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Show Encouraged by her family to seek out new careers, to bravely go where no person had gone before, Kay began her trek from the family ranch in Den· ton, MT to traverse the land of the northern lights and to eventually set down in a salt lake valley. This is the enterprising saga (an odyssey) of how a simple country girl attained medicine's golden fleece, the all illusive MD. and also became the recipient of the 1987 Dermatology Foundation Fellowship for a one year research lay· over before continuing on her mission as intern and resident. KAY SEILSFAD Kay, Susan, and Scott Armed only with a BS, Kay set out to teach English to the natives of the snow blown, northwestern tip of MN (a Prarie Home Companion classic). After the great chill, she sought refuge in the temporate zone of Bozeman, MT where disguised as a nurse's aide she secretly completed her BS. Finally once aboard the great medical education machine, she was processed and prepared for the greatest mission of all, the search for the gift of healing, of caring and of sharing oneself with others. Throughout it all she never lost her childhood sense of adventure which was instilled while riding her pony over the big sky prarie and exploring the vast expanses of the Little Belt Mountain range of Central MT. Discovery is a great adventure whether it is found in nature, in the lab, on the wards, or at a class party (where Kay could be found sipping a tequila while discussing ten different topics all at once at a rate of a mile a minute). Realizing her own