Hi guys! It's been a while, but just wanted to thank anyone still reading! I'm excited to announce that some of my photographs from last year's work in India, Tanzania, and South Africa are featured in Weill Cornell Medical College Magazine's spring issue. You can take a look at them here: http://www.med.cornell.edu/publications/ (click on the "spring 2009" issue)
Thanks again for all of your support and encouragement!
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Working HEMS with Netcare911
Flying with Netcare911 in South Africa!
We're about to take a call...
Posing with the helicopter at Grand Central Airport, the heli base
... we landed the Helicopter right on the highway to pick up a car accident victim
Loading the patient into the helicopter...
A view of Johannesburg from the air! So beautiful (at least, the nicer parts are...)
Posing again!
I'm having a fantastic time, learning a lot, seeing a lot, doing even more... now if only I could stop having fun long enough to actually get some work done! :)
We're about to take a call...
Posing with the helicopter at Grand Central Airport, the heli base
... we landed the Helicopter right on the highway to pick up a car accident victim
Loading the patient into the helicopter...
A view of Johannesburg from the air! So beautiful (at least, the nicer parts are...)
Posing again!
I'm having a fantastic time, learning a lot, seeing a lot, doing even more... now if only I could stop having fun long enough to actually get some work done! :)
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Documentary: Saving Soweto
A fantastic documentary of the trauma unit at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital (Soweto). This is pretty much *exactly* what it was like (and often busier). Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZjrSf3QG9k&feature=channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZjrSf3QG9k&feature=channel
Monday, October 13, 2008
Update!
Hey everyone! I know it's been quite a while since I've written, but due to all of my competing responsibilities (rotations, exams, interviews) I don't have the time to devote myself to this blog the way I would like. However, I do have an exciting announcement!
This spring, I will be returning to South Africa! For approximately six weeks, beginning in early March, I will be working with NetCare911, South Africa's biggest pre-hospital care provider. I will be based in Johannesburg for the majority of my stay, conducting research on flight medicine and its utility in trauma. This means I will be flying as part of the aeromedical crew!! (me = incredibely excited). This is, in may ways, a once in a lifetime opportunity that I'm really looking forward to.
My return to South Africa, of course, means my return to writing this blog! And I will be bringing along my camera, so I will also be posting more photographs. Thanks again for reading, and please check back in March for further reflections and random musings from (that's right) elsewhere. And otherwise. (I had to, I just had to...)
This spring, I will be returning to South Africa! For approximately six weeks, beginning in early March, I will be working with NetCare911, South Africa's biggest pre-hospital care provider. I will be based in Johannesburg for the majority of my stay, conducting research on flight medicine and its utility in trauma. This means I will be flying as part of the aeromedical crew!! (me = incredibely excited). This is, in may ways, a once in a lifetime opportunity that I'm really looking forward to.
My return to South Africa, of course, means my return to writing this blog! And I will be bringing along my camera, so I will also be posting more photographs. Thanks again for reading, and please check back in March for further reflections and random musings from (that's right) elsewhere. And otherwise. (I had to, I just had to...)
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Back!
It's been nearly a month since i've gotten back to the states, and after some thought I have decided to continue writing... at the very least, writing down my thoughts and experiences once a week or so will keep me on my toes :). I'm on a Surgical ICU rotation right now, at NJMS-Newark (it's a trauma ICU, so for the moment that's keeping me very busy...), but i'll be able to get back to a more regular schedule of writing in a few weeks. For now, I wanted to share a few poems that I wrote while I was in South Africa... the first deals with the inevitable love (what's a chick website without at least one love poem, right?) and the second... well... you can figure it out. Thanks for the reading, i'll be back online and writing shortly!
Oh, and I also wanted to let everyone know that I have new photographs of Soweto on my photography site... just go to www.pbase.com/quideam.
US
A moment with you
And I'm lost.
An eternity runs past
And I do not notice.
Time
It pulls you away
Too suddenly
Too quickly
But a moment with you
And I'm lost.
Time cannot seep
Into us.
SORRY
I bleed for you,
Dark crimson pouring out.
Contractions clutch my soul,
And shove it down my throat,
And on the floor.
And there it is.
I look down and it's you.
My insides are outside,
Coffee grounds and tomato paste,
Salt water and crushed ice.
I'm bleeding with you,
Drowning in me.
And then you're gone.
I wasn't ready yet.
I'm sorry, my child, I wasn't ready yet.
Oh, and I also wanted to let everyone know that I have new photographs of Soweto on my photography site... just go to www.pbase.com/quideam.
