In medical school, one of my small group leaders was Dr. Lydia Kang, who was (is!) an Internal Medicine physician who practiced outpatient medicine, and who was (is!) also a writer. When I went to the library to pick up a book on hold, I noticed one of her books on a display shelf and picked it up.
I’d already read one of her books in med school, after I found out she was a published author. I don’t remember the name of it, but it was a YA dystopian-science fiction novel about a girl with Ondine’s curse, a medical condition in which the sufferer does not have an intrinsic trigger to breathe. (In the book, she got around this by wearing a necklace that sent a stimulus to trigger breaths. Kind of like the Inspire devices for people with sleep apnea?) I don’t remember too much about it, which doesn’t necessarily reflect poorly on the writing because my memory is terrible now.
Anyhow, I just read my second Lydia Kang novel and it was… ok. Very competent! By the end I wanted to see how it ends even if it didn’t ring true all the time. I’m amazed by all the books she’s had published, it’s very impressive. And, she’s kind of like me! Well, not really. We’re both women, and we’re both physicians. I’ve taken care of a patient of hers before.
I’d love to do what she does, be a physician and a writer. A writer with a capital W, which I guess in my mind means published. Unfortunately, before that can happen, I actually have to, you know, write something. And then it has to be good enough to get published. And then it actually has to be accepted. I don’t think that will ever happen.
I guess I can be a physician and a writer, little w, right now.