The telling of my story is an act of resistance, a statement to the world of my community’s rage, despair and silenced voice, all of which I choose to carry in my own struggles to be a part of the change – the change that would make me feel content, that would help me know that when it is time for me to die, I can die smiling knowing that I am leaving it better than I found it. I want to share my abundance and privilege with those whose rights to health have been stripped because of the systematic act of prejudice, whose children will continue to carry the history of structural violence in their blood, on their skin and in their bones. I want to be the physician that can help heal not only a wound or a disease, but also a community itself; it is with community that I believe true change begins. I have led an extraordinary life thus far, filled with multitudes of opportunities for me to grow and evolve, for which I am eternally grateful. It would be a lie for me to say it was easy, to be constantly in motion, to be uprooted repeatedly, to be independent at the age when you should not have to be, to be alone in the bicultural bridge over the abyss of expectations and responsibility. However, because of these challenges, I am blessed enough to have had opportunities to get to know people from all walks of life, to be immersed in ideas and cultures far from what I had ever known, ideas and cultures which have deconstructed my norms, assumptions and beliefs, and cultivated the person that I am today, ready to give myself away to the art of healing, to the public’s health and well-being.
I was born to an older father who practiced dermatology at his own clinic in Sendai, Japan, and a mother who was the administrator of the clinic. I grew up in close proximity to all things medical; watching my father cultivate relationships with patients from the community, memorizing the names of medicines he prescribed, and my favorite – looking at all sorts of organisms and biological particles with my father under his beloved microscope. Despite my father’s alcoholism, both of my parents gave me incredible amounts of love and ample opportunities to explore and learn about myself and what I wanted to do with my life when I grew up. They never forced me to pursue medicine, and as a matter of fact, as a child, I thought about pursuing many other careers including kindergarten teacher, carpenter, astronaut, comic book artist, scientist, musical theater performer…. the list goes on. However, I always came back to my most prominent dream: becoming a physician. Not just any physician, but someone like Hideyo Noguchi, like Albert Schweitzer, like Ginko Ogino, who became physicians out of an extraordinary passion to want to cure the incurable, and to treat the underserved. This is how I met Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), and how I, as a scared but determined twelve-year-old, came to the U.S. to begin a new phase of my life.
My parents were (and continue to be) determined to provide me support in my pursuit of living my life to its fullest, of realizing my dream. They are the ones who taught me to see the joy and beauty of having a dream and working towards realizing that dream. It was they who helped me get to the boarding schools in the U.S. where I began my solo journey of self-discovery that allowed me to open my third eye, which eventually led me back to where I started: the drive to want to give oneself away to the vulnerable through the art of healing. Those pre-teenage and teenage years were not easy. Not only was starting school in a new language hard enough, learning to function in a particular society as an independent person without constant guidance and care from my family was also extremely difficult. I also learned in hard ways the smallness of myself, of my failures; the inability to be the best the way I had always been, to stand out from the rest the way I had always taken for granted. The schools I attended had many students who were on full scholarships from all over the world, with whose level of intelligence I could not compete. I felt the immensity of the world, and it gave me an opportunity to learn that there will always be someone who is going to outrun me no matter what, and that all I can do is to do the best I can. Nonetheless, I survived those years without too much trauma, and gained an ability to work with my own strengths and weaknesses. However, attending prestigious college- preparatory private schools, there was always a sense of disconnect inside my heart, a sense that somehow I was misplaced and that I did not belong there. The sensation was different from the discomfort of identity discordance, which was abundant in my struggle to come to terms with my sexuality and gender. The source of such unease began to be unveiled during my years in college, where I shed my last pubescent skin and entered a true adulthood, through which I acquired the first doses of wisdom that have become the foundations of my current life. More than anything, people I met in college – friends, staff, and professors alike – have touched me in ways that were unlike anyone else whom I had met in the past. Each one of their stories was unique and powerful, and it fed their passion and determination. In turn, getting to know them and cultivating friendship and camaraderie with these individuals gave me courage, skills, faith, and support to practice my own beliefs and strive to become the person that I desired to be.
As in any process of self-discovery, it was hard for me to settle into my new skin; juggling the utter freedom of college life, experiencing first real romance, and learning the level of commitment required by my chosen extra-curricular activities, the reality of responsibilities associated with independent adult life, and the academic rigor of the science classes. During such a tumultuous period of personal growth, I was unable to sustain emotional stability on my own and I had to seek psychological counseling. My grades suffered, and my cognitive focus was lost. However, with the tremendous guidance provided by my therapist along with my own drive to evolve, by the time the senior year came, I was finally able to be comfortable with my own self and focus on my school work. Although my academic performance at Smith was not on par with what I believe is my maximum potential, I gained so much outside of academia – about life, humanity, society, and compassion – all of which are fundamental to the work of a community physician.