US
A moment with you
And I'm lost.
An eternity runs past
And I do not notice.
Time
It pulls you away
Too suddenly
Too quickly
But a moment with you
And I'm lost.
Time cannot seep
Into us.
SORRY
I bleed for you,
Dark crimson pouring out.
Contractions clutch my soul,
And shove it down my throat,
And on the floor.
And there it is.
I look down and it's you.
My insides are outside,
Coffee grounds and tomato paste,
Salt water and crushed ice.
I'm bleeding with you,
Drowning in me.
And then you're gone.
I wasn't ready yet.
I'm sorry, my child, I wasn't ready yet.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Happy Birthday
Yesterday was Israel's 60th birthday, marked by numerous celebrations commemorating the nation's struggle for independence in 1948. I wrote a poem (posted below) to commemorate the continued struggle towards a truly democratic, peaceful nation that can be celebrated by all of Abraham's sons and daughters.
Birthday
Toddler in men's trousers,
Sucking your thumb through a cocked pistol.
Is the trigger in your mouth?
But you're pointing it at me.
Ancient stains on a tainted land -
Did He keep His promise?
Birthright through bloodshed,
And no one to tell the emperor he's naked.
The keys to the temple are here,
But we search in darkness.
Where did we meet last we found each other?
Take my hand, my brother.
Sixty candles coated in honey,
But the milk is burning.
Can you see?
Can you see me?
Birthday
Toddler in men's trousers,
Sucking your thumb through a cocked pistol.
Is the trigger in your mouth?
But you're pointing it at me.
Ancient stains on a tainted land -
Did He keep His promise?
Birthright through bloodshed,
And no one to tell the emperor he's naked.
The keys to the temple are here,
But we search in darkness.
Where did we meet last we found each other?
Take my hand, my brother.
Sixty candles coated in honey,
But the milk is burning.
Can you see?
Can you see me?
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Night
5 am and we're hurtling through the streets of Soweto. Brush fires blaze in the background as shadowy figures huddle around them for warmth, thick blankets wrapped tightly around thicker waists, infants rocked to sleep on their backs. Bitter whiskey runs freely between young men patrolling the streets with bats; barely old enough to shave, they are marching with an uneasy certainty. Metallica's "For Whom the Bell Tolls" blasts from our radio. I open the car window as Francois lights another cigarette, and the wind is deafening.
'Princess' is a squatter camp rocking on the edge of chaos; it is a place of cramped shacks, raw sewage, and bullets. I wear an over sized bulletproof vest over my jacket, aware that its frayed belly is more for show than any real protection. Francois offers me a hand as we pass over a rickety bridge haplessly built on an open sewer; I do not need it, it is not the first time that I have passed through nightmares. Quietly, we make our way to a tiny shack, barely the size of a western bathroom, nestled in the heart of the camp. There is no crowd, only a small girl standing outside, lost in a dark blue blanket; a fat officer with faraway eyes idles restlessly nearby. We walk inside. There is a woman sitting on a bed. She is young and frail with high cheekbones and slightly sunken eyes; she clutches a bottle of milk and doesn't look at us. Her three month old daughter is lovingly wrapped in a blanket beside her, tiny coarse curls matted against her forehead. She wears a tiny pink hat that nearly covers her eyes, startlingly long eyelashes peeking out. We stay only briefly. We don't talk to the mother. As we leave, we ask the officer to translate for us. "Please tell her that the baby is dead", we say. We file a report and leave, drive away, faster and faster in the darkness. Far in the distance, beyond the dry hills and isolated roads, Soweto is burning.
I have written a lot about God in this past year, generally to reflect on his absence. The problem of evil haunts me: how could a benevolent God allow the horrors I see all around me? Perhaps worse, how could he blind so much of the world to the suffering that is so obvious it shakes me to the core, keeps me awake at night? There is so much pain, and for what reason? For a long time I have not believed in God. Rabbi Hillel said that most people live their lives in an easy darkness, unaware of their blindness. A few, however, are tormented by lightning: occasional flashes of realization that light up the earth and shake them from complacency. My experience this year has been one long lightning storm; sometimes it is a nightmare that I cannot wake up from, but other times I'm glad, because I am no longer sleeping.
