| I grew up outside of Philadelphia, as the fourth of five children
of two physicians. With sixteen MDs in three generations of my family,
I must have inherited a "doctoring gene," but never considered
medicine as a career until a phone call from my sister Nancy on
May 20, 1978.
I attended Northwestern University and then made my way to Northern
California for graduate work in Zoology at UC Berkeley in 1967.
Arriving in Berkeley during the Summer of Love was an amazing experience!
In addition to learning to do research, I took up backpacking, jogged
every day in Tilden Park, became politically active, replaced the
clutch in my Mazda, etc. I finally completed my Ph.D. in cell biology
and began a post-doctoral fellowship in exercise physiology at UCB.
On May 20, 1978, a phone call from Nancy turned my world upside
down. Out of the blue, she shared a dream she'd had of me walking
around a hospital in a white coat with a stethoscope around my neck.
"Would you actually go to medical school if you ever got accepted?"
she asked. Without hesitation, I found myself answering, "In
a heart beat." I didn’t relish having to relearn organic
chemistry at the age of 35, but as soon as I got off the phone,
I signed up for the one remaining place in an MCAT review course,
and took them that fall.
UCSF has been my medical home since I got accepted off the wait
list as the oldest student in the class of 1984. After completing
a Primary Care Internal Medicine Residency at Parnassus, I joined
the full-time faculty in the Division of General Internal Medicine
and have never left. I was also fortunate to serve as the Director
of Education at the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at the
Mt Zion campus from 1997-2008.
One of my greatest joys has been participating in and witnessing
the development of students and residents as they grow into mature
physicians, so I am honored to serve as one of the Advisory College
mentors.
On a personal level, I am blessed with a wonderful family. I helped
raise my niece and nephew with my sister Nancy. Peter works as a
clinical psychologist at Bellevue Hospital in NY and Amy is a remarkable
jack-of-all-trades, having excelled in everything from high tech
to remodeling houses. I live in the outer Mission in a small community
called St. Mary's Park. Working in the garden, ballroom dancing,
hiking, and learning about Buddhism are some of the activities that
help bring balance to my life.
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