The Vital Capacity

A friend from medical school who is about to graduate with her MD, PhD needed a place to stay in between residency interviews in the area. She stayed with me for two nights last week - it was great to see her and catch up. We talked about the how Baylor College of Medicine is sadly dropping in rankings, what is like to be a newlywed (she recently married in March), and enjoyed each other's company over chocolate fondue near Copley Square. But it was one statement that struck me more than anything else she said to me. We were sitting down at my dining table reminiscing about medical school when she said, "I miss your blog. I used to love reading all your stories."

Wow. Someone actually missed reading what I wrote? The truth is, I have wanted to be a writer for a really long time. I remember how creative I was in medical school, emailing silly rhyming poems to my friends at 2 AM while studying for exams the next day. I remember reading aloud a poem I wrote about my cadaver to my fellow medical students during a ceremony dedicated to our cadavers at the end of our Gross Anatomy course. I remembering writing a play about Rama and Sita in honor of Rama Navami at our temple in Houston. Now, many years later, I can't remember the last time I wrote a silly story or a poem or anything other than a patient's history or an email or maybe a comment on someone else's facebook post. My friend's statement made me realize that I miss my blog too!

So here I am again, with a new look and a new title. I decided to rename my blog "The Vital Capacity," as a shout out to my profession, pediatric pulmonology, which I love. I had no idea when I first started this blog in 2005 that I would one day be finishing my fellowship in Pediatric Pulmonology at Children's Hospital Boston. I am now close to finishing my fellowship, and I have slowly realized that I have neglected my passion for writing.

I realized how much I want to be a writer yesterday, while attending a lecture by Robert Kaplan. Kaplan is a Professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School and co-chairman of Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, a global venture philanthropy firm. He has written a book entitled: What to Ask the Person in the Mirror: Critical Questions for Becoming a More Effective Leader and Reaching Your Potential. In his fantastic talk, he outlined crucial questions one must ask one's self and answer to become an effective leader. He asked the audience to write down what our vision or aspiration was for ourselves, and next to outline 3-5 tasks we must do well to acheive that aspiration. Although his principles were meant for leaders who are trying to lead more effectively, I decided to apply his principles to improving myself.

This is what I wrote for my aspiration: "I want to be an astute clinician and writer who makes my patients feel better and communicates the principles of medicine to the world." Yikes. I can't believe I wrote that as I type those words now. Acheiving my vision seems really hard, but that is pretty close to who I want to be. My tasks to help me acheive this aspiration were 1) Read about my patients/ read about pediatric pulmonology every day. 2) Write about my experiences everyday and 3) Make sure I make time for my soul and spirituality.

Kaplan stressed that the key to acheiving one's vision to define it clearly, define the tasks that need to be done to acheive that vision, and then to manage your time, where 70% of what you do should be focused on those tasks outlined. I thought about how I manage my time, and it made me a bit queasy. I felt like I often waste my time performing useless tasks, and then spend extra time mourning the fact that I haven't accomplished anything.

The simple of act of reactivating my blog is a step in the right direction, and have a visit from a dear friend to thank for inspiring me to do this. And I started by renaming my blog "The Vital Capacity."

The vital capacity is the maximal amount of air that a person can breathe in and out. I love the term because it implies the Ayurvedic concept of breath, or prana, which means life force. Medical subspecialists joke about how "their organ" is the most important, but when I was deciding on what fellowship to pursue, I thought: why not study the life force, the vital capacity that is the basis of our health? The vital capacity is not the "good" capacity, or the "adequate" capacity. It is vital. It is vital that we are able to breathe freely and easily. It is also vital that I am true to myself as a physician, and as a writer. To be a physician is to practice medicine. To be a writer is to write. I have decided that it is vital that I do both.