I suppose that it would have been easy for God to make people good, to always make the right choices and create a happy world. But instead of goodness, God gave us an even greater gift: he gave us freedom. Uniquely, we have the ability to analyze and reflect, thereby making genuine choices. Those decisions will not always be right or just, and humanity as a whole has suffered for it. Greed, hatred, bigamy, ignorance... they plague us as a people, and yet most of the time we continue to walk in darkness, blissfully unaware of the evil we have allowed ourselves. But God in his wisdom has in fact given us two gifts: Free will, and Insight. I believe in God because I have seen the lightning; I have felt the truth and am blessed with the ability and opportunity to bring change, however small. It is a challenge that we all must answer, each in our own way. My time in India and Africa has been illuminating... I am coming home with enough thoughts to write without stopping until the end of my days. There is so much to see, to do, to experience and to change that it is nearly overwhelming... I take deep breaths and continue on, small steps and one at a time.
Thank you to everyone I have worked with - all of the amazing people and organizations that have made this year possible. You have enriched my life beyond belief, and I hope that in the years to come I prove worthy of the opportunities you have granted me. I have two more weeks in South Africa, mostly on holiday, but I will continue to write. After all, there is so much more to say. I am sitting here now, listening to the familiar Metallica tune that blasted on the radio a few nights ago in the paramedic response car. The deafening instruments do not drown out the original inspiration, Jon Dunne's 16th century poem in which he famously wrote that "any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee."
'Princess' is a squatter camp rocking on the edge of chaos; it is a place of cramped shacks, raw sewage, and bullets. I wear an over sized bulletproof vest over my jacket, aware that its frayed belly is more for show than any real protection. Francois offers me a hand as we pass over a rickety bridge haplessly built on an open sewer; I do not need it, it is not the first time that I have passed through nightmares. Quietly, we make our way to a tiny shack, barely the size of a western bathroom, nestled in the heart of the camp. There is no crowd, only a small girl standing outside, lost in a dark blue blanket; a fat officer with faraway eyes idles restlessly nearby. We walk inside. There is a woman sitting on a bed. She is young and frail with high cheekbones and slightly sunken eyes; she clutches a bottle of milk and doesn't look at us. Her three month old daughter is lovingly wrapped in a blanket beside her, tiny coarse curls matted against her forehead. She wears a tiny pink hat that nearly covers her eyes, startlingly long eyelashes peeking out. We stay only briefly. We don't talk to the mother. As we leave, we ask the officer to translate for us. "Please tell her that the baby is dead", we say. We file a report and leave, drive away, faster and faster in the darkness. Far in the distance, beyond the dry hills and isolated roads, Soweto is burning.
I have written a lot about God in this past year, generally to reflect on his absence. The problem of evil haunts me: how could a benevolent God allow the horrors I see all around me? Perhaps worse, how could he blind so much of the world to the suffering that is so obvious it shakes me to the core, keeps me awake at night? There is so much pain, and for what reason? For a long time I have not believed in God. Rabbi Hillel said that most people live their lives in an easy darkness, unaware of their blindness. A few, however, are tormented by lightning: occasional flashes of realization that light up the earth and shake them from complacency. My experience this year has been one long lightning storm; sometimes it is a nightmare that I cannot wake up from, but other times I'm glad, because I am no longer sleeping.
I suppose that it would have been easy for God to make people good, to always make the right choices and create a happy world. But instead of goodness, God gave us an even greater gift: he gave us freedom. Uniquely, we have the ability to analyze and reflect, thereby making genuine choices. Those decisions will not always be right or just, and humanity as a whole has suffered for it. Greed, hatred, bigamy, ignorance... they plague us as a people, and yet most of the time we continue to walk in darkness, blissfully unaware of the evil we have allowed ourselves. But God in his wisdom has in fact given us two gifts: Free will, and Insight. I believe in God because I have seen the lightning; I have felt the truth and am blessed with the ability and opportunity to bring change, however small. It is a challenge that we all must answer, each in our own way. My time in India and Africa has been illuminating... I am coming home with enough thoughts to write without stopping until the end of my days. There is so much to see, to do, to experience and to change that it is nearly overwhelming... I take deep breaths and continue on, small steps and one at a time.
Thank you to everyone I have worked with - all of the amazing people and organizations that have made this year possible. You have enriched my life beyond belief, and I hope that in the years to come I prove worthy of the opportunities you have granted me. I have two more weeks in South Africa, mostly on holiday, but I will continue to write. After all, there is so much more to say. I am sitting here now, listening to the familiar Metallica tune that blasted on the radio a few nights ago in the paramedic response car. The deafening instruments do not drown out the original inspiration, Jon Dunne's 16th century poem in which he famously wrote that "any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee."
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