episode 03: emily beckett
October 25, 2023
Interview by Erica Thomas
Photo by Ivan Dominguez
Edited by Erica Thomas and Michael Fortunato
Where are you from? Like originally?
Originally originally? I was born in Banbury, England. Not to be confused with Danbury, Connecticut.
How come you don’t have an accent?
Because I’m talking to you fine people.
Wait, do you change your accent depending on where you are or who you’re talking to?
I've been told that it happens, yeah. There are certain words or phrases that I’ll say a certain way because I just learned it like that. For example, and I didn’t realize this until I got to college, what you guys call a robe, we call a dressing gown. So I was saying something about my dressing gown and my roommates were all like, “What are you even saying,” “What on earth is a dressing gown?” And then there’s “garage.” You guys pronounce it “ga-rah-ge,” but we call it a “ga-ridge.” I’m never giving that one up. That one stuck.
So you’re a twin. What’s that like?
So when my mom found out she was having twins, she was not thrilled. Not excited at all. Until we were really born, to be honest. My parents weren’t expecting a child, and definitely not two. I think we’ve grown on them a bit by now though. My mom never fought to separate us and make us into our own individuals but we were never the kind of twins that always needed to be together. My sister is one of my best friends for sure.
So, did you guys move to Yorktown from England directly?
Nope. Actually, I feel very full circle with New York Medical College - it’s a funny story. So when we moved, we didn’t have a house here so we stayed in the Comfort Inn that’s right next to the Applebee’s near campus. We were there for two months before we eventually got a house and moved up to Yorktown. It was kinda wild. Because we didn’t have a lot of options in terms of cooking, I remember eating at Applebee’s and at that diner that’s over there a lot. This was around 2001.
Shout out to the Executive Diner.
Yup! It existed back then too. When I was first looking at NYMC during the application process, I didn't really make the association at first, but as I figured out where everything else was in the vicinity, I realized that this was where we had spent those couple of months. I also had a surgery done here at Westchester Medical Center, so it’s all coming full circle for me.
What were you like as a kid?
I think I was a relatively quiet kid. I was very affectionate. I loved my mom for sure. I still love my mom obviously. Oh, when I was younger, I was one of those kids that hated sleepovers. I was just a ball of anxiety. I remember once, when I was maybe 5 or 6, there was a huge snowstorm in the area, and I had gone to have a sleepover with a friend and I couldn’t go home for like, two extra nights. I remember just being horrified and panicky. That stuck with me for a while. I recently had dinner with a good friend who I’ve known for years. And we were talking about how I tried to have sleepovers at her house but then as soon as it was time to go to sleep, I started having massive anxiety and would have to go home. So yeah, to answer your question, I think I was a pretty quiet and anxious kid. But an affectionate child!
A true Pisces.
Oh yeah. Through and through.
What was your high school experience like?
My high school experience was pretty good, I think. I had a good friend group. I was kind of a nerdy, kind of athletic, closeted teen. I played soccer and played the trumpet pretty extensively. I played in area all-county jazz bands and like, all-county wind ensemble, which I know you know a thing or two about.
For the readers, Emily and I played in the Westchester all-county concert band together in like, middle or high school.
Yeah, we didn’t know each other at the time, but I think sometime during M1 year we put two and two together and figured out that was somewhere we had crossed paths before.
And now here we are.
Here we are.
How'd you get into playing the trumpet?
My grandfather actually. Well, actually, and this is another case of me just being a big anxious worry wart as a kid. I wanted to play an instrument and I knew it was going to be either the trumpet or the drums but I had a hard time deciding. I remember I had this huge meltdown in the kitchen one day and I was like, “Oh my God, what am I going to pick?” Like it really was the worst thing ever that I had to decide between these two things. Somehow I ended up settling on the trumpet. I remember being really frustrated when I first started to play it though. It was like learning to read again. Then my grandfather came for Christmas and I was super excited to show him my trumpet, but I didn't know how to play it. And then every day, a little bit every day, he started to teach me how to play because he played in the army. And then I just got better and better. I continued to play all throughout school, all throughout high school, all throughout college. I still have my trumpet now. Medical school makes it hard to find the time to keep up with it but it’s definitely something that I really want to keep doing and get back into.
So, you mentioned surgery before. Is that something you can talk about?
Yeah, totally. I had a Chiari-1 malformation and had a C1 laminectomy and decompression surgery in 2014.
Can you explain to the audience what that is?
Yeah, so a Chiari-1 malformation is a congenital condition where your cerebellar tonsils are displaced down into the spinal canal and then it kind of blocks the flow of your cerebrospinal fluid. You get a lot of headaches and all these other symptoms like dizziness, vision problems, sensitivities to sound and light, coordination issues. So I was having those problems. Honestly now, even just holding my finger straight out is crazy. Because before I couldn’t do that. Hold it still like that without shaking.
I didn’t really pay much attention to my symptoms, but one year, my grandma came to visit for Christmas and she got worried because she noticed I was taking a ton of Tylenol and ibuprofen for my headaches. So she told my mom, who’s a nurse, and my mom was like, “She’s probably fine.” They took me to my pediatrician anyway, who also was like, “Yeah she’s probably okay but we’ll order an MRI just to see.” And then I had a Chiari-1 malformation.
Whoa. What happened after that?
