04-JUL-A-6
SEEM RATHER
TRIVIAL,
AS THE LETTER
I AM ASKED TO WRITE AS A REFERENCE FOR
MY GRADUATING PROTÉGÉ SAMMY GORMAN POINTS OUT
July 13, 2004
I am writing this letter at the request of, and in support for, Sammy Gorman recent graduate DO who is considering entering a postgraduate training program at Highland in Oakland upon her return from a mission to India.
I
am eager for this assignment and do so with enthusiasm, since I know the
candidate well under a variety of settings, among them a few that could be
described as the most stressful that human beings should ever be called upon to
withstand. She has carried herself
through the regular events of her medical education well, but has been even
more exemplary in her response to crisis.
I
may have introduced Sam to her first clinical practice seeing her first
patients. She joined me when I led a
clinical freshman team of medical students to remote parts of Ladakh India,
where we conducted medical missions in villages among the peoples of the
Chang/Thang Plateau of Himalayan India.
Sam performed admirably among her peers, given their introductory
status, but she would really light up when I would demonstrate a physical
finding that impressed her. I remember
distinctly one specific case: a fellow had come in from his farm work
complaining of abdominal pain when he would lift any heavy object. Lying on his back, he demonstrated no
abnormality, and Sam could not find anything wrong nor could her senior medical
student team mates with an internal medicine resident monitor failing as
well. When I came by to have him clasp
his hands behind his head and try a half sit-up posture, his large ventral
hernia slid out through his diastasis recti, and Sam entered the wonder world
of clinical diagnostician with eyes round and smiling broadly “I cannot get
enough of this!” she exclaimed. On my
desk, I proudly display a flat smooth rock I retrieved from Lake Tso Morari,
arguably the highest altitude lake on earth where we did a lakeside clinic at
that time of her first clinical experience; she returned it to me with a
landscape painted on it of the Himalayas as they were mirrored in the Tso
Morari lake that they rimmed. She has a
great deal of depth behind her newly acquired clinical skills.
I
had joined with her in two subsequent trips to India, and it was not just for
my tutelage that she was there. She had
met the son of the district medical officer named Jigmet Dawa, and with a
considerable problem in transcultural understandings, I was instrumental in
smoothing a few problems—not in her family or his, but in the American resident
Sikh outfitter and his group who felt some residual caste consciousness!—Jimmy
and Sam were married in their California ceremony.
I
met them in Tahoe in March, just before their plans for the month-long rural
Colorado elective period of externship, preceding graduation and a summer long
trip to India which would include the “Monsoon Wedding” on the Indian side of
the relationship with all families involved in this joyous event. They were all together near the time planned,
but not for any such joyous celebration, but, of all things, for a combined
family funeral. During the Colorado
residency for her senior rotation, Jimmy and Sam were in Colorado when on a
spring hike he was swept away in an avalanche and killed.
This
kind of stress is put upon few newlyweds at the tumultuous time of graduation
and the start of a new life. Sam has
done it with good grace and perseverance, with much support from family and
friends—among whom I am happy to be numbered.
She is going to India now again, following the funeral trip to use her
considerable talents as artist to paint a mural in the monastery at Shey
Palace, where I had been with both her and Jimmy. She will also be working with a surgeon who
will be teaching at Leh Hospital where I have given lectures and made rounds on
each visit, while she is involved in his teaching of laparoscopic techniques. She is also going on the circuit of village
visits with Dr. Dawa, the Leh District Medical officer and a friend of mine and
her all-too-briefly father-in-law. She
has made remarkably positive use of her period of mourning.
I
am very proud of her. I am delighted to
recommend her for the training program to which she will be a credit. You can predict from her immediate past
history, that she would not decompensate under any less significant stress, and
that she uses crises turned to positive experiences in her life and that of her
patients.
I
am happy to recommend her to you and would be happy to be called upon further
in her support (addresses and phones attached)
Yours
very truly
Glenn
W. Geelhoed MD