gifts of any other kind

so today brought some interesting progressions as my usual 4am to 11pm schedule took a bit of a twist and I spent the day working at kaplan hospital instead of my home hospital in tel aviv. It doesn't have the greatest reputation and colleagues of mine in tel aviv has mentioned in passing that it's the hospital where patients go to die. A beautiful sentiment if I may say so. Despite it's shoddy reputation and dilapidated appearance, I loved working with the internal medicine bet department. The director is amazing and said to me.."I'm here to help you be successful in your career. Just tell me you'll commit to our team and I'll personalize your residency program to begin whenever you're ready to start. I want to do what it takes to make you happy".

What Israeli have I ever met who has that approach? It's never what can we do for you. In this case, it's true enough that medicine in Israel is akin to barely paid slave labour, but it really helps to have a supportive department director behind you, especially when it comes to applying for that crucial post residency fellowship in the U.S....

I loved being in that department. I could take my time with the patients and not feel like a dunce speaking in henglish or fractured hebrew ( a disgrace to israelkind as my ex used to say as I regularly mispronounced words that I had taught myself from my dictionary.) My hospital in tel aviv is much faster paced as we have a larger feeder group and similar low staff numbers so we have far less time to consult with the patients, do intakes and write up reports.

I committed to the residency program at my hospital months ago but I'm having second thoughts about either doing it at Kaplan or applying for this next cycle of residency matching in the US to hopefully get into my choice program in Boston to begin next july. Going back to north american would be a huge move for me, but I would have to get in first anyway. I don't really want to leave but life leads us down bizarre paths sometimes. I believe the saying goes that we make plans and g-d just laughs.

This director of the department at kaplan was so cool and approachable that he really made me reconsider my options and then after my day, he even drove me back to tel aviv. It seems at Kaplan at least that I have a tiny advantage over the doctors from russia who don't speak either hebrew or english ( the language of academic medicine).

Anyway, when I reached tel aviv, I had an immediate meeting with an old sports sponsor of mine who is now helping me faciliate some funding for some of my NGO's peace oriented projects. We figured out how to apply full funding to a music oriented project similar to one being run by heartbeat in jerusalem. This was an icing on my cake kind of moment.