Stress Test

Stress Test, my memoir of medical training in the 1970s, is particularly timely in the wake of the Dobbs decision, when the rights that underpin a woman's ability to participate fully in professional and public life are under attack. My story takes the reader through a five-year crucible, from the first day of medical school through the last day of an internship year in pediatrics and from the gross anatomy lab to the neonatal intensive care unit. Unveiling the cadaver in the first days of medical school while my mother lay dying on an oncology ward; examining a patient on a hospital ward for the first time; the excitement of making difficult diagnoses and the terror of disastrous mistakes; the joy of connecting with patients and the heartbreak of losing them--it's all here. Women comprised less than a fifth of my medical school class, so the scourge of sexism riddles the narrative. And as a white woman in the largely Black urban environment of West Baltimore, barely a decade after the Civil Rights movement and long before Black Lives Matter, I bore witness throughout my training to the human cost of racism.

All this took place while I navigated personal struggles: my mother's death two months into medical school; coming to terms with my sexuality through several romantic relationships, including an interracial love affair with a professor; a roommate’s suicide; and my own suicidality, depression, and experiences in therapy.  

This memoir joins a growing body of work by women physicians in recent years, including several memoirs. What makes it unique is the era when it was written: a time when women were still years away from comprising half, or more, of medical students, and when the second wave of feminism was surging. Yet many of the fears, griefs, and struggles that women in medicine face today are the same ones I grappled with decades earlier. 

Stress Test is scheduled for publication in 2024 by Apprentice House Press in Baltimore, MD. 

At the Baltimore Civic Center, just after graduating from University of Maryland Medical School, 1977.