Musical Stories - Duke - AMCAS personal statement
AMCAS personal statement
Stirred from a deep sleep by a loud knock, my bleary-eyed fourteen-year-old self fought back the covers and opened the bedroom door to find my father there, stethoscope draped around his neck.
“Megha, where are your keys? It’s icy outside and your car drives best.” I scrambled to find them and watched him dash off, imagining what emergency might have called him back to the hospital.
Between classes the next day at school, I felt someone grab my shoulder. I turned to find a classmate with watery eyes and a wide grin on her face.
“Megha, I want to thank your dad so much.” She paused to wipe a tear. “My grandma was sick in the hospital last night, but your dad came in and took care of her. Can you thank him again for me?” I smiled, not without some pride, and responded, “Of course, I’d be happy to.”
My first insights into medicine came from witnessing medical emergencies in our small, bring-your-new-neighbor-a-pie community. Somehow, the care my father provided our neighbors would emerge as the oxygen tank my piano teacher’s husband rolled along as he opened the door for me, or holding my friend as she wept from frustration with her grandfather’s unidentifiable disease. Though I did not realize it at the time, I was enchanted by the idea that I could become someone to be called on to ameliorate pain or fend off manifested disease; someone to provide immediate, visible support during another’s greatest time of need.
Soon my turn came to provide support, and I was ill-prepared to navigate the differences between my hometown and my cousin’s distant community.
Awoken from a fitful sleep by the ringing phone, I threw back the covers and dashed into the living room to answer the call, which I knew came from my father’s hometown.
“Juhi? What’s going on?”
“They found carcinoid tumors in Dad’s intestines. We’re taking him to the hospital. He needs to go into surgery immediately.”
I let my cousin’s digitized voice wash over me as I reflected on her position. Juhi’s father coped with alcoholism, diabetes, and hypertension for many years. After a series of unsuccessful outcomes, my uncle’s kidney function declined rapidly due to acute-on-chronic kidney failure secondary to sepsis. Care providers ignored my uncle’s history and family situation. They did not provide preventative education and were unaware that subsequent substance abuse combined with hereditary conditions caused his ailments. My uncle’s providers were also oblivious to his weakened family structure in which no one ensured my uncle took his prescriptions in a timely manner. The resultant complications led to my uncle’s loss of independence, making Juhi the effective head of the family. Now, whenever managing family relations, finances, and her college education overwhelm her, Juhi calls me, where I act as her community, thousands of miles of earth and ocean away. I switched from observing effective care to being a sort of care provider, offering advice, sympathy, and comfort. Still, I could not provide what Juhi originally needed: someone who could have met her father’s primary needs by knowing his story.
This, I could work towards. By attending to patients’ stories and training to provide competent, global care, I can become the person that Juhi needed. But to learn patients’ stories, I first had to share stories of my own, which I did with my guitar.
“Do you have anything you’d like to hear, sir?” I asked the man nestled among plastic tubes and cotton sheets.
“The Beatles, if ya can,” he replied.
I obligingly plucked and strummed the tune of “Rocky Raccoon.” At first self-conscious about my crooning, I glanced over at the man to see his eyes closed and pulse-oximeter wrapped finger tapping along. Encouraged, I played on.
“Try it with more feeling next time,” he offered when I asked for his comments. “That there’s a story that needs to be felt.”
I thanked him for his critique, feeling the weight of his words as I packed up. At first, I struggled to perform for patients, nervous that my rendition of such legendary artists could do their music no justice. But sharing musical stories and making myself vulnerable to patients as a performer removed the distance between myself and patients, empowering them to share their own history. The patients told me tales of seeing Paul McCartney perform live in the 70s, or touring with a jazz group as a youth. Perhaps these stories lack the clinical significance that would inform medical decisions, but I learned to build an honest rapport with patients, hearing stories that surpassed those of any novel’s characters, simply because they belonged to real people.
Allowing stories to reveal patients’ humanity enabled a fuller understanding of their condition. On two separate nights, I woke up to be of some assistance to the people in my two communities, but I knew I wanted to do more. While in my hometown people could rely on tangible support during medical emergencies, my family in India was not as lucky, with little more than me for emotional support. By pursuing medicine, I hope to be there for my community when it matters most, the way my family needed someone—to lean in a little bit closer to hear the next part of the story, because that’s how medicine saves lives.