los anjalis to anjuquerque

Just renamed the blog. I think it’s self-explanatory, don’t you? It may change, it’s fluid right now, but the two cities aren’t changing. I’m in love with both and from now on will only live in cities I can play anjali word games with.

I didn’t realize it until I saw the small note in my online calendar. “Los Anjalis anniversary” it said. I did a double take and realized, holy shit, is it really true? Four years ago today I started this blog. I had recently moved to Los Angeles from Newark New Jersey, and was working as a resident physician (specialty training after medical school) in family medicine, at a county hospital in LA. I was blogging at the time at To the Teeth, a health justice space I created back in 2002/2003, but I had a feeling I’d need to be blogging about politics, human rights, silly videos, culture, and los angeles, so Los Anjalis was created.

Now, four years later, four years wiser, four years sillier, I’ve landed in Albuquerque, New Mexico and will plant my feet and some seeds for a little while. I will share my stories on why and what and how, later. I’ve been in quite a wonderful transition from my work in Los Angeles to my work and life in New Mexico and have been quite sporadic and impersonal with my blogging here. I’ve been blogging a little bit more over at Cure This, a health justice blog that I co-founded in residency in Los Angeles. And I’m navigating that space that bloggers often do when they’re managing two blogs — should I stop posting at one of them? What should I post where? (and other totally useless thoughts that such privilege entails). I guess there’s always a need for this blog, at least to post autotune the news, or videos of europeans doing dances to the sound of music in a subway.

In related news, today also marks the day that my parents met, 37 whole years ago.

peace.

Last week I was a resident. This week, a fellow.

Ack! Suddently, I’m supposed to be smarter, more beautiful, more intense, and lots more fun. All that in wonderwoman style, with such a quick transition from Family Medicine resident to Family Medicine Fellow? Bollocks!

What in the world is a “fellow”? As always I first consult the handy dandy Wikipedia:

A fellow in the broadest sense is someone who is an equal or a comrade. Historically, the term fellow was also used to describe a man, particularly by those in the upper social classes. Nowadays, it is most often used in an academic context: a fellow is often part of an elite group of learned people who work together as peers in the pursuit of knowledge or practice.

Ah yes, elite. One would think that’s a bad thing after all the “elitism” thrown around about the Obama campaign. Anyway, I just completed an intense 3 year long residency training in Family Medicine (in early August i’ll take my Family Medicine boards exam, which means that after passing, I’ll be properly boarded in this field and if I want, I’ll be able to set up my own little humane, innovative clinic for low-income folks).

I made the decision to pursue a 1-year Fellowship in Faculty Development at my program in Los Angeles, with a focus on Homeless Health Care (and Resident Education). It’s a win-win situation for me. It’s not that I don’t know what i’m going to do and thus am stalling with a fellowship. No-ho-HO. I gave up a wonderful move to Albuquerque to do totally rad work there, I passed on a better salary and possibly more flexibility in my work in Los Angeles, to do this fellowship. It’s all part of a larger strategy for the 10 year clinic/neighborhoodchange/community-building/healing plan :>

I’ll post some of my goals for the year in another post (after I’m done narrowing them down — you have NO idea how long that list is right now!). But for now, this fellowship will afford me opportunities to continue to develop as a competent (and hopefully excellent – in the future) physician, opportunities to teach residents (and therefore really solidify my knowledge as well as develop my teaching skills), and opportunities to also work with homeless populations in Los Angeles and pursue some really rad projects with amazing folks in LA.

So it’s off I go, first thing tomorrow, to serve as a “preceptor” in the clinic in the AM (which means family medicine residents will present a story, if you will, of the patient that they’re seeing in clinic, and i’ll give feedback and suggestions and ask questions about what they plan to do for management of that patients’ conditions, before they go back in to finish seeing the patient and explain their thought processes to the patient to come up with a solution that both of them find acceptable). I’m excited and nervous, and stoked to develop skills to nurture, teach, and challenge doctors in training!

(I’ve also made the decision to try to blog more spontaneously here at Los Anjalis and on the community health justice blog Cure This, which turned one years old this past week!) Hope to share more of what inspires me, more on music, and more on strategy for community change, on a more regular basis.

Back to blogging, after almost a month. What an adventure the past month has been. Intense! (just the way I like it). During a two week vacation in October, I participated in an inspiring and totally radical Doctors for Global Health gathering in El Salvador (with a few of my close friends from LA and SF) — I liveblogged once from there, and hope to share some more experiences and photos from that inspiring trip.

I flew back to LA just in time to fly out to New York City in order to hang with the ‘rents in NJ and DJ the 10th anniversary of MUTINY, an event that a few other DJs and I put on every month for 6 years. It was HISTORIC to say the least. Again, hope to reflect on that a bit here.

