Foreign Sounding Doctor

So good news! I passed my first medical school course, ensuring that I am a little bit closer to becoming a medical doctor. That pressure, coupled with the fact that I wrote a 50,169 word novel in the month of November (for NaNoWriMo), is why I have neglected this blog for the most part. I really would like to get my novel published one day, as it was an attempt to make primary care physicians sexy. Improving people's opinions for primary care physicians is my primary goal.

Regardless, I would like to get back on point. Yesterday all the first year students, across all the disciplines, had our HMTD course (nobody knows what HMTD stands for). We were split up in groups, and my group got to hear from a man in his seventies who had had a hemorrhagic stroke about five years ago. A doctor, a pharmacist, and a physical therapist talked to him about his recovery since the incident. The doctor was my community leader, Dr. Senno. Dr. Senno is a really loud man, a neurologist who deals with traumatic brain injuries. He also has an accent of medium thickness (which means its detectable, but you can understand pretty much everything he says).

At one point, he began talking about how easy it is to develop a rapport with your patient--asking the man questions pertaining to the day (it was Pearl Harbor Day), the man's hobbies, the man's career. When it was discovered that the patient and his first doctor treating him during and after his stroke had both gone to the same undergraduate institution, Dr. Senno had noted that he had done rotations at the very same hospital. Dr. Senno then proceeded to go on a tangent about how important it is, especially for doctors with foreign sounding last names, to establish credentials.

Should I change my last name? What would I change it to? No. I like my last name, even if people tend to pronounce it as Abandagu, even though my last name is phonetical and clearly Apantaku. It scares people. I don't want to scare people. But things should change, if only because the majority of the students in my class aren't white. But until then, I guess I could be Dr. A.