Meet Sarah Jane...
 Class: 2008
Hometown: Mystic, Connecticut
Undergrad: Middlebury College
Major: English
Program: M.D.
I had barely swallowed my first word when my grandmother declared two prophecies: Sarah was going to be tall, and she was going to be a doctor. Now, keep in mind that these divinations were
coming from a woman who was almost 4’11” with the help of a perm, and who claimed to hate doctors after her appendicitis was misdiagnosed. By the time my grandmother died, I was the
second-shortest kid in the entire class, and traumatized by the video we had to watch in seventh grade about the removal of parasitic worms. But, lo and behold, I sprouted up to a respectable
5’7” in high school, and when I remained unfazed as a Red Cross blood drive volunteer after a donor vomited all over me, I realized I had also become less squeamish. Still, the only solid
evidence of my becoming a future doctor floated sweetly in my mother’s daydreams—wanting nothing but the best for me, she always fancied the ring of “Paging Dr. Borch…please report to the ER.”
Me? I had too many interests to narrow them down just yet. The little kid who fastidiously dissected the vole bones out of regurgitated owl pellets was the same college kid with dyed-pink hair
whose heart was rapt with the poems of Pablo Neruda. I did not fit my own stereotype of the typical “pre-med” type: you know, the EMTs whose cars were equipped with enough lights and sirens to
simulate a slot-machine jackpot at the casino, and the students whose thick, leather planners had 31 flavors of color-coded subheadings. These were the kids whose paths were so precise that
they could walk without disturbing any molecules of air along the way. Even so, my tenacious little grandmother could somehow foresee the person I am today—a bona fide 5’7” second-year medical
student at UConn.
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“I was inspired by people who helped patients write poetry to cope with the depth of their illness, and by physicians who recited poetry while on rounds with their medical
residents.”
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Since I didn’t know any physicians personally, my influences were often subtle. Other than the obvious magnetism of Doogie Howser, M.D. (TV’s child prodigy who entered medical school at age
14), I think my initial guidance was a byproduct of being an only child. I spent a lot of time around older people, and a lot of time alone in the backyard: these were really lessons in
listening, patience, observation, and imagination. I became fascinated by people’s stories and by nature. So, even though I spent my pre-med-school years studying English and performing
glamorous work like small-town journalism (you may recognize my name from a stunning feature on broccoli), I was learning good medicine all along—in every mindful interaction with another
human being, and in every honest reflection within myself.
During my two years in UConn’s Post-baccalaureate Program, I attended a conference on poetry and medicine at Duke. I was inspired by people who helped patients write poetry to cope with the
depth of their illness, and by physicians who recited poetry while on rounds with their medical residents. I realized that literature is all about diving passionately into the meat of being
human. It recognizes all the suffering and all the beauty and all the paradox that causes light and dark to exist simultaneously. While in medical school at UConn, I have had the freedom to
share a poem during a class in problem-based learning; to receive wisdom from participants in a literature and medicine book group, whether physician, researcher, administrator, nurse, or
chaplain; and to coach female prisoners in using journal-writing as therapy. In medicine, stories exist as living things. They dance, cry, laugh, touch, kiss, blush, and scream. I am thankful
for all of those weird, disparate pieces in me that can connect with other people’s unexpected wrinkles and bumps. Amazing, how human it is to vibrate at more than one frequency. |
