One of the unique opportunities of anesthesia residency at Duke is the opportunity to work in the hyperbaric chamber. The division and chamber has a storied history, perhaps most notable for the Atlantis Dives, an effort that culminated in three volunteers’ record-breaking chamber dive to 2,250 feet. Today, the chamber continues a combination of routine therapy for wound healing and other chronic indications; emergency therapy for carbon monoxide poisoning, air embolism, and dive emergencies; and a fantastic program of research. It is the only civilian hyperbaric facility with US Navy certification. The chambers themselves look like something out of a cold war submarine movie, and so pictures earned a spot here.
Just in time for Halloween, Jerome and Eva of Penn MSTP fame, and possibly the nerdiest couple known to man, were married in the planetarium at The Franklin Institute. Appropriately enough Jerome walked down the aisle to the Star Wars theme, and Eva to the song from Disney’s Anastasia. The wedding cake toppers were from Disney’s WALL-E.
I flew up for the occasion, and was also able to reunite with Penn State Company 20 friends, Cecilia and Lauren, and take one more Hudson River corridor flight.
Probably the greatest thing about the Duke Anesthesiology internship year is getting to know and work with fantastic physicians throughout the hospital. My internal medicine team — Jenny the senior resident, Jenny the MD/PhD student, and Erik the PA student — was no exception, and so after we finished up our work a little early on a pre-call Thursday, we snuck out to some fly-in barbecue.
As one last pre-residency adventure, I took a quick northeast visit-flight tour. I set off from RDU to Pittsburgh to visit Katie from Penn State and Priya from Duke, now both residents at UPMC. After good visits (including a trip to the zoo and aquarium), I set off for New York City, to visit Léa from Blair and Natasha from Oxford. We were joined by Zach, and took a flight down the Hudson River and out to Block Island for the afternoon. On the way back, I stopped in Maryland to see my parents for Fathers’ Day before settling back in to Durham for the start of intern year.
Our final stops on the graduation trip were Florence and Milan. In Florence, we had a packed day of museums, seeing the Museo Galileo, the world-famous Uffizi, and the Galleria dell’Accademia, which holds Michelangelo’s David. In Milan, we took a walking tour of the city and saw Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper. Finally, having had all of the adventure we could take in one trip, we flew back home to the States.
The day after the Oxford degree ceremony, my parents and I flew from London to Naples to begin our whirlwind trip through Italy. We started in Naples, and spent a day exploring the ancient Roman city of Pompeii. The next day, we set off for Rome, where we toured the Colosseum, the central Form area, and Vatican city before continuing on to Florence and Milan!
To cap off the summer of graduations, I set off to Oxford for the DPhil degree ceremony, making a quick stop in Iceland along the way, and catching the Summer Eights bumps race while I was there. My parents met me in Oxford for graduation after a side trip to Paris. And after graduation, all three of us set off to explore some of the famous spots in Italy. The trip was a fantastic way to enjoy the last bit of freedom before residency starts: I got to catch up with old friends, have a few adventures in Europe, and spend quality time with my parents.
After finishing my DPhil at Oxford last year, and completing the final year of Duke medical school this year, this spring was filled with graduation festivities. It was a big summer for my sister Lorne as well, who earned her juris doctor at UNC Law. Over the space of just a few weeks, we celebrated Lorne’s law graduation as well as my graduations from Duke and Oxford. We were lucky enough to get Bill back into some MD robes and take a family academic dress picture or two!
One of my first fun flights from the Durham area, many years ago, was to Ocracoke, a small town on the North Carolina Outer Banks. It has remained one of my favorite destinations: The remote beach can be reached by air in a little over an hour, compared to the 6-hour drive. This relative isolation makes it easier to explore the beautiful town and shore, somewhat removed from the bustle of other tourist beaches.
My latest flight from Lake Ridge out to Ocracoke was around beautiful cumulous clouds on an otherwise sunny afternoon. I filmed the trip and sped it up to just a few minutes; enjoy the view!
On a sunny post-medical-school-classes North Carolina day, two classmates and I decided to head out for the hills of western NC. We took off from RDU, circled Duke and Durham a couple of times, landed at Rowan County airport to re-fuel, and then set off west for Avery County. There, we rented a car and hiked a couple of the local trails, notably stumbling across Linville Falls, before heading back to Durham just before sunset. It was Riikka and Qihua’s first time in a small plane, and so pictures were copious…
