Contributing Writer
University of Florida
Melissa went to medical school at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso. She is currently a PGY-1 at the University of Florida Pediatrics Residency Program. She is not quite sure where she will end up after residency but has thought a lot about pursuing fellowship training in infectious disease. In her spare time, Melissa enjoys going to local parks and farmer’s markets with her husband and baby. She also enjoys reading sci-fi, writing letters to her awesome pen pal (her 8-year-old nephew), and Facetiming friends and family.
Very early in the morning on Wednesday, October 18th, 2023, I stumbled into the emergency department with my hair in a tangled mess and accidentally still wearing my house shoes. It was my older brother’s birthday, but I wouldn’t end up having time to send him a happy birthday message. It was my baby boy’s third day of life, but I wasn’t going to be able to hold him in my arms that day. Instead, …
Hello, come in, / and welcome to peds clinic! / My attention is on you / for the next 20 minutes.
“A lot of the men in my unit started getting sick and never got better. And we just didn’t know. I mean, all I want is to help build a group big enough that we might finally understand more about what’s happening to us.”
End-stage starvation is rare, but devastating. After exhausting its fat stores, the body breaks down its organs for energy: muscle, liver, kidney and finally the heart. The blood itself becomes toxic, in a dangerously narrow balance between brain death and cardiac arrest. As a pediatrician, I wish to protect all children from these symptoms. But as an American taxpayer, I worry about my contribution to the starvation of children in Yemen. President Biden recently announced …
On the morning of January 6, I awoke ecstatic to the news of Reverend Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff’s predicted wins in the Georgia run-off elections. To be frank, I have become hesitant to hope while inured by the near-daily attacks on civil rights by the Trump administration via executive orders and federal policies. Over the past four years, I witnessed with pride — but also fear — as community activists tirelessly organized to combat racist policies.
When do you leap into the unknown and venture into the uncomfortable? Is it after methodical deliberation or is it much more abrupt, emboldened by a critical decision? Perhaps it is a deep drive within you, one that propels you forward in a way in which you cannot look back.
Recent events have highlighted a systemic problem within our world, our country, our state, and our community. People of color fight an uphill battle in every facet of life, at every socioeconomic level. The COVID-19 pandemic is no exception — as we all know by now, patients from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are disproportionately afflicted. But the spotlight has refocused on a chronic pandemic: systemic racism.
The pandemic points to an important lesson: a rejection of traditional leadership structures, at least those that feed into a profit-based medical system, may be necessary in order to create a different world. The union provides such a framework, vesting power in a collective of voices. But in order to succeed at the level of a union, physicians need to let their voices join that collective — they cannot expect a delegate or representative alone to do the entire job, just as we might expect a program director to guide us in the right direction.
I learned to trust my own discomfort as an indicator of the toxic power dynamics that breed abuse for both patients and health workers. I became even more attuned to the pitfalls of professionalism because of my membership in Put People First! PA (PPF-PA), a human rights organization made up of working-class people building power to win universal health care.
The nurses noticed the behavior first — how he answered for her, his arms on her shoulders, and, on the day of discharge, his refusal to leave her room to retrieve her medications. The labor & delivery floor was already in full swing when her nurse came over.
In the first two months of 2020, I watched with alarm as a cordon sanitaire descended on Wuhan. I lived there as an anthropologist completing my research on Chinese medicine in 2017. Friends from Wuhan — most of them doctors — were suddenly describing scenes out of a dystopian nightmare.
Has social distancing paradoxically made us closer? Can disease be tragically beautiful? I pondered these questions as I reminisced over the past few weeks working on one of the medicine floors in my hospital, grappling with these thoughts almost every moment as I have witnessed the world respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Editor-in-Chief Emeritus (2019-2022)
University of Central Florida
In 2015, Lydia graduated magna cum laude from Campbell University with a Bachelor of Business Administration in healthcare management and a minor in general science. While completing her undergraduate degree as a Campbell "fighting camel," Lydia was inducted into numerous honor societies including Phi Kappa Phi, Delta Mu Delta, Pre-Med Allied Health, and Who's Who Among Students: Class of 2015.
Lydia applied and was accepted into medical school at age 19 and matriculated soon after she turned 20. During her third-year of medical school, she applied and independently pursued a Master of Business Administration separately from her doctoral studies.
Throughout medical school, Lydia wrote stories about her experiences learning clinical skills and reflecting on life through poetry, and she began as a contributing author for in-Training. Before becoming one of the editors-in-chief of in-House, Lydia was editor-in-chief of the Campbell University Community Care Clinic newsletter and is managing editor emeritus of in-Training.
In her pursuit to study anesthesiology, she has published physiology pieces on PubMed and StatPearls, LLC which have been subsequently cited on over 90 different medical journals and academic texts. She has been published by KevinMD, social media's leading physician voice and in Essays & Poems From Medical School, for a piece which she co-authored with the novel's author, Dr. Kamiar Rueckhert.
In May 2019, she graduated cum laude with a Doctorate of Osteopathic Medicine and summa cum laude with a Master of Business Administration. Lydia co-matched in 2019 via the NRMP into an intern position at Campbell University and advanced anesthesiology residency at the University of Central Florida. After residency, Lydia plans to pursue fellowship in pediatric anesthesiology and advanced fellowship in pediatric cardio-thoracic anesthesiology.
Lydia would like to personally thank and recognize two women who have been paramount in her writing education: her beautiful mother for pressing her to strive for success while homeschooling her from Kindergarten through high school and her beloved college English professor and dear friend, Mrs. Susan Cannady, who continues to encourage her to find her own voice.
Disclaimer: The opinions and views expressed in any publication written by the author are those solely of the author. They do not reflect the opinions or views of any university, institution, organization, or medical facility of which the author may or may not be affiliated.
