episode 18: hannah litwA

Interview by Anna Williams

April 26, 2020

My mom is an ICU nurse. She’s been working 12-hour shifts almost every day for the past two months. For a while, she had to get a hotel room by the hospital because my grandmother was staying at home and she didn’t want to infect her. My mom hasn’t shown any symptoms herself, but it’s definitely been a trying time for her and her career. Not only because of the number of patients and the severity of the illness, but also because she’s having a hard time not allowing her patients’ families to visit. It’s really hard to see these patients so sick and so alone.

When I was growing up, my mom missed birthdays and Christmases and Thanksgivings. I’m so grateful for how she explained it though; I never resented her for it, for missing any of that stuff. She would say, “I’m saving lives. I’m doing service. I have to do this.” I respected my mom for her job, especially since we lived on a farm. She kicked ass at the hospital and then came home and kicked ass taking care of three kids and a farm of animals. She was always so firm, but still so gentle. I think that shaped my view of medicine too. She taught me how to get my point across in a delicate way.
 
Growing up on a farm also shaped who I am and definitely contributed to why I wanted to go into medicine. It was really interesting to see the process of life up close. We were raising chicks, ducks, goats, and horses. The animals would die occasionally, so I learned how to cope with death at a young age. The farm also fed into my work ethic because it was up to the kids to do a lot of the chores. At the end of the day, if we didn’t feed the animals, they would go hungry. We learned that awful feeling of forgetting to care for someone who’s relying on you. When I was little, I used to joke around with my mom that I was going to turn our barn into a veterinary hospital. As I grew up, I felt more connected to human medicine than veterinary medicine, probably because my mom is a nurse. It just aligned more for me.
 
I started thinking about going into medicine my senior year of high school. My mom tried to talk me out of it, which I feel is not uncommon for parents in medicine. She would explain how demanding it is and how hard it is to be a woman in medicine. I tried to talk myself out of it too, but every time I shadowed, or was in the hospital, or visited my mom at work, I was so invigorated and excited by that career path. There was no talking me out of it.
 
I studied neuroscience at Bucknell and was one of two women in my major. It wasn’t a very big major (I think there were 14 or 15 of us), but there was this general discomfort of being the different one in the room. I can’t say there wasn’t ever any discrimination or that anyone ever put me down, but being different was uncomfortable at times.
 
NYMC is definitely a lot more heterogeneous than Bucknell was. It’s been really refreshing to study with people who come from such different backgrounds. It makes you feel like less of a black sheep because everyone’s different. You don’t have to fit a mold or conform to any ideas because everyone has such different viewpoints. I also feel like the relationships that I have at NYMC are built on a very strong foundation of mutual respect for each other, our careers, being a physician, and everything that that means. The friendships that I have at NYMC feel a lot different from my other friendships, but it’s not that those friendships are less meaningful or bad; these new ones just feel more mature.
 
Despite making some strong connections within our class, my transition to medical school hasn’t been totally seamless. I struggled with Anatomy at first. It felt like everyone knew what they were doing and I had no idea. I remember meeting with Dr. Pravetz to go over study strategies. He said, “It’s not the way you're studying. It’s your mindset. You have to stop being so negative.” And he was completely right! He said, “You’re beating yourself up for no reason. You’re doing well!” I had to stop putting so much pressure on myself and redefine what success is for me.
 
Honestly, I think the Resiliency Curriculum really helped. Those meetings helped me realize that everyone is in the same boat. We’re all doing this together. I think the NYMC community is really good at being inclusive and working as a team so that nobody feels left out or alone. The session when we read about M2 and M3’s first-year experiences really resonated with me. It wasn’t the same exact situation that I was in, but all of the key points were there. I thought, “I’m really not alone. Everyone is feeling this way.” Even though I didn’t know these people, I felt connected to them and it made me feel more connected to the school. And on top of that, whenever I feel beatdown or alone, I remember, “my mom can do it, she’s killing the game, so I know I can do it too.”

What are your 5 Most Recently Played Artists on Spotify? 
Avicii, Vampire Weekend, Big Wild, Neil Young, and Nirvana

If you could have any superpower, which one would you choose?
Probably reading minds

Pick something or someone from NYMC to give a shout-out to!
Everybody who’s volunteering and doing their part in some way during these unforeseen circumstances. During a time like this, it’s so easy to implode or turn in on yourself, but shout-out to everybody who’s giving back and being called to service.

If someone wants to talk to you, they should lead with:
Favorite food, for sure. Mine is cheese!