’s Day
It’s my first Mother’s Day. BG just turned 3 months old. And in that short time since her birth, I think about how much my life has changed. Not just my house, which now has bottles, playmats and pacifiers strewn about in a perpetual state of chaos, but my perspective too. “I didn’t know life…
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Growing Pains
Yesterday I got some unexpected, negative feedback at work. A combination of poor delivery, fatigue, and some shouldering burnout caused the 2-minute encounter to subsequently ruin my day. As a resident, receiving constructive criticism is part of the job description, but some days are more palatable than others. What follows is some advice to myself…
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National Doctor’s Day
Instagram is telling me it’s National Doctor’s Day. I scrolled through my photos and tried to find something recent that’s “doctorly” and came up blank. Most likely because I’ve had some more pressing things on my mind… The question of what to do about childcare has been this enormous, frankly stressful project over my maternity…
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37 Weeks
My attending gave me the most incredible “baby shower” gift: a day off. This has never happened before and I don’t expect it to happen again in my lifetime. But like Hailey’s comet I’ll lay on the couch watch this day burn in the night sky, relishing the temporality and beauty of this fleeting moment.…
Med-Derm, MD 