Finding Nilimo

March 30th, 2022 Dear Nandini,  She doesn't know I hear her in the early morning hours, crying for you. They don't know I hear their hushed chatter, whispers surely after a poor night's sleep -- haunted by your dream-time visits. Everything these days reminds us of you. The songs on the radio, the heels in the store -- their height, their shape, their color. The gifts you gave me over the years -- the clock, the aquarium too. The clothes you left behind, your favorite foods -- all of it brings us back to you. When I'm home, I pass by your room a few times a day.  No replaced furniture or paint job could ever wipe the memory of the disheveled, smoke-scented, cigarette-stained carpet, the lavender walls, or the pile of empty bottles underneath your bed.  I'm still reminded of what I was wearing that night I stood between the door and you as you tried to leave -- the liquor store not too far by car.  I remember the night you came home at 2 -- I awoke to hear the clatte...

June 1st, 2020 -- 5:15PM   Dear Nandini,       I've come back to this opening line for the past 1.5 years though every time I did, I was never really sure what to say or how to organize my thoughts.  Every few months, I'd pick up this journal -- stare at the words and set it down again.  To be honest, I still don't know what to say but I think it's time.  So, here goes.     We somehow got to a point in our lives where I dreaded talking to you.  In fact, I couldn't even stand to hear about you from Mom + Dad.  If I didn't know what was going on -- then I couldn't feel all the emotions I usually did: anger, confusion, sadness, but most of all -- helplessness.  I could protect myself, I guess -- bury myself in the obligations of school and casually continue to think that my friend- and me-centric views would erase anything that was going on with you.  It was selfish, I suppose -- immature.  I'm embarrassed to say th...

May 10th, 2020 "RAPID RESPONSE TEAM". I remember the first time I had met her -- a few weeks ago and, actually, on the first night I had returned to work since this pandemic began.  Prior to this, donning, doffing, and the decompensating COVID patient were -- for all intents and purposes -- theoretical to me.  Everything  was new.  In fact, I had put my CAPR on for the first time just minutes before and goodness knows if I even did that  correctly.   By the time we got to her room, two other providers were already tending to her and after gowning up we headed inside.  I remember the room being inordinately loud because of the ventilation system and as we used the phone interpreter I thought to myself, "I can't hear a word of what's going on."  Quite hypoxic, uncomfortably tachypneic, and intermittently vomiting, this patient needed to move to a higher level of care.  While we awaited the arrival of the ICU team, I remember usi...

March 31st, 2020 To the Universe, So when this all began, I was traipsing about Greece not fully realizing what I was coming home to.  Just as we had arrived in Santorini, Trump had announced his travel ban and our priorities very quickly shifted to figuring out how we were going to NOT get stranded somewhere in the Mediterranean.  As soon as we heard our mainland tour was being canceled, we found our flight through London and had just enough time to spend one full day roaming the streets of Athens -- undoubtedly growing eerier with each passing hour as the Greek slowly peeled into their homes with the remaining rays of sunlight preparing for their nation, like so many others had, to shut down.  We reached JFK on the evening of March 15th and by the evening of the 22nd -- the first night I was returning to the hospital for work -- so much had changed.  I was a mix of excited (to return to work with people I love), anxious (to began to treat something I ha...

A lot  has happened this year.  In fact, a TON  has happened in the past two years -- actually...since I last posted anything on this blog.  For a quick recap of major events in my life, please consider the following:  June 2015: I started my prelim year, all bright-eyed and with a tail that was somewhat bushy...(I've since gotten a haircut)  October 2015: I was all "damn, I kinda like this internal medicine nonsense"... December 2015: I was like, "Girl, bye!" to Radiology... March 2016: I got an IM spot at Cornell and I finally stopped plotting the various ways I'd live my jobless days on the couches of my BMC co-interns... And the rest...is a very brief history that leads us to...now...at the turn of the new year.  Apart from that...a lot of other amazing things happened.  My nephew was born and he rudely usurped my title of The Cutest Baby in the Shet Family (a title I held (though still do in my heart of hearts) for 27 years o...

(Don't worry, this has nothing to do with make-up.) I know, I know...that's not how the L'Oreal slogan goes...but it works for the purposes of my post...and my segue.  Though, I'm sure I'd be lynched by every English professor I've ever had because, according to them, the first rule about segues - much like Fight Club - is to not talk  about the segue.  That being said, this is now - officially - the worst segue ever. So.  Today was the start of a new elective.  I was told before the rotation that it would be a whole  lot of reading - and after a more serious perusing of the required book...I concur.  The book itself is about 1,000 pages of information-dense chapters with scant sprinkling of figures - replete with problem sets at the back of most  chapters.  All in black-and-white.  Thanks to the snowpocalypse, however, we were dismissed for the day almost  as soon as we got there - though not without a reading assignment, of co...

Just the other day, I visited someone in the hospital on my way home from work.  Upon arriving to her room, I saw that her parents were already there - flipping through TV channels and not really talking to their daughter, perhaps unsure of what to say to her.   Slouched on the edge of a hospital bed, sullen, she stared at the floor.  As I moved closer to sit beside her parents I saw she was anxious.  Tremulous and unsteady.  Confused.  I knew what this was.  This, though, wasn't like every time before.   Now, she was older.  75 lbs.  Five feet, 1 inch. Black sneakers that were at least 20 years old - surely dug out from one of her parents' closets at home. Black tights that let me know her legs could not have been much wider than my arms .  A shirt that fit her as well as a garbage bag ever could.  A jacket that hadn't been washed in who-knows-how-long, hanging off her shoulders because there was barely any body to clin...