Para qué?

Paulita Lara Mejia, MS2

We are out here living our wildest dreams.

Our parents’, abuelos’, ancestors’ wildest dreams.

We’ve done and do so much to chase these dreams

Migrated across borders, oceans

Our village lays down the road for us, our parents place

The ladder on the ivory tower

So that we can reach places they’ll never know

And for what?

Para qué?

I sit in class in this ivory tower

And I learn about the newest therapies

To treat this condition

The latest innovation

So shiny, so pricey

I always think to myself, my family could never afford that

And then I remember, oh right

This isn’t even available in Ecuador for my family to not be able to afford

Sometimes in class we learn about diseases that aren’t prevalent in the US but are seen

In the rest of the world

My classmates complain, why do we need to learn this?

It startles me

How far from home I am

Way back when

My father

Who chased his own dreams

Immigrated to a new country (and took me with him)

Pulled himself up the tower

Onto the high grounds of higher education

(my dad has always loved climbing mountains)

Who looked for every opportunity to stay dreaming

(so I could graduate from high school in the land of opportunities)

Still was forced to go back

7 years later he got a diagnosis so bad that

You talk about it in months not years

Sometimes I think that his big brilliant brain just got too big

A brain that kept wanting to climb higher to places no one has been before

Too much brilliance that god said ahí no más

So then what do you do

What do you do when with all your training and dreaming

You can’t even help your own dad, abuelita, tía

You go into it wanting to give back to your own

To your community to which you belong

To the village that paved the way for you

And you can’t even save the pillars of your village

Man that’s humbling, this ain’t a noble profession

What’s it all for when this profession

Provides me with a visa for the US, the privilege to train here

But its side effects and complications mean

I haven’t seen my dad in the last

4 years

And now that I was finally able to make it home

My dad can’t stop sharing his life regrets

Of spending too much time on his career, his own ambitions

And not enough with family

And now that I’m walking the same path

Of pursuing an education in a country far away

I can’t help

But wonder is it all worth it? Para qué?

What’s it all for

When I spent 7 YEARS studying the brain

And now 2 more in medicine

(this precise intersection now my worst enemy)

And all these years I’ve spent learning about the newest therapies

That are shiny, cutting edge, innovative

What do I do when I’m stuck in the ivory tower

With all its privilege, dripping with resources

When my family

Is waiting for me at the bottom

But my hair isn’t long like Rapunzel’s

I can’t figure out how to build a ladder back down in time

to help my dad

What happens when my village raised me to just put one foot

In front of the other when times get tough

But I seem to keep walking further away from home?

What’s it all for?

About the Author:

My name is Paulita Lara Mejia (she/her/ella). A little about me: I was born in Quito, Ecuador and grew up in Bloomington, Indiana. I graduated from Princeton in 2018 with a degree in Neuroscience and I worked in Boston for three years doing clinical neuroimaging research at Massachusetts General Hospital before starting medical school (I love the brain). I also love dancing, cross-country skiing, playing spikeball, and spending meaningful time with friends. I’m now an MS2 at Geisel SOM at Dartmouth, where I help lead the Latino Medical Student Association and Global Health Scholars, and am also involved with McGill Scholars and Race.Culture.OBGYN.

About the Work:

I wrote this on the plane on my way home back to Ecuador. This journal submission was the nudge I needed to get some of my thoughts out of my head and onto paper. This piece is about my experience going to medical school in a place of privilege while my dad received a terminal illness diagnosis in Ecuador. I write about the dissonance I experience when I learn about cutting-edge treatments that my family doesn't have access to. I feel that this writing aligns with the theme of the journal, Madre Tierra, as I continue to question my connection to my home country, and question what I am doing so far from home.