LAUSR

“I was raised Polish and Catholic in a small Wisconsin town and learned early on the meaning of sin and the utility of cow shit.” This was the entirety of the requested 2000-word essay that I submitted to the American Student Medical Association, but it was enough to secure a summer internship in a medically underserved area of Appalachia. A philosophy major at the University of Wisconsin (1969), I also received my MD there (1973). I knew I was from a medical family (my father and 2 younger brothers are also MDs), but it took me by surprise that it was also a sexist family (my mother, a medical technologist, and my 3 sisters, RNs) (Author photo 1). I was basically absent during my 4th year of medical school, spending time in extensive rotations at the Alaska Native Medical Center; Tuskegee, Alabama; and rural Wisconsin. My internship was a rotating one at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, and my internal residency was at Good Samaritan Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona. I was destined to be a primary care doctor in a medically underserved area (Author photo 2; Video 1, available online at www.VideoGIE.org). However, during a GI rotation at the Phoenix Veterans Administration Medical Center, I met Bob Sanowski, whose senior GI fellow had taken an