Small victories

They say that both good and bad things come in threes. Once something good happens, it creates a positive energy or outlook in a person, and there you go: it's all you need for further good to come. Last week was one of these "good" weeks for me, finally! A series of small victories.

One of the most amazing things anyone has ever done for me: sometime late last year, I met a very nice couple through the part of my host family who live here. It's a couple they'd been friends with for many years, from New Orleans, both doctors, the husband having a temporary appointment at the New York VA Hospital as head of Neurosurgery (wow). They became interested in meeting me because they had heard that I was planning on going into medicine and apparently they like helping out "talented foreigners" - this is what they told me. They also have a neighbor in New Orleans who is an olympic champion fencer from Hungary - and a doctor, naturally - so they saw the dots connecting. In any case, they have taken me out to dinner a couple of times - very fancy places both times - and have sent my resume to at least one very valuable connection at one of the top medical schools in the country (double wow). Last week, I got a call from them, offering their apartment in NYC to my parents for 3 weeks in the summer, while they go on a tour of Eastern Europe. WOW WOW WOW!! Unbeleivable! They have never met my parents or have spoken to them before, and had only met me twice, and here we are, my parents with plane ticktes in hand already, coming in June, having their own apartment for 3 weeks in Manhattan! Subsequently, I met the husband for brunch on Sunday, at the Yale Club (you have to be dressed business casual at least, even for breakfast:) - it's their favorite place, very very proud Yale alumni! - and I just have to say that this is one of the mos generous things anyone has ever given me. And really, I have to thank my host family, who introduced me to these people, and to so many others in the US, making it so much easier for me to settle here.

Often, people talk about the superficiality of relationships in this country: how difficult it is to make meaningful connections and true friends and meet people who go beyond acquitances. Even if it's generally true, about any place in the world, it just shows the dangers of generalization, as always. I am hopeful that my generation can learn something from the ones that came before and that the world could really work on a pay-it-forward basis.

Just the day after I got this call, I had a very inspiring talk with a professor here at school, whom I asked to write me a recommendation and whom turned out to be so excited about supportive about my plans, that I was very pleasantly surprised - even though I am sad that my own mentor can't be this way.

And then, suddenly, my experiment worked!!!! I have been trying to work out a new system in the lab, which basically means tons of troubleshooting before things go right. It was an experiment that lasted more than 2 weeks, and basically, if anything went wrong at any step along the way, things wouldn't work out at the end, but I wouldn't know until the very end. My readout was for cells in a culture dish (isolated from mice 2 weeks before) to turn blue. And voila, there were those beautiful, blue macrophages:



Especially this one, an extra gift with the experiment, looking so cool: somehow 2 cells fused, and the nuclei are the eye-looking things in the middle. I printed this out and ran around the lab, showing everyone and screaming that my experiment worked!!! If anyone still had some doubts about my sanity, they sure don't anymore.

And to top things off, the weather this past weekend was just perfect, the way I like winter to be: chilly, but sunny, not a coud in the sky, breezy, but not too much. Perfect for a run, early afternoon, once the sun is high and there are lots of people in the park. For the first time in a few months, I got to the perfect moment during my run, which is what people must call "runner's high", when there the feet and the road are somehow connected and everything is smooth and the mind empties and lets something great inside, when all of a sudden, emotions break through and there are tears in my eyes, not tears of sadness, but of happiness because I am running and I feel so connected to the entire universe and I can see myself crossing the finish line at some great marathon. And then as quickly as this moment came around, without any warning sign, it's gone and it dawns on me: this is happiness.