US visit recap

Well, all good things must come to an end. As fun as it was to wear my fancy suit and heels and to drag my suitcase across southern New England for a month, I am now back in London with Danny and I'm learning all about English Christmas and winter-weather preparedness (or lack thereof). More about the winter in England later, but for now I just wanted to recap my trip to the US.

First of all, a HUGE thank-you to everyone I stayed with over the month, and everyone who drove me around to interviews, dinners, train stations, etc. This includes: Mom, Dad, Jon and Julia, Miya and Lester, Erica, and Marlise. An especially big thank you to my mom, who hasn't chauffeured me that much since I was 16. Thanks, Mommy!

There was also some good eating and catching up with a bunch of other people: it was really great to see all of you, and my apologies to those of you I didn't see enough, or didn't get to see at all. Sorry to people I said I would call and didn't get to - my bad :(

Minor exciting announcement is that our ultimate frisbee tournament was a success - the Happy Hannukah Huckers won their bracket, beating out, um, Lincoln-Sudbury high school for an amazing light-up santa sleigh trophy! Good times. Totally worth the bloody -> dying toenails I am now enduring (though thankfully, painlessly).

More exciting than that was Medicine Lake's EP release concert, which was an incredible show. Medicine Lake is the band my brother is in - as the sax player and occasional (though on some songs not so occasional!) vocalist. Here are some pics of him doing his thing:



In the case of music, though, if a picture is worth 1000 words, then an mp3 is worth a million. You should listen to their stuff here. You can also see them on Youtube, here. Like what you hear? If you want to buy the album you can do it on itunes or from cdbaby. Or you can get in touch with my brother directly (cheapest way to buy the album!) Want more shameless plugging? Also check out Danny's brother's band, The Real Feel, which is also awesome.


Lastly, I just thought I should recap the business-reason for going back to Boston: my interviews. The good news is that I liked all the programs and really think they would all be excellent places for me to train. Everything has something unique that they offer, and each one fits my interests in a slightly different way. Now I just have to weigh all those individual factors and decide which are the most important. Here is the basic philosophy of the places I interviewed, in the order I went to them:

Brown: "Our mission is to take care of the state of Rhode Island, particularly the uninsured population."

Cambridge: "Our mission is to take care of the city of Cambridge, and to embrace our patient population for all of its complexity."

Boston Medical Center (BU): "Our mission is to take care of the underserved population in Boston and to provide trainees with skills in the outpatient setting."

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center: "Our mission is to always provide the best possible clinical care, while constantly working on quality improvement."

UMass Medical Center: "Our mission is to create a healthy learning environment so our residents get the best possible training experience."

Brigham and Women's: "We think we offer the best training program in the country. And despite being a cutting-edge, tertiary care center, we also love primary care!"

Well, there you have it. Obviously there's much more to the programs than that, but that was my impression of the main message they were all trying to get across. Lots to think about in the upcoming 6 weeks are so, maybe I'll post some of my thoughts here, but don't expect to find out my rank order...some things are better left unpublicized :)

Next up, a recap of our trip to beautiful, snowy Edinburgh!