Flew back to LA and started a super intense adrenaline-rush of a 2 week stint working in the hospital with very sick patients. It was a truly rewarding experience, and I spent 16+ hour days in the hospital, taking care of patients, thinking out my clinical management of their diseases, talking to their families, and discussing plans with the subspecialty consult services in our hospital. Outside of the hospital I saw MIA in concert with a few friends, it was an out of control 2 hour visual and aural onslaught! Saw Suzanne Vega in concert the next week, she was amazing too. And now, I’ve completed a week on my new rotation as Resident Clinic Director, where I’m managing the flow of patients in our family medicine clinic as a 3rd year resident in family medicine. I’m also triaging the walk-in/urgent care patients and doing some administrative work too. It’s a fascinating learning experience, and very valuable for me since I’m jonesin’ to start my own clinic someday.

Lastly, this thanksgiving weekend has been filled so far with goooood movies (Syriana, City of God), goooood homecooked vegetarian food, goooood quality time with the bro, and some nice LA exploring (first time at the Eagle on wednesday night, and heading to dinner and maybe some dancing tonight in silverlake or west hollywood). I’m excited about my new resolve to spend some more time in Los Angeles instead of flying around the country and the world, and about figuring out what’s next for me after residency finishes in June. Always an adventure, always an adventure :>

and now, back to near-daily updates here. It’s been a month, and it’s time to get back in the game. I’m reading TOO much and experiencing TOO much that I’m itching to share with others…

Ah.  We’re here!  5 residents from our family medicine residency program (Jose, Suganya, Casey, Eva, and myself) arrived in Kansas City, Missouri yesterday for the annual American Academy of Family Practice (AAFP) National Conference of Family Medicine Residents and Medical Students.  We’re accompanied by our wonderful program director, Dr. Castro, and our associate program director, Dr. Sanchez.  Thinking back, this specific conference is what introduced me to my residency program in the first place.  I’m from the east coast — New Jersey and NYC to be specific — and I had no way of knowing what programs in the west coast or midwest fit my interests well.

I remember feeling a little down (and exhausted) after walking by many many display booths at this conference when I was a 3rd year medical student.  After a few long days of talking to many programs, I felt a connection to a few, a handful of them who I felt really walked the walk and did not just talk the talk in regards to broader public health issues, resident-driven change, and sustainable community outreach.  And then — love at first sight.  I glanced over at one table where a slideshow was being shared, and I saw photos of residents rallying with SEIU for healthcare reform; I saw photos of resident-driven international trips;  I saw photos of residents running the show at a resident-founded homeless clinic.  I talked to the residents and faculty at the table, and I heard more of the same, accompanied by a rigorous training, a sense of satisfaction and a sense of humility.  This was exciting!  Long story short, the conference introduced me to my top choice program in the country, and I’m ready to play the role of excitedly sharing the program with medical students.

We set up our display booth, which was quite fun, we’re pretty excited about it.  We’ll have video from our residents and screenshots of our residency blog (first of its kind in the nation, eh?) and our wiki (resident-driven collaborative learning/reflecting) on two laptops at our booth.

The freebies here are interesting.  There are some really fun ones, like the program that brought the portable popcorn maker and another program that brought a smoothie machine.  But it’s quite disappointing to see so many pharmaceutical companies’ huge display booths — very expensive and schmancy ones at that — set up among the family med residency booths.  We’re not quite sure what the purpose of them is…other than blatant blatant marketing of their drugs to physicians and (get ‘em young) medical students.  This is a family medicine conference for medical students and resident doctors, a recruiting conference, this is not a recruiting conference for the latest Merck drug.  sheesh.

Last night, my brother and two friends and I headed to OutFest, the annual Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. We saw a beautiful short film called Talking about Amy by Yorico Murakami — all animation, and all about the filmmaker’s thoughts on a friend’s free-spirited views on family and social norms. She narrated the film while stop-animations were going on to describe the abstract and concrete thoughts in her head. 9 minutes. That’s all we got, but every second of it was beautiful.

Then the feature film went on — Spider Lilies — a taiwanese film that deals with two womens’ losses and coming to terms and blah blah blah the details of the movie are less significant than the fact that I need to see more movies. Why? Because the symbolism in the movie was partly lost on me, and I was left taking a crucial piece of the story as literal. Oops. Thank goodness my brother could point out the symbolism and I didn’t have to ask the 2 other friends we went there with, who are filmmakers and cinematographers, the stupid questions. (hopefully they’re not reading this).

