Greetings.
For those who don't know me, my name is Ezra, and this is my blog.
On a crisp Long Island night in December 2018, I exhaled in new freedom and triumph. I had returned home after what seemed like an academic bootcamp, exhausted from a rigorous first semester of medical school. Exams had been continuous, heck---even contiguous. Alas, a sharp decrescendo from my never-ending war with class PowerPoints laid before me, and I was going to take advantage of these moments. A few short weeks separated me from returning to school for an infamous second semester, and I looked forward to spending time with my friends, loved ones, bagels, and pizza.
Many of my high school friends may remember me as the kid who played oboe. The oboe: a double-reed woodwind instrument that beginners wrestle with to only produce duck-like noises, whereas professionals produce beautiful, full sounds that embody the aura of post-battle scenes (and maybe sex scenes) in movies. In the pure heaviness of the American adolescent experiment, I traversed these years in the Symphonic Band of Smithtown High School West. I have fond memories of being the "concertmaster," which is just the fancy label that exists for the oboist who comes out to tune the band and subsequently takes a seat. After an introduction that rendered a minuscule applause, I would sheepishly get on the conductor's podium and smile to the band. Often times I'd make eye contact with my dear friends before beefing out a B flat. To my left, my tall Croatian friend, Dora, sat deer-in-the-headlights at first chair clarinet, muzzling her horn. She was always ready for a concert. To my right, I'd spot my friend, Laurel, a brunette Jewish girl who had become almost like a sister to me over the past couple years. Every time I did the concertmaster shtick, she'd peer up with an ear-to-ear smile and a half-chuckle before her flute, acknowledging the mediocre applause I received after my introductions. Finally, I'd look straight ahead to my best friend, Mike---the Boston University-bound academic stud, who was my ride-or-die oboe brother. He smirked too. After tuning, we sat down and created something great for the next half hour of our lives. We created.
In my return to Smithtown, I realized that I wanted to create---again. I still can't put a finger on the motive. Was it the uneasiness that bellowed from having nothing to do for once? Perhaps. Regardless of what sprung that feeling, I saw an opportunity to share my passion for healthcare and medical news on a platform. I felt disengaged from influencer culture and felt almost violated that others would take on the fascinating world of medical development and the prestige associated with being a doctor just to...flex (literally) on social media. Healthcare to me was about being human, not about being hot. And I saw an opportunity to create a real dialogue about the topics I enjoyed with a blog. Written prose, baby.
Off I went. I sprawled through Wix.com and purchased a domain name. I built my site on the premise that the blog was the main page, but I populated a few other pages in the likes of a resume, tickling the potential that people would reach out to me after learning more about my background and then offer up research and publishing opportunities (which never came into fruition). I churned out several blog posts, writing about a plethora of topics---from acai bowls to medical marijuana---taking keen steps to author evidence-based facts that I sourced. I would run an interview with a high school friend who had just become a pediatric cardiac ICU nurse; that article would get shared several times on Facebook and set me up to receive many in-person and online compliments. Things were going well.
I tripped over the train tracks and stopped the blog for a couple reasons. For one, medical school got gritty again. You got a test that means so much for your future on one hand and a blog on the other hand. Guess which one goes out the window. Secondly, I wanted to take a step back from writing only about healthcare, but I didn't know how to do that gracefully, so I just stopped altogether. Finally, I felt a fierce rush to minimize my online footprint. I'm trying to become a doctor, right? What will residency program directors think of someone who shares thoughts and opinions in an online setting? Would they infer that I got loose lips and will, as the saying goes, sink ships? I didn't know the answers to such questions, so I retreated. It feels vulnerable to even share these thoughts, to be truthful. When asked about my blog, my go-to was "Oh yeah that thing?....yeah Wix wanted to charge me a lot to keep it going, so I dropped it."
2020 made me feel all sorts of ways. When I got dumped in January, I felt like a clown. When COVID-19 hit, I was scared. When we lost Kobe, I felt shocked. When I studied intensely for my important board exam, I tucked in my frustration, and when I scored lower than expected, I let my frustration known. In complete 2020 fashion, I was one of a sliver of third years that got sent to a rural town in Upstate New York to complete a year's worth of clinical rotations. But with 2020 over and my rotations more than half-way done, I now feel at peace.
The solitude of rural healthcare and the hominess of new friendships helped me turn the page on my previous apprehensions. Patients care a lot more about what I can do for their congestive heart failure than what I think about acai bowls and single-payer healthcare. Coworkers care if I can hold my own and also prefer a good personality. And I want organizations to know that I am a human who holds hobbies, but I value confidentiality and professionalism.
This blog presents an opportunity to share a story. There's still a whole lot of beauty in medicine. I recently finished an autobiography by Susannah Cahalan, "Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness." Her wonderful book tells a story about how she survived Anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, an autoimmune disease that caused Susannah to experience paranoia, seizures, manic episodes, and catatonia. I was absolutely mesmerized by the details. No doubt: science needs to be continuously shared. I am also intrigued about the prospect of sharing articles of other topics I find important or amusing. I found a way to cook days' worth of chicken that won't make you want to bang your head against a hard table. Interested? Subscribe! In all seriousness, this pandemic---especially seeing it firsthand in the hospital---makes me value story-telling and chronicling my life. I hope to learn along the way, strengthen my writing muscles, provoke high level thoughts for the reader, inspire disagreements, and cultivate hearty laughs.
This blog may not publish on a regular basis, and heck, I'll probably take breaks.
Be assured, however, this blog stays.
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