While not a scientific endeavor, allowing Google to auto-populate queries into an empty search bar is an amusing way to glimpse at the most pressing medical needs of our modern America.

I have always loved a challenge, whether it has been conducting scientific research since age 15, volunteering on Massachusetts General Hospital’s (MGH’s) chemotherapy unit, stepping on the ice as the first woman to play men’s hockey at MIT or teaching genetics as an undergraduate teaching assistant (TA) with a team of graduate TAs.

I stood nervously among a sea of bodies in the chilly pre-dawn glow. My impulsive idea to run the 2013 Seattle Marathon was finally coming to fruition. Surging forward at the sound of the gun, it didn’t take long to settle into the familiar rhythm of all those early morning runs around Lake Washington.

The first time I learned the details of cardiac catheterization, I was translating the procedure in Spanish to a stoic Mexican man in a white Stetson hat.

It’s not every day you help a kid become Iron Man. It happened for me during an internship at the NIH.

His house was disheveled and well off the road and seemed to be slowly melting into the creek that ran in front of it. It was the second day of the two-week data collection period of my research into the Costa Rican healthcare system.