A Decade of Hope by Dennis Smith

moved to Yonkers. There I finished grade school, and then went to Lincoln High School, a normal high school with no science specialization. From there my parents told me that I could go to the college of my choice, but they had only a limited amount of money. I didn’t want to burden myself with loans, so I had to think about whether I wanted to go to a state school or a private school. I got into all of the state schools in New York, but I also got into Columbia, which is where I decided to go.
    To be closer to campus, I moved to my grandmother’s apartment on the Upper West Side. And it was a great experience because (a) I didn’t really have a commute, only a five-minute subway ride, and (b) I was able to have the full college experience, with everything right there. Also, I got very close with my grandmother, which was just a very big benefit. Most of us don’t live in an extended-family world anymore, and I’m glad I got the chance to do so, because my grandmother was a great person.
    I didn’t always know that I was going to become a physician. I knew that I was going to do something in science but was not quite certain what. I majored in biochemistry, and originally I thought I was going to become a PhD scientist in biochemistry or organic chemistry—what a mistake that would have been. But I was convinced that chemistry was my calling. I was incredibly wrong.
    Many people think parents want you to become a physician, and I can tell you with 100 percent honesty that in the beginning that was not the interest of my parents at all. They did not care what I chose to do, but based on their own life experiences, they did feel that happiness required a certain amount of security—not money, but security, the ability to control your own destiny and make your own decisions. My dad had always wanted to do certain things but was impoverished growing up, and he did not want the same thing to happen to me. He felt that if I went into chemistry that I would become an automaton, and pharmaceutical companies would just use me and spit me out. And he was probably right. Only a few very brilliant people can really control their own destiny in that industry. And so after a while he lobbied very hard, in a way I found distasteful at times, for me to go to medical school. I hated what he said at the time, but as usual with parents, he was absolutely correct.
    So I went to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx. It’s a great medical school, but I was completely uninterested for the first two years, at best an average student. However, when I got onto the wards and started seeing patients, I realized how great this field could be, and how you could change things for both individuals and, through teaching and research, for large numbers of people as well. I realized that I wanted to specialize in internal medicine, and did my internship and residency at Harlem Hospital, because I wanted a place where I could learn a lot, and where I really could make a difference. I wanted to be in an impoverished area, where interns and residents were used as physicians, something that is not too commonly practiced in this day and age. At that time, although we had supervision, we were really doing it all ourselves. I was there for three years, and then I went back to Einstein–Montefiore Medical Center to do a pulmonary fellowship to become a pulmonary critical care specialist.
    While at Montefiore, the main teaching hospital for Einstein, I ended up meeting two physicians who worked for the Fire Department. One was Dr. Fell, who was a chest surgeon, and the other one was Dr. Rosenbloom, who was a cardiologist. I was not part of their sphere, being a pulmonary doctor, but we’d interact, and we seemed to get along well. By the time I finished my fellowship I was married to a woman who already had two children, so I had substantial financial responsibilities. But I did not want to go into private