MESSAGE FROM THE EDITOR

Spring is a time to celebrate growth

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Farah Karipineni, MD, MPH, is board certified in General Surgery and fellowship trained in Endocrine Surgery. She is currently practicing in Fresno as an Assistant Clinical Professor for UCSF. Dr. Karipineni earned her medical degree from University of California, Irvine School of Medicine. Her residency in General Surgery was completed at Albert Einstein Medical Center, and she completed her fellowship in Endocrine Surgery at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Dr Karipineni has been published in journals including The American Surgeon, the International Journal of Surgery and the Journal of Surgical Education. Spring is a time to celebrate growth. It conjures up images of new blooms, baby chicks appearing in nests, and animals emerging from hibernation. But while growth is generally seen as a positive thing, it is, paradoxically, not always desired or even welcome. We tend to settle into the familiar groove of our routine, and when something comes along to push us off our comfortable tracks, it can be a fairly traumatic experience. The past year or so has been a testament to this, wherein we have been stretched and tested and worn out in ways we never hoped to be. But for those of us alive and lucky enough to still be breathing oxygen into our lungs, we can look back at how far we have been forced to grow, and all that we have overcome along the way. We may even see, in hindsight, that some of that growth was necessary or beneficial, though we would never have chosen its rocky path of our own accord.

In medicine, we see patients living this out on a daily basis. Those of us who practice inpatient medicine see patients at their nadir. Not only are they suffering from whatever brought them into the hospital, but in the times of Covid, they are doing so with no social support. Whether it’s the 81-year-old Spanish speaking cervical cancer survivor with a small bowel obstruction, the 20-year-old paraplegic from a motor vehicle crash, or the breastfeeding new mother with

choledocholithiasis. My patients always humble me But without this life-altering experience—which led with their capacity to adapt to new circumstances to major surgery, upheaval of her personal life and when life threw them off track. ultimately divorce and single motherhood—she would

I am humbled and amazed by our staff as not have been forced to rise to the person she is today: well, stretching confident, happy, themselves to fill and fulfilled. Her in for family who words resonated cannot be there to “My cancer wasn’t a bad thing. It with my own support their loved ones in their time was part of my path to who I was experience in which the lowest points of greatest need. supposed to become.” of my life, those On rounds, I hear that I almost didn’t of nurses giving out survive, and only cell phone chargers barely rose from, and back rubs collide with my despite a mountain of other tasks. I witness physician greatest moments of clarity, grit and purpose. Indeed, assistants going the extra mile to update patients the parts of myself I hold in highest regard hail back to multiple times a day on discharge planning. And I see those darkest times. physicians spending more time with patients, or with All around us now, nature continues its their families on speakerphone or facetime, to put beautiful yearly renewal. With all the abuse it has their minds at ease- taken from human -all this, in the face consumption, it of so many more seems implausible hurdles than we all that spring could are usually forced to And here we are, too, alive in its still be abuzz, year cross. Recently, beauty, ready to rise again from the after year, with the breathtaking one of my cancer storms we have weathered with our beauty of new life. survivor patients precious, hard-won growth. But it is. And here said to me during we are, too, alive follow up, “My in its beauty, ready cancer wasn’t a bad to rise again from thing. It was part the storms we have of my path to who I was supposed to become.” At the weathered with our precious, hard-won growth. time, I recall her utter devastation with the diagnosis.