Attending Physician Guest Writer
NewYork-Presbyterian Columbia/Cornell
Krutika Parasar Raulkar completed her Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation residency at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia/Cornell, where she served during the pandemic. She graduated magna cum laude from Brown University in 2012 and attended Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, where she was elected to the Gold Humanism Honor Society and received distinctions in Medical Education and Community Service. An exercise enthusiast, she has run three marathons and enjoys a myriad of sports/fitness activities. Her first book, Exercise as Medicine, was published by Wild Brilliance Press in 2018. The same year, Dr. Raulkar was featured on the Dr. Oz show for her care of Montel Williams after he suffered a stroke and received rehabilitation at Weill Cornell Medical Center. Following residency, Dr. Raulkar moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where she lives with her husband and children, her lifelong partners in health and happiness.
In 2020, she published her second book, COVID-19: Inside the Global Epicenter, featuring New York City health care providers’ experiences from the peak of the pandemic.
My husband was a 53-year-old man who worked full-time as a mental health aide. He was a hardworking man, with shifts from 3:30pm to 12am, and was very dedicated to his patients. He was on the frontline caring for COVID-19 patients. I work as a nurse at the same hospital during the day shift.
I am a 25-year-old resident physician of anesthesiology /
My sister and I are bonded by genetics, anatomy and biology /
I am a senior in high school at age 18. / My sister and I are bonded by love and everything in between.
For the first time in history, a pandemic has shut down the entire globe. COVID-19 has affected our lives in many ways, including significantly impacting health care services. Many people, sensing an unseen danger looming in the air, have become increasingly afraid to visit their primary care physicians, and we are now discovering the catastrophic consequences of this delay.
As the COVID-19 pandemic stretched into the late spring months, the ACGME made the recommendation to hold all residency and fellowship recruitment for the 2021 Match cycle virtually. At University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center, preparations began.
In the pandemic’s wake, we witnessed the explosion of viral social media content such as Plandemic, an alternate exaggerated narrative which sought to perpetuate the types of claims one would expect from the title. These kinds of conspiracy theories have always existed in many different shapes and forms; however, COVID-19 struck at a time when society was suffering from a pre-existing condition of deep mistrust.
No one had told her how difficult the fight after COVID would be. Of course, few in her community had lived to tell the tale. And then again, precious few people had expected her to survive at the ripe old age of 86.
“Hello? Can you hear me?” Tightly holding the phone, I heard only an old man’s distant yelling and the shattering of dishes being thrown against the wall.
My husband Tom isn’t afraid of anything; strapping on a bulletproof vest every day for work will do that to a man. Tom wasn’t scared until I couldn’t breathe.
“The United States reports first death from COVID-19 in Washington State.” It was the end of February as I glanced over this news alert. For the past month, my inbox was flooded with emails regarding the COVID-19 outbreak. I saw my patients as usual throughout the day, albeit washing my hands and using hand sanitizers more often.
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.
When the COVID-19 alarms were raised, I got ready for battle against the virus the world was fighting, only to later feel cut off from “the cause” as my efforts to volunteer outside of my daily work were denied time and again. Some might call it luck, but for me, it felt isolating.
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.