When deciding what to do with my life after college, I was somehow reluctant to apply to medical schools. I was not sure why I felt that way then, but now I know that it was because I simply was not ready. I needed to continue exploring my motivation and determining its strength, a strength that was and is able to sustain my commitment to a clinician’s career path. As a close alternative to a medical school, based on my curiosity in living organisms and drive to want to discover something that would benefit the world at large, I decided to pursue a career in medical research. After working at the Foundation for Osteoporosis Research and Education briefly, where I became familiar with the nuts and bolts of clinical research, I joined a laboratory at Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute as a research scientist, investigating several genetic and immunological aspects of bacteria Chlamydia trachomatis and Chlamydia pneumoniae in clinical samples from the U.S., South East Asia, and Latin America. I cannot deny that fact that I enjoyed my work at the institute, though despite my aptitude for laboratory-based research, I became discontent and conflicted with the large gap that exists between research and the patients from whom the samples were taken. I understood that in theory, findings that were being published through research could help these patients. However, the juxtaposition between the excessive resources that were poured into research and how little these sick underserved people had became an unbearable ethical issue for my conscience. I could not help but to feel that we were conducting research for research’s sake – to publish novel findings in the most prestigious journals to receive more funding to do the same – and that the process had become completely detached from the act of healing. Whether or not this was a true interpretation of my experience aside, this research experience began to elicit a sense of discomfort once again, and it seemed as though I was far from where I wanted to be. This is how I came to shift my gears and pursue a Master’s degree in Public Health to learn about population-based research and community-based health advocacy.
My academic experience in graduate school was remarkable. I felt as if I finally found a niche in the grand scheme of medical research, where I found the greatest potential to conduct research-by-the-people-for-the-people. The classes were engaging and motivating, and conversations captivated my heart and spoke to my soul. Aside from the fact that I was genuinely inspired by the public health paradigm in which I was immersed, the experience brought me back full circle to wanting to become a physician. The seed I had planted long ago had finally found a favorable climate to germinate. Using this realization as a springboard, I took an initiative to become more involved with what I believed was an important aspect of building a healthy community, and I served as a member of the Rhode Island Tobacco Control Disparities Workgroup, a new committee of the Rhode Island Department of Health’s tobacco control program to address issues related to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) populations, and also as a chairperson of the executive board that oversees Lifelines Rhode Island, a community-based non-profit organization that provides social support and advocacy to transgender and gender-variant people in the Southern New England region. After graduating from graduate school, I decided to move back to Northern California and began my new career in the medical quality field working as a cultural and linguistic competency program coordinator. The goal of my work is to assist healthcare providers and medical education professionals to become aware of and recognize the importance of cultural and linguistic sensitivity as a means to improve health and wellbeing in the general population. The premise of cultural and linguistic competency comes from the need to address health disparities which form barriers to the advancement of health in underserved populations, and to delve into the socio-economically structured system of discrimination that creates inequity in access and utilization of healthcare.
These experiences of my involvement with the underserved members of my community have convinced me that this is the road I want to take; the road to become a medical community leader who is able to exercise the power to heal, the power to investigate the inequities, and the power to provide needed medical care as vehicles to change the health care system as a whole. I want to be the physician who is able to bridge the reality of the community’s healthcare needs and the medical system.
I commute everyday on a train, and it has become my sweat-lodge of reflection. As I watch the faces of strangers; some familiar from our daily train ride and others I do not recognize, thoughts glide through my mind along with the moving scenery of the city, all the way from the lush green hills speckled with glistening windows to the rows of boarded up houses that flank the industrial concrete port. In moments like these, I wonder when we became so detached from our senses, from our own hands and feet, from our skin and our hearts. We thrive in a society where every aspect of what nurtures human lives has become invisible, only available as a mere concept: business is transacted through credit and via electronic payments, communication is carried out through e-mails, education has become defined by scores of computerized tests. And health? It has become a commodity. Health has become a synonym for wealth, wrapped up in and woven through with statistics and theories. When and how did we allow our own health and well being to become something so far downstream from humanity and become fabricated concepts? As we all know, the World Health Organization defines health as: “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity (Preamble to the Constitution of the World Health Organization as adopted by the International Health Conference, New York, 19-22 June, 1946; signed on 22 July 1946 by the representatives of 61 States [Official Records of the World Health Organization, no. 2, p. 100] and entered into force on 7 April 1948.).” However, this ideology has fallen victim to human nature’s drive for advancement and economic prosperity, and has taken physicians out of a conscience-based system into a capitalistic system where insurance companies allegedly hold the ultimate power to heal. I strive to become a physician who challenges such systemic inequality, and brings medical care back to the examination table, back to communication and the relationship with patients, back to the practices of nurturance and love and the commitment to serve those who become deprived of health and wellbeing regardless of their socio-economic circumstances. I want to become a physician who can look patients in their eyes, listen, touch, feel, understand and aid without assumptions and value judgments. And if the system does not allow me to do it, I will take the initiative to lead in changing it.
This is what I want to do with my life: practice the tangible art of healing.
