On Tuesday, October 24th Dr. Peter Lee came to give a lecture about his life and experiences in becoming a cardiac surgeon and his career outlook. His experiences have been truly fascinating. He is a Canadian citizen who has worked across the country doing research and other medical work. His fascination with flying and space have led him to aeronautics research with NASA, Space-X, and Blue origin. It was truly amazing to see how following ones heart and interest can lead to ultimate career success.

A very insightful part of his lecture was his discussion of different paths to becoming a doctor. The varying training and degrees are all variables that affect salary, occupational responsibility, length in education and destination. All these different things are difficult to balance when looking to the future as a prospect medical student. His insight certainly helped guide me, despite of the vast span of time before such decisions are necessary for me.

As a transplant surgeon Dr.Lee spoke of some amazing experiences while quite literally saving lives. From traveling on private jets to see patients to holding a disconnected yet still beating heart, Dr. Lee has seen it all and the experiences inspired me to become a cardiomyopathy surgeon with transplant training.

I was granted an incredible opportunity to speak with Dr. Subha Raman, the leader in the cardio radiology field. Much of her work leads the forefront in noninvasive diagnosis of muscular and cardiac related ailments. In preparing to speak with her I read much of her work.  A large portion of this work pertained to individuals with Duchene muscular dystrophy, an interesting pattern. One article I found extremely interesting was her work with phosphorus 31 isotopes from imagining of skeletal muscle to determine the rate of oxidative phosphorylation. Essentially, this new method of imaging is able to obtain information about the energy use of skeletal muscles. Before this information was gathered through biopsy and the data collected was not quantitative. Using the phosphorus 31 isotope one can determine much more about energy use noninvasively.

When meeting with her she was tremendously amiable and really sought to understand why I had such an interest in her work. She asked me about my future aspirations and we began to discuss how she had become such a successful researcher and clinician. I was able to gain much about how to treat the whole college experience as well as how to make an impact on my education that would truly be invaluable in my future. One thing she made very clear was that each and every endeavor that I pursued it was critical that I kept my end goal in mind. At the end of the day my success would be driven by my devotion to my goals. Additionally, I was advised to follow my heart in a way; to do things that interested me, not just that would make my medical school application competitive. In bringing our discussion back to her work I was able to learn that much of her work had been relating to DMD because of chance. She happened to be the expert in the field and neurologists needed an expert. It seemed that even being in radiology was a chance happening as she had majored in electrical engineering in her undergraduate work. Speaking with Dr. Raman was an amazing experience and I gained a lot of useful information in going forward with my education.