Category: David C

  • God Only Knows

    I grew up steeped in a very specific religious tradition, namely a Chinese-American-contemporary-evangelical-Christian-neo-Calvinism, and so perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that the algorithms of Netflix and Facebook led me to watch “A Week Away”, a fairly superficial teen drama musical about (of all things) a summer Christian camp. While many books have been written about…

  • A bottle of Coke

    I used to love drinking Coke. It has been my favorite soft drink since an off handed conversation with a new classmate & friend​​ during orientation to college, in which he so enthusiastically described being from Atlanta “and of course I’m loyal to Coke” which got me thinking for the first time about how something…

  • Covid, Community, and Me

    …the experiences of this past year have changed me profoundly and in ways I still do not yet understand. It means some days I can feel my brain nod along to the evidence and statistics that, through immunization, my risk of getting it again and becoming severely ill are virtually nil, and yet still reflexively…

  • Graduation: the Fifth Floor

    This address was given for an Internal Medicine residency graduation event on June 3, 2021. It is lightly edited for clarity and the scripted portion is below. What does it mean to graduate in the year 2021? Future generations of residents will undoubtedly ask you, “What was it like to train during a moment in…

  • Fatherhood

    It was hard to hear him over the rhythmic humming of the ventilation, so I leaned in as his other classmates filtered out of the room. “How do you be a dad?” As a pediatrician, most of the questions I am asked are technical ones.  What is this rash?  How do you change the diaper…

  • That Unique Desolation

    That Unique Desolation

    This post has been dormant since March 29, 2016, but its title and its content have persistently been on my mind since.  The other day at some social gathering someone asked me what my hobbies were and, after thinking for a moment, said that it was studying firearm violence.  They laughed awkwardly and so did…