More Summer Projects

Did I mention that I'm one of the AMSA community/environmental health grassroots coordinators this year? I am!! It sounds like an important title, and in some sense it is, I suppose, but not as titles go. I'm just happy to have some kind of support and example and community learning to be the kind of doctor I want to be. To that end, I've been kicking around ideas that I might want to head up for my personal project this year, trying to find synergy between things I've done, read, known, like, believe in.

I also need to get off my sorry ass and start volunteering again, and find some docs to shadow. To THAT end, I filled out an application at a network of community clinics here in western Washington (I wish they were east of the Cascades, but oh well) thinking that even if I was doing shitwork in the front office at least I would be getting to see how such a clinic works, how care is delivered, etc. I might even be able to sweet-talk some shadowing. I lagged on getting my PPD test sent off though, and by the time I did all the local positions were filled. However, whatever passes for Providence these days smiled on me--the first suggestion of the volunteer coordinator turns out to be the most awesome. Turns out the Marysville clinic has a small garden behind the building that has fallen into some disrepair, and the new chronic care coordinator and health educator think it would be a peachy idea to revamp it and make it into the community-building, health teaching tool powerhouse it was meant to be, and I quite agree. So that's what I get to do, can you believe it? I get to spend my summer working in a garden for an enormous amount of good, AND I get to make friends with a lot of people who can help me implement a similar sort of project in Ellensburg next year after I move.

Also, I get to serve on the National Primary Care Week planning committee this summer. Shut up, I'm not bragging! I'm just stoked is all.

If you had told me even 2 years ago that this is what my life would look like and this is the kind of potential future I was looking at, I'd have sighed and said if only. Sometimes I really can't believe how lucky I am, to have this chance to become what I might have been.