Professor David Hemenway from the Department of Health Policy Management at HSPH is a renowned expert on injury prevention. He gave a talk in the beginning of fall 2009 that coincided with the entry of the class of 2010. Professor Hemenway showed us pictures of famous doctors (e.g. Louis Pasteur, Dr.Bernard, etc). Someone from the audience would always end up identifying the name. Then he flashed a picture of Maurice Hilleman. The audience sat silent. Professor Hemenway looked at us and said this man is credited with saving the most human lives in the history of mankind. This man developed the vaccines for measles, mumps, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, chickenpox, meningitis, pneumonia and Haemophilus influenzae. He has saved more children from dying than many many men put together. Yet he didn't earn fame and recognition. If any of you have any disillusions that the path of public health would be easy and earn you money you are badly mistaken. You would however get the opportunity to change the lives of millions and millions.

How can you put words to a year in which you sit on the beaches of Miami , gaze at the splendors of Niagra, look down the Rockfeller Center, sail towards the Statue of Liberty, party late into the night in the Space Needle, and attend graduation at the Harvard Yard? What can you say about a year compressed into long hours of work , unimaginable amount of stress and sometimes a Himalayan mountain load of readings?

Words can't do justice to the immense gratitude and thanks I feel for the Fulbright Program and HSPH. For once I didn't have to feel resistance to my dreams. People didn't have long discussions with me on why my dreams were naive and impossible to achieve like I had been struggling to deal with the many years before grad school, instead they sat down to help lay out the building blocks to MY dreams. I got a chance to be ME and not be dictated by what the world wanted. I took courses driven by my passion and desire rather than a predefined path. I got a chance to make my OWN road.

Today sitting at the Yard and then at HSPH I felt extremely lucky and honored to have known all the Fulbrighters and HSPHians that came across my path this year. I might not get the chance to talk to everybody before I leave, but I can assure you that I am extremely thankful to have had a chance to work, study and party with you. I wish you all the best in life and hope to meet you once again at one point or the other in life.

I feel like crap.

Longing for the streets of Islamabad......the hills of Margalla....the sodas and fries....the random hang outs......the insane conversations......playing Moha ( Mera Ballack ) at 3 in the night at a stuffy net-cafe......listening to FM late at night.......texting friends about random stuff.....

Holy family's coffee on a rainy night....Nurses waking me up at odd hours to see panicked parents and their kids with stuff up their noses, down their throats and in their ears........Suturing lacerated ears.......trying to figure out what to do with avulsed lips.....And arranging ER OT rooms for oesophagoscopies and bronchoscopies.....dreading when our professor had an anger attack.....hating to have to go do consults from Medicine and the ER, packing bleeding noses, and taking out splints........

DHQ's insanely crowded ER.....patients storming in and out demanding attention, as I tried to figure out mentally who needed the most immediate care.....CPRz........the dread of running a code alone.......the relief of picking up a MI early on......the feeling of intense satisfaction when we would triage patients and get them shifted to proper wards within minutes......ranting how our MOz were totally driving us insane  

Driving our MOz insane Those gatherings in the doctor's room of the FMW...the CCU/ICU tiredness......waking up early to do ECGS......the patient notes.....the rounds.....the morning meetings.....


Every moment and every feeling in life has an importance....I'm glad to have gone through them all.....

Maybe a year on I'll write about HSPH, Boston and the US.....But for now, I long for the streets of Islamabad.......