Match Day +1, or How I Learned to Embrace the Ripples of Life-Changing Moments

Yesterday, just shy of noon, I interrupted one of my medical school deans over the virtual Match Day portal my school had set up to announce I’d received an email from the Match:  the National Residency Matching Program, our nationwide singular system that places graduates into residency positions. I interrupted as I scrolled through the email to discover where my job would be after graduation. 

I read that I had matched into a family medicine program in Queens, New York. 

Words like excited, happy, and thrilled don’t begin to cover my feelings at the direction my life has taken. New York, New York has been the center of my universe for many years; as a show tune singing, theatre arts minor, multicultural eating teenager and young adult, there was no place like NYC. Living in London for a couple years gave me a taste and when I moved back to the U.S. after finishing my studies there, I wanted seconds of the metropolitan duality of independence alongside a fierce community.  

Of course, the metropolitan setting holds many challenges. Patients are underserved in terms of health care resources; they are underinsured or uninsured, many in unstable housing or working paycheck to paycheck. Many are immigrants, first generation Americans, recent additions to the great experiment of America my ancestors joined decades ago. Each day, doctors in these communities spend part of their time evaluating, diagnosing, and educating patients on their health or disease, but they likely spend much more of their time filling out paperwork, on phone calls to pharmacies or insurance companies, fighting to get patients what they need to achieve health and wellness. It’s not always a battle they win. 

That mission is even more complicated now. As I sit at my kitchen table writing this at noon on Saturday, a mere 24 hours after Match, Governor Cuomo in my soon-to-be state of residence has closed every non-essential business, enforcing a stay-at-home policy. I expect my home state of New Jersey will do the same today. 

I was recently speaking with a friend at another medical school that this feels like the defining moment of our generation, for both physicians and non-physicians. My friend spoke of the life-changing news of learning about his father’s brain cancer diagnosis and how the things began shifting into a “before” and “after.” That there was no return to normalcy when one receives life-changing news. 

He’s right. When this passes (and this shall pass), the memory of the fear of a pandemic that seems to be running rampant across our populations will alter the way we approach our lives.

This is a new normal. Life has changed. 

Yesterday, I found where my future as a physician lies. It lies in my dream city, an epicenter of coronavirus cases, serving a population with needs that grow more numerous every day this current public health emergency grows. Hospitals are expected to be out of protective equipment in two or three weeks. And when this crisis ends, their needs will continue to be an effect of the economic landscape that follows in its wake. 

Thursday, I was notified that I had direct contact with a person who since had shown symptoms and tested positive for COVID-19. I immediately began tracking my temperature and watching for symptoms on the counsel of my student health center. I spend the majority of my days since away from my parents, whom I live with, just in case I start showing symptoms. I had a sledgehammer of a realization that my decision to be on the front lines of health and disease holds consequences for my family and those closest to me. 

The ripples move outward from singular events. 

This morning, I took my temperature when I woke up and made my standard cup of black, no sugar, strong-enough-to-stand-a-spoon-up-in-it coffee. I started thinking of apartments and how to plan my move to New York. I made a list of how to spend my time under the stay at home directives:  practice Spanish to better converse with future patients, crochet just like my grandma taught me, play my piano for the first time in ages, and finally follow through on doing yoga every day. 

This morning, because there was no Match Day in-person celebration and I cannot physically connect with the family outside my house due to my precautionary isolation, my aunt, uncle and cousins flocked me. Which, in case you don’t know (and I don’t expect you to know), means I was greeted by a yard full of bright pink flamingo lawn ornaments celebrating my Match. It was accompanied by a gorgeous vase of flowers and strawberry shortcake. And just like that, my incredible family were the ones on the other side of the glass door, surrounding me with love and pride despite our physical isolation. Love…and flamingos. 

The ripples move outward in all directions. 

We are inside our home for the foreseeable future. For this first upcoming week, that’s on isolation protocols per my student health center following the protocols of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). For the weeks after, it’s on the order of my governor and for the care, compassion and love for my neighbors and communities. Both here in New Jersey and future communities in New York. 

Life is changing, has changed. As I said last time, I don’t know what things look like beyond this crisis. But I’m here to embrace it. 

So wash your hands, clean your surfaces, get your information from official sources and stay inside.

P.S. Look up flocking, it’s a thing. And yes, there are photos below. Furthermore, on the bottom of my page, you can find links to information on COVID-19 from the CDC and the NJ and NY Departments of Health.