I’ve been so heavily involved with the literal that I’ve lost some appreciation for the symbolic. I really need to see more movies. Oh hey, OutFest is going on for another week! Jackpot.

for the National Physicians Alliance board of directors and national committees meeting starting today! Should be fun. We’ve got quite a broad agenda to discuss, so it’s going to be a 4 cups of coffee a day kind of weekend, with little sleep, lots of wonderful ideas, and of course lasting inspiration that’ll keep me going for the next week iof work (and longer!), before my trip to New Jersey and New York City to visit my parents and attend a good friend’s wedding. looking forward to riding the chicago metro later today…

In the meantime, please keep checkin’ in at the National Physicians Alliance blog. If you’re a doctor, you’re free to register yourself and either write a post or comment on a post!

Digging in the crates — I was going through some old emails and reread this piece I flagged, from last year around this time, when Dave Chappelle surreptitiously took a break from his show and flew to South Africa to be inside his head.

“I’ve got to check my intentions.”

…”I want to make sure I’m dancing and not shuffling,” he says. “What ever decisions I make right now I’m going to have live with. Your soul is priceless.”

…But Chappelle also says that he must share the blame for the stalled third season. “I’m admittedly a human being,” he says. “I’m a difficult kind of dude.” His earlier walkout during shooting “had a little psychological element to it. I have trust issues, things like that. I saw some stuff in myself that I just didn’t dig. It’s like when I brought a girl home to my mom and it looked as if my mom really didn’t like this girl. And she told me, ‘I like her just fine. I just don’t like you around her.’ That’s how I feel in this situation. There were some things about myself that I didn’t like. People got to take inventory from time to time. That’s what this [coming to South Africa] is for.”

(From TIME.com: On the Beach With Dave Chappelle)

I’m feeling the dancing too.  Checking my intentions for sure.  Reflecting on the past few weeks and my months ahead, really wanting to dance.  Though this past month i’ve been working with the neurology consult team at my hospital, affording me the opportunity to see too many people shuffling along because they have Parkinson’s disease.

SAJAforum: There seem to be a lot of doctors who are also writers, journalists, etc. Any advice to physicians who are considering doing some writing?

Gawande: There does seem to be a sudden surge of physicians communicating in some way or another –through television, fiction, journalism, book-writing. And the great thing is to see the uncommonly high level of that work at present. It raises the stakes for all of us. My advice for would-be physician-writers? It’s the same as for any would-be writer: write! And find somewhere to publish – whether it’s a newsletter, an internet blog, or a magazine. The key is to write, put it out, and then learn from what went right or wrong in order to try again.

Seems like simple enough advice. Go physician-writers! I’m more of a physician-reader, physician-blogger or better yet a physician-linker (you know, “hey check out this article it moved me! [link]“). I started blogging in part to hone my writing skills, but I don’t put much time into honing them. Thanks, Sri, for the tip. More at “Books: Five Questions for Dr. Atul Gawande, author of ‘Better’”

It’s gatheration time. As Lady Sovereign sings, ” Yeah. Get to know dis. Gatheration. It’s not called a house party no more.”

I turn the big 3-0 on April Fools’ Day! That’s Sunday. Sunday night isn’t a fun time to party, so Saturday it is (in indian culture it’s not cool to party before your birthday so we’ll act like it’s not a birthday until midnight!)

I’m stoked. Folks are coming to my house first, and enjoying various forms of weirdo entertainment, like the recent activity I discovered at a BarCamp LA gathering last weekend — Powerpoint Karaoke! I know, sounds so geeky but it’s actually quite a trip. You adlib random powerpoint presentations you’ve never seen before, on topics foreign to you. Friends are making some mojitos to get the party started.

Then we head over to Industry Cafe and Jazz (which is just 3 minutes from my place) in Culver City, where we’ll have wonderful ethiopian food for dinner, a nice cafe venue, and a live jazz band greeting us. And after 10pm the place is ours and ours only! sweet :> Thanks to my friend Aron who owns the place (and cooks all the food!) for letting us use his space! I’ll be DJing for much of the evening, and have made some mixes for the times when i may be too imbibed to know if i’m mixing properly or not :>

What I’m most excited about is mixing crowds. I know it’s not always appropriate to do that, but it’s going to be grand tonight. I’ve got a mix of musicians, architecture folks, techy folks, queer friends, and of course my doctor buddies.

I’m also stoked to be doing a donations system instead of birthday presents. We’re accepting donations in increments of $5. This $$ will be used to buy mosquito nets for villagers in rural Shirati, Tanzania (where a few of us worked this year). $5 buys a lifesaving net for a kid or two.

As a result, my brother in all his witty wisdom renamed the gathering “Mojitos against Mosquitos” or “Malaria Hysteria”!

Pics to follow (don’t i always say that?) I still have pics to share here from my trip to Tanzania and Kenya, the National Physicians Alliance meeting in DC, Medusa performing at Temple Bar, BarCamp LA, and the Rupa and the April Fishes show :> i’ll get my act together sooner or later…