Airports

Hello from Paris! Or from the airport at least. I'm on my way to Niamey now that I have met up with Mark, the director of the Worldwide Fistula Fund along with Jaqui, another nurse who is heading out to the new fistula center to help set it up with us. On the plane to Paris I met a 3rd year medical student from BU who is heading out to Africa to do her clinical rotations as part of the Schweitzer foundation. She went to Niger in undergrad also and was so excited that I am going over there to study maternal health. She went back the summer after college because she loved it so much. I still don't know exactly what to expect but I'm so excited to meet the people and learn about health in a hands on setting.

I wanted to read Cutting for Stone on the plane as many of you have recommended it to me but I didn't have time to pick it up before I left so I grabbed The Emperor of All Maladies: a Biography of Cancer that Professor Tannenhauser recommended to me over the summer when I was telling him about my interest in clinical research. I haven't had any life changing experiences yet (unless you count navigating the Charles de Gaulle airport) so I will start my first blog post with a review of my in flight entertainment:

I think what strikes me most about this book and similar ones like it ("The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" and "Flu: a History of the 1918 Flu") is that they make research sound like results are made every day and it is the most exciting, fascinating career to be a physician scientist-- on par with that of a rockstar or a fireman. Even when I read it, I forget how tedious and frustrating research can be and how long it can take to get real results. I salute the writers who make seemingly mundane acts of running test after test sound like a scene straight out of CSI. It truly brings you back to the "glory" of research. If I weren't heading off to Niger right now I'd be ready to hit the lab and read the literature in the manner that
Siddhartha Mukherjee so eloquently describes. I haven't finished the book yet but I look forward to reading the rest.

Thanks for reading,next stop Niamey! I promise my next post will get down to business as Ive been assured by Mark and Jaqui that we will all be very busy on the ground in Maradi.