episode 10: tim sullivan

April 6, 2021

I’ve been in New Jersey my whole life. I was born in the next town over from where I lived for 22 years. When I was younger, my grandfather would tell my cousin and me stories about how being a doctor was the most rewarding field. He was born and raised in Colombia and was a pediatrician there. He started the path to medicine at a young age, and becoming a doctor was a big deal because he grew up very poor. He moved to Queens, NY in 1964 with my grandmother, my mom, and her sister. He had to go through residency all over again because he was a foreign medical graduate, and that basically meant living at the hospital. My mom and her sisters would have to go to the hospital to visit him on the weekends. It was inspiring to hear his stories as a kid. It made me think that maybe becoming a doctor was something for me.
 

 As I went through school, I was really interested in science. I remember in the second grade, I wanted to be an entomologist. High school is where my path to medicine started. During my senior year, I took an anatomy and physiology class, and we were assigned a project in which we had to cover a 12-inch skeleton with muscles made from Playdoh. We even had to use toothpicks to striate the muscles and attach them onto the skeleton. Completing it was really hard at the time because I had to memorize all the muscles in the body but looking back on it that was a significant turning point. I’m currently interested in orthopedics and sports medicine, and I think that that project is where it started.  
 

During my time at Seton Hall University, I focused on narrowing down the path to medicine. As a freshman, I volunteered in an orthopedic clinic to get some experience. This was a big step for me because it showed that I could work in that setting. The summer after that, I began doing research on cancer cells. I learned that bench work was not for me, that I would rather work with people. It solidified that caring for patients was the aspect of medicine that drew me in most. Junior year I began shadowing a sports medicine doctor at Columbia, and it was there that I really got to work with patients. The doctor I was working with was the assistant to the team doctor for the NY Yankees, and so he had seen some very interesting stories and he loved sports. 
 

I graduated from Seton Hall a semester early and was going through the interview process for medical school while also working as a medical assistant. Around that time, I started realizing that something wasn’t right. I began to feel more lethargic and tired, and at night I would have to get up one to two times to use the bathroom. It was concerning, but since I was transitioning out of college; I thought it was just stress. As time went on, I began losing a lot of weight and was chugging an unbelievable amount of water. At night, my heart would pound. When I would text, I couldn’t see right. It seems obvious in retrospect, but at the time, I really thought I just needed glasses and better coping skills. But then I was pulled over. I wasn’t able to see the color of the traffic light. I realized maybe this wasn’t just stress and scheduled a doctor’s appointment. My appointment was the day after my interview at Seton Hall’s medical school. I ate the catered lunch and felt as if I was about to faint at any moment. I thought, “Well if I do faint, at least I’m in a place full of doctors!”
 

I told my primary care doctor what I had been experiencing, and he actually asked me if I got the symptoms I listed from WebMD because they were classic symptoms of diabetes. I thought that was crazy. I was too young for type II diabetes and too old for type I diabetes. After pricking my finger, he told me that my fasting blood sugar was 202. At the time, I didn’t know anything about blood sugar. I even asked if that was normal. On Monday while I was at work, my doctor called me back with the results of my blood panel and told me that my A1C is 11.5. We all now know it should be below 6. This meant my average blood sugar had been around 300. He told me I most likely had type 1 diabetes. I didn’t really know how to take that news. I had never received a bad diagnosis before. 
 

I then went to the endocrinologist and learned how to give myself insulin injections and monitor my blood sugar. This was in March and right before my interview with NYMC, which was on the phone because by then lockdowns were in effect due to COVID. So not only do I find out I have a chronic disease, but also there’s a pandemic going on while I’m working in a health care setting. There was definitely a learning curve because the average onset of type 1 diabetes is around 10 years old while I was diagnosed at 21, so a lot of people know what to do already at my age. I had to learn how to schedule my days and change my eating habits so quickly. Thank goodness the rest of my interviews were on the phone because traveling and giving myself injections in new places would have been too much for me. It was almost a blessing in disguise when we had to transition into virtual modes, because I don’t know how I would have been able to do these interviews. 
 

I look at this on the bright side because I had to learn so much about insulin and the cardiovascular system out of my experiences, and in Biochemistry and Physiology we talked about diabetes almost every day. When we were given questions describing a patient and were asked to think critically about the scenario, I had already done the research a year ahead of time! Going forward, I feel like this experience can only help me better relate to what patients may be going through. I know what it’s like to get a bad diagnosis and I think it’s helpful when thinking about how you're supposed to give that to someone else.

What are your 5 Most Recently Played Artists on Spotify?
Oh, this is funny, I don’t really listen to music to relax. Whenever I’m driving, whether it’s to school or back home, I listen to podcasts.

Follow-up: What podcasts are the podcasts you've been listening to recently?
I listen to whatever comes up on Talk Radio, and I’m really interested in military podcasts so lately I’ve been listening to The JOCKO podcast, The Spear, and Cleared Hot.

If you could have any superpower, what would it be and why?
I guess I’d say mindreading, I think that would be really helpful. Honesty is very important to me, and you’re not going to get anything more honest than reading someone’s mind.

If you were given $200,000 right now, what would be the first thing you would spend some of that money on?
I think if I had money like that I would first buy another Star Wars figure because those are pretty pricey! Those aren’t close to $200,000 but still expensive.

Who is your favorite childhood fictional character?
I’m never a fan of the good guys, the bad guys always have a more compelling story. I think the character I’ve been most consistently interested in is Boba Fett. He’s not a good guy, not a bad guy, and heavily based on John Wayne Westerns.

If someone wants to talk to you, they should lead with:
Anything Star Wars! What I have noticed though is that through Zoom, whenever I see someone I recognize and they make eye contact with me, I’ll go talk to them and meet them. So just make eye contact! It surprises people when I know who they are in person.