I remember one day at school, I was outside for gym and it happened to be really bright that day. And then I came back inside and, you know how sometimes it takes a while for your eyes to adjust? It was taking a long time for that to happen. My eyes weren’t adjusting and I couldn’t even see my lab partner next to me. So I texted my mom and next thing I know, she’s already called the school nurse, who then called my physics teacher on the phone in the classroom. And then my physics teacher comes to me, kneels by the side of my desk, and is like, “Emily, you have to leave.” It was super embarrassing. My brother came to pick me up and drove me to my neurologist. I had my surgery towards the end of that school year. I healed really well. I was out probably within 5 days, took my Regents exams 11 days after my surgery, and went to prom with my friend about a month later
What's involved in the surgery?
So they shaved the back of my head and my neck and made a big incision in the back of my neck. I would say it’s probably at least three inches. They removed the lamina of C1 and took a little piece of my skull out to relieve the pressure. They also put a little mesh in there and stitched me up. I actually can’t give blood anymore because it’s a bovine-based mesh.
It’s kind of crazy to think about because we learn about all these conditions in school and I feel we’re always joking like, “Yeah, nobody has that; that’s definitely made up.” But yeah it’s definitely real and I had it! I remember my roommate Jo (Issenman) was like, “Which one did you have?” Because there’s two kinds of Chiari malformations, 1 and 2. And I was like, “I had 1.” And she was like, “Okay, cool.”
Did your experience influence your decision to go into medicine?
Oh yeah, I think so. I had always been very heavy into science and my mind was kind of on that route already. With my surgery, it kind of was like, “Oh this is pretty interesting and cool,” even though it was unfortunately happening to me.
So why emergency medicine?
Ah! Well, I worked as an EMT for about a year in Yonkers after graduating from Binghamton. I saw a lot of different things and really enjoyed it. The only thing I didn’t like about it was the amount of work you had to do for pretty poor pay. I don’t know, it didn’t seem right and it didn’t seem fair. I’ve seen paramedics working ridiculously hard at multiple agencies, working throughout the week just to make ends meet. At the same time, I saw what they did and I thought the job was super interesting. You never know what you’re going to walk into and I really enjoyed that.
When did you realize you were gay?
Hmm. I guess I was never a very feminine person. I was always a tomboy. In middle school, my friends decided it would be fun to rename their crushes with secret code names and I remember just wanting to be part of that and just picking some boy at random and coming up with a name and doing that. But it never felt right. And in the meantime, I felt like I had way more meaningful interactions with the girls in my middle school class. And then when I got to high school, I had this friend who, I don't know, we just had these interactions that felt way more normal to me. Eventually she told me that she was interested in girls. And I kinda, like, reciprocated that sentiment. So that's how that came about more officially for me
Did you ever have an official coming out?
No, I don't think so. Like there are people from my childhood who probably still don't know. I feel like I'm constantly coming out. Anytime that I post anything on social media with my girlfriend I frequently feel like somebody will see it who probably didn't know. I feel like it's a constant thing that keeps happening. I never had a big post on National Coming Out Day or something like that was like, “Hey I'm gay.” I feel like I make my presence known in little ways. The way I dress is not so much to make a statement either. It's just truly what I feel more comfortable in and what I like to wear more and it just happens to be far more androgynous I guess.
How does this part of your identity affect how you move through the world?
I guess the hardest part was not being able to share all of myself with some of the people who were closest to me. You know, I grew up Roman Catholic so there were ways in which certain things were viewed and it created an environment where it was really hard for me to share all of myself even though I wanted to. I’ve definitely had experiences where I would tell someone and they took it badly and said insensitive, hurtful things, and then we’d live in that discomfort until they eventually came around or we lost touch. It was those instances that shoved me back in the closet for even longer. I will say, I am grateful that people have come around because I know not everyone gets to have that, and I am very fortunate to have people close to me that support me. My sister, for example, turned out to be one of my biggest supporters. She’s always like, “What are we doing for Pride this year, we have to do something for Pride.” Things with family aren’t the easiest a lot of the time when it comes to this stuff, but I’m lucky that we were able to make huge strides. Like my girlfriend, Isa, was able to come to Christmas at my house this past year. That was especially meaningful to me.
Did you have a moment where you had a breakthrough moment with your family?
How do you feel? Talking about your sexuality?
I think it’s important to talk about it. Even in our circle right now, there’s lots of LGBTQIA+ physicians and healthcare professionals who never talk about it. Who never refer to their partners. I won't lie, sometimes I feel uncomfortable saying anything on my rotations. Not that it really comes up often but, for example, yesterday, the PA that I was with, he said something along the lines of, “Oh my wife is Puerto Rican so we always have pineapples in the house.” But for me, even in this moment, I felt super uncomfortable to say, like, “Oh yeah, my girlfriend's Colombian and she always does XYZ.” So that's something that I'm still working through because I want to be professional and be taken seriously and I don't want the biases of others to affect that. Sometimes I feel like my identity may skew some people’s opinions of me, which is a shame. My being gay is definitely not the most important thing about me. But I feel like it’s somehow intertwined with every other part of me. I think it’s important that we talk about it.
Got anything you've been listening to lately?
Karol G and Young Miko!
Are you reading anything right now?
At the moment, an EKG book given to me by the attending on my EM rotation.
Favorite movie?
Favorite movie is The Theory of Everything. Or Love Actually. Love Actually is definitely my favorite Christmas movie. I also really like The Adjustment Bureau with Emily Blunt and Matt Damon, which I feel few people have actually watched.
If you could give a shout out to anyone right now, who’s it going to be?
My grandfathers for sure. Both of them.
Contact Emily at ebeckett@student.touro.edu.
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