My home for three weeks this
January was New York City--stores, restaurants, people everywhere,
and the insane pulse of a great city. My internship took place at
Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, where I spent the majority of
my time observing heart surgery. My sponsor was Dr. Mehmet Oz, the
director of the Medical Center's heart-assist device program, an
active surgeon, and the cofounder and medical director of the
Complementary Care Center at the hospital. Oz is the most energetic
man I have ever met in my life. The first day I was humorously
advised to wear Rollerblades to keep up with his active schedule.
In the entirety of my
internship I observed approximately twenty-one heart operations
ranging from transplants to bypasses to the insertion of heart-assist
devices. I witnessed heart surgery on men of all ages, women, and on
small children. The youngest patient I observed undergoing heart
surgery was being operated on by a world-renowned surgeon named Dr.
Quaegebeur. The patient was thirty-four-and-a-half weeks old and had
congestive heart failure. On Tuesday mornings I
attended my favorite meeting, the Complementary Medicine Research
Group, with Dr. Oz. During that time the group's current and future
research projects were discussed. Dr. Oz's interest in complementary
medicine was one of the many reasons I sought this internship. I'm
intensely interested in the potential benefits of complementary and
alternative medicine in our society. The internship was an
extraordinary experience. Observing the beauty and intricacies of the
surgery, experiencing for a brief time the world I am working to
eventually attain, and feeling so incredibly aware of how much I need
to learn, I feel stronger than ever the pull to create a career in
medicine and healing. The inspiration and learning experiences I
received from Dr. Oz, from the other talented heart surgeons of the
center, and from the operating teams in the hospital OR, will carry
me forward for a long time in my educational journey.
I
will be returning to the New York Presbyterian Hospital in the summer
months to work with Dr. Oz and the Complementary Medicine Research
Group in the research occurring on complementary health
care.
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