How I Became a Doctor: Part Two

After waiting for one year for the coveted Green card, I entered the USA in December of 1973 as an FMG (Foreign Medical Graduate) without a Hospital offer. I had $10 in government support money. Socialist India was stingy with foreign exchange, but as the Fab Four said “I got by with a little help from my friends”. I also discovered that all green card holders were eligible for the draft. Fortunately, the Vietnam War was winding down, so the US Army lost out on possibly the skinniest MD in their history. Upon arrival I learned that savvy American lawyers were willing to help in converting an exchange visitor visa to a Green card, so my waiting had not been necessary after all.

In my early days living on the south side of Chicago I was oblivious to mugging and travelled via the “L” (Elevated Rail Train) at 10 p.m. until I was educated by friends. Fortunately, I did win the National Matching Lottery and ended up at a suburban Jewish Hospital (Sinai Hospital) in Detroit, aka “Motor City”, where I not only received excellent training but learned all the choice Yiddish words such as schmuck and shiksa making reading Philip Roth a breeze.

As the Jewish Population moved further away from the city, Sinai hospital had Jewish doctors from Bolivia, Egypt and Israel along with Indians, Pakistanis. and Eastern Europeans. Plus a few locals . The Chief of Staff was Dr. Axlerod, a very fitting name for Motor City.

I was a Goody Two Shoes during my residency and didn’t take much time for dating and relationships. I was also deterred by the question: Do the ladies like me or do they just like my profession? Fortunately, neither my Aunt nor my Mom tried to fix me up with an arranged marriage.

Later, while applying for a competitive Cardiology Fellowship, I learned that American hospital directors were not above favoritism and could withdraw an offer made eight months ago.

When I arrived in Louisville in 1977, I found out that Matzo ball soup was not an all-American dish served everywhere. It was a shocker to see that in the South even cardiologists smoked in the hospital while trying to decide who should have bypass surgery.

The commonwealth of Kentucky required me to take the TOEFL (Test Of English as a Foreign Language) even though my entire education had been in English, and I had lived in Michigan for three years. I am not sure how long it needed to be, but the TOEFL was hilarious. It was my first encounter with “y’all” instead of “you all”. And by this time, I even knew many Yiddish swear words.

After finishing my training, I toyed with the idea of returning to India, but I eventually realized that Indian cities were already saturated by FRCS (Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons) trained sons of doctors. Being rudderless, I ended up in Green Bay for what I thought would be a year but that somehow extended into thirty.

My long stay in Wisconsin produced many “interesting” encounters.

I had an Oneida Indian patient, 80-year-old Mrs. Denny, who asked me, “Doctor, where are you from?”

“I am Indian” I replied.

Her quick question:  “What tribe?”

I had to disappoint her by saying “I am the original Indian. From India.” (We have castes but not tribes.)

After Medical Society meetings, most of the doctors from the two nearby Green Bay hospitals would go to the Lorelei Inn, a local tavern.  The Lorelei Inn was my introduction to Wisconsin beer drinking culture. Their entrance featured a sign which read

Im Himmel gibt’s kein Bier,
Drum trinken wir es hier.

I will leave it to you to Google the translation.

I was there, minding my own business, when a somewhat irritating non-MD bar patron asked the usual question. “What brought you to the US?”

I gave him my usual answer: “A scholarship.”

But he would not quit.

“What kind of scholarship?”

I had just read about Spud Webb, a 5’ 6” man who had made it to the NBA, so I said, “Basketball!” (A game about which I know almost nothing) “Do you want to go one-on-one?”

That did end the conversation. But a jolly Pathologist at the other end of the bar overheard our conversation and from then on in every newsletter for several years he would add “Slam-dunk Pathakjee will be there as well”.

Beer inspired another moment that I still remember. I was monitoring a treadmill test, and my patient said “Hurry up, Doc! I have to go bowling!”

“Are you going to be drinking beer?”, I asked, as a concerned cardiologist.

“I’ll pick up a 12-pack” he responded.

“For the four of you?” I asked, still concerned.

“No. Just for myself”.

I did a quick mental calculation. This would be an amount equal to his entire blood volume. And, yes, he planned to drive home.

In addition to the humorous memories, I have a serious one that I cherish.

We diagnosed a young woman, who had recently delivered a baby, with Marfan Syndrome, a condition which causes a tear in the aorta called dissection. (It is a miracle that she survived delivery.) It is a life-threatening surgical emergency. She underwent a complex, but successful, surgery that night and left the hospital with a prosthetic aortic valve. We managed her blood thinner for almost 20 years. She had a factory job, and we had an understanding that she could come in after work to adjust the dose once a week even after our regular office hours.

After I retired, I was at the local library and a young man who was working there asked me “Are you Dr. Pathakjee?”. Upon hearing “Yes”, he said “Let me shake your hand!” It turned out that he was the newborn whose mother was my patient. It made all the night calls worthwhile, and I would do it all over again!

And it was there in Wisconsin that I met my future wife in the Doctors Lounge. She was a liberal atheist and an outlier in the conventional sense. In spite of the most unromantic proposal for marriage (on the phone) she did say “Yes”, and we are still together after nearly forty years. In my defense it was exactly one year after our first date and after a long call day!

Cheers!

Bharat Pathakjee MD, is a retired cardiologist who earned his initial degree in his native India and took additional training in Michigan and at the University of Louisville.

Dr. Pathakjee enjoys reading, running, and learning history, science, and philosophy. (Well, actually, Bharat enjoys learning about anything and everything.)