In Pittsburgh, I jumped off our couch onto a coffee table and broke my arm. It was October, and the plaster cast became part of my preschool Halloween costume: a cowboy thrown from a bucking horse.
It was an early lesson to pick yourself up, dust off, and keep on riding.
The cowboy state of mind helped when my family soon after moved to Wichita, Kansas. My new kindergarten was only a few blocks away, but my parents chose to have me cross-bussed as part of the nationwide desegregation effort.
The varied educational matriculation helped establish a diversity of emotional and educational development, which was beneficial through my time at the University of Kansas.
Between Fall and Spring Semesters, I interned for a Congressman in Washington D.C., sold and designed advertising for the University Daily Kansan, and got a signed photo from Michael Jordan.
I hung MJs photo in my first apartment in Chicago, when I worked as an intern for the public relations firm Golin/Harris Communications. I was unable to leverage the yearlong opportunity into a journalism career. So, I tried to be a ski bum, worked at Banana Republic, and was unemployed.
Once I decided to try to get into medical school, I enrolled in a post-baccalaureate premedical studies program at Loyola University in Chicago. I also worked in a gastroenterology immunology lab at Northwestern University learning benchtop research, and then received a grant from the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation to dive into how a bacteria affects the intestinal immune response.
The research was very beneficial as I started medical school at the University of Kansas. My internship year was difficult and very enjoyable at Rush University in Chicago. I finished my residency in Dermatology at The Medical College of Wisconsin, and I have now practiced Dermatology in Milwaukee in private practice for 23 years.
From a broken arm to a life in medicine.
Something good from something bad.
Emet Or -- Truth. Light.
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