INFLUENCERS IN MEDICINE
8 Years in 15 Minutes
I have been alive for 24 years , my life punctuated in seeming epochs of eight years that have helped to form not only myself , but my pursuit of medicine . It is during these times that my understanding of the world and medical system were challenged .
I recall when I was in elementary school , sitting in my grandmother ’ s living room floor , a show debuted called Dr . G : Medical Examiner . There was something about the word “ medical ” that gripped me . Growing up in an agricultural town , my understanding of the word “ medical ” was formed by the long trips made by my grandparents from Millersburg to Lexington to seek care . Millersburg was a one stoplight , zero doctors type of place . Although there was a small community hospital in the neighboring town of my hometown Paris , my grandmother was inevitably transferred to Lexington due to her complicated medical picture . These long days to the specialist appointments brought me joy , though . The car rides there in my grandfather ’ s truck meant we would have uninterrupted time to talk , and we ’ d grab dinner to take home ( even for Ruthie , our favorite cookie-eating cow on the farm ). It was on these rides that I began to understand what “ being sick ” looked like , especially for my grandmother Nanna . Nanna would sit down at the kitchen table with lab results and call her doctors ’ offices trying to make sense of mountains of results . She had diabetes
18 LOUISVILLE MEDICINE by JES ESKRIDGE , MD
and knew to watch her diet , but what was a nephrologist ? Why did he care about filtration and what was it ? How did her lungs have an obstructive problem when she could cough stuff up ? Why did her blood have to be thinned ? The list went on .
So , I was particularly impressionable when the screen flooded with images of Dr . Jan Garavaglia performing autopsies in Orange County , Florida , recounting her real-life cases and investigations . I was enamored with her after the first 15-minute case . She spoke about diseases of the body and , although I understood not a word of the pathophysiology , I was hooked because what she said was pertinent to illness in our family ( It also didn ’ t hurt that she was a girl doctor when I had only ever seen boys ). It was a year after her pilot episode aired that at 8 years old , I wrote in a school assignment , “ I want to be Dr . G .” Without knowing it , this physician had changed my life with her show , igniting in me a new interest in some of the most important time I shared with my family . Thus , as a child , I experienced my first excitement about the field of medicine .
Eight years later , I was graduating from high school with intentions to pursue a pre-med track in college . Meanwhile , Dr . Garavaglia had become the pathologist and leading expert testimony in a high-profile homicide case that consumed the nation . As a sophomore , I had watched her present her findings on my grandmother ’ s bedroom TV . Nanna and I sat and ate Doritos , admiring how Dr . G was able to piece together a cause of death from forensic evidence .