I woke up early to go to the Memo­r­ial Sloan Ket­ter­ing Cen­ter in New York City. It is a world-famous can­cer cen­ter, and Dr. Noy is a highly rec­og­nized spe­cial­ist in can­cers of the lym­phoid immune sys­tem, espe­cially lym­phoma. I was warmly greeted by her sec­re­tary. The first day was a pretty long one sim­ply because there was a long reg­is­tra­tion process that I had to go through in order to be able to inter­act with patients. Her sec­re­tary was so hos­pitable and made me feel com­fort­able in the office dur­ing the reg­is­tra­tion process. When I was finally allowed to enter the clinic around 3pm, I had unfor­tu­nately missed many of the patients, but I still got to see the last  three patients and sit with Dr. Noy as she reviewed patient charts with a fel­low. It was a very cool expe­ri­ence because I got to see what goes on behind the cur­tain as the doc­tors pre­pare to meet the patients, how they present the infor­ma­tion to the patients, and then how they dis­cuss patient responses after­wards. I learned that how you present the same infor­ma­tion (fram­ing) has a strong influ­ence on the patient’s under­stand­ing of the infor­ma­tion and their sub­se­quent deci­sions based on that infor­ma­tion. I also learned that in most cases, if you lay the options out in a log­i­cal, sim­ple man­ner, patients are more con­fi­dent about mak­ing a deci­sion on what treat­ment to take. So even though it ended up being a very short day in clinic, it was still a valu­able experience.

The sec­ond day I attended a lec­ture by Dr. Groop­man and his wife Dr. Hartzband in the Rock­e­feller Research Lab­o­ra­tory adja­cent to the Memorial-Sloan Ket­ter­ing main build­ing. It was on med­ical decision-making, which was a very inter­est­ing topic for non-specialists and pre-meds like myself. Dr. Groop­man was apply­ing game the­ory to the med­ical set­ting, which made me inter­ested in per­haps tak­ing game the­ory before I grad­u­ate Prince­ton. I was able to under­stand every­thing in the lec­ture with­out any med­ical train­ing, which I think made it even more inter­est­ing to me. Fol­low­ing the lec­ture, I fol­lowed Dr. Noy to do rounds with her. I then fol­lowed another Attend­ing, and ended up doing rounds until noon. This was a very use­ful time for me, see­ing the in-patients and also hav­ing time to talk to the interns and res­i­dents that were round­ing with me. In addi­tion to sev­eral MD’s, one of them was an MD/PhD, another an MB/PhD (she got her med­ical degree from China, hence the MB), and I also met a clin­i­cal phar­ma­col­o­gist. It was great to inter­act with doc­tors who have fol­lowed dif­fer­ent tracks to get there, and I was able to get their con­tact infor­ma­tion in case I had ques­tions later. I remem­ber the MD/PhD intern telling me that she had taken the non-traditional route in doing MD first then trans­fer­ring into an MD/PhD pro­gram, and inspir­ing me by say­ing some­thing along the lines of: “ You don’t need to be so hung up on try­ing to plan out the next 10–20 years of your life. If you have a clear dream and goal, then even if it isn’t the tra­di­tional route, you will be able to achieve it if you put in the effort.” The rest of the day I spent with Dr. Lamanna in clinic. Her spe­cialty is in leukemia, par­tic­u­larly in chronic lym­phoy­cytic leukemia (CLL). It was inter­est­ing that patients with CLL tend to be older, and there­fore they age with the dis­ease and do not usu­ally die of the dis­ease, but with the dis­ease. I loved that she has a very charis­matic style of inter­act­ing with the patients; she was very out­go­ing and ener­getic when speak­ing with them.

The final day, I did rounds again, then attended a multi-disciplinary con­fer­ence between var­i­ous spe­cial­ists in which they dis­cussed two patient cases. Then, I spent the rest of the day in clinic with Dr. Noy. I wit­nessed a lum­bar punc­ture, two bone mar­row pro­ce­dures, and longer patient-doctor dis­cus­sions than on Mon­day. I felt that Dr. Noy has a very calm and witty way of inter­act­ing with the patients, and that she made the choices very clear for the guardians and patients in decid­ing which treat­ment path to take. It was very good to know that you can have real inter­ac­tions with patients; not just 10-minute short encoun­ters, but 30–40 minute ses­sions to really get to know the patient bet­ter. Also, there was a for­eign cou­ple who came in, and so a trans­la­tor was on the phone trans­lat­ing between Dr. Noy and the patient. It was a very unique expe­ri­ence truly real­iz­ing what a global world we live in.

I am so grate­ful to Dr. Noy for this oppor­tu­nity. She not only found time to allow me to shadow her, but also went out of her way to try to fill up my sched­ule so that I could meet dif­fer­ent doc­tors and expe­ri­ence the var­i­ous ele­ments that make up a doctor’s day-to-day life. She was very friendly and down-to-earth with me. I was hap­pily sur­prised that in addi­tion to being so accom­plished in her career, she is also a singer and an artist. I was wor­ried that I might have to give up my hob­bies of singing and draw­ing if I become a doc­tor, but it was great to see a real exam­ple of some­one who has man­aged to do all.