Dead To Me with Maureen Miller, MD
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What is the opening premise of Maureen Miller’s story and how does it set up the episode?
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Every spring, match day rolls around. It's the day where medical students open up their envelopes and learn where they're going to be doing their residencies. Sometimes there are tears of joy. Sometimes there are tears of sorrow. But what about the medical student who doesn't match at all? I'm Emily Silverman and this is The Nocturne, stories from the world of medicine. In this episode, physician Maureen Miller describes how after match day her life took an unexpected turn. And how an old dusty box of autopsy records helped her to embrace her new future. After the story, Maureen and I talk about creativity and humor in medicine and dig deeper into the evolution of her professional identity. Here is the incredibly talented Maureen Miller.
Miller.
Basically during medical school I used to do these Not really like readings, but almost like performance art things that were kind of like they were about medical narratives and about being a doctor. But they were done in character. That's like a different doctor. It's so so here we're gonna try to pull a little bit of a star is born move here, like the vampire makeup. So I I'm going to be the real me, I'm not going to be in the character of me as a doctor. And for those who are new, there'll probably be a lot of exciting experiences out of it. So anyway, um that as one would expect from that intro, I'm a pathologist.
So uh let me just take you guys back. This is two weeks before Christmas 2016. And my boss was gonna kill me, except, like, of course, he's a pathologist. He could tell you exactly how he's gonna kill you and the method by which he did it. Um, he may have stepped out actually. I thought him, I saw him here earlier, but his name's Dr. Muhammad, I'll let you guess who he is. So, Dr. Muhammad in uh Christmas uh 2016 is working with me on A a paper that is not exactly the most exciting topic to even the most devoted of surgical pathologists. Uh it's about tumor of the parathyroids. So this parathyroid tumor had been the result of like a previous parathyroid growth, and we just want to d explain how it looked for an academic publication with an endocrinologist.
And Whatever we reproduced was not exactly lighting Dr. Muhammad's fire, who was somebody who could probably sit for twenty hours a day at a microscope and never get tired at all. But he was just tired that Saturday afternoon for whatever reason. And in a couple of recent encounters with him, he had said to me Again, like quoting Ecclesiastes, he goes like Maureen, there is nothing new under the sun. I I thought it wa at the time I I mean I was horrified, but I thought it was just like this incredibly profound and beautiful statement. And this particular day had that vibe and he says he he gets this like gleam in his eye almost, as if he's actually giving me a holiday present. And then he like he he's a very tall man with a long torso and like he tends to like lead conversations with this torso.
Then he says, like, Maureen, this is my present to you for the holidays.
How did Maureen’s experience of not matching on residency day change her career path?
The lab manager Gerald found it, and he wants you to write a novel out of the books that are in this box. And I look at him like, Are you I I I was trying to like resist my language, like, are you kidding me? The endocrinologist who's there with us who doesn't even like know Dr. Mulovid is like, I'm out And then then he says, like, no, but like, you're so passionate about history and about like racial disparities and ethnic disparities and medicine. This is the entire autopsy records of Bellevue from 1897. And I think that you're the only person in this department who will know what to do with them. Like somebody dropped them off in the ER and and we just have been trying to figure out what to do with them for years.
So I give him, of course, like the very enthusiastic resident response of thanks, but no thanks, like trying to be polite about like I'm not doing this, not on your life.
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Chapters
3 chapters
1
What is the opening premise of Maureen Miller’s story and how does it set up the episode?
0:00–3:27
2
How did Maureen’s experience of not matching on residency day change her career path?
3:27–18:10
3
What role did the dusty 1897 autopsy reports play in shaping Maureen’s professional identity?
18:10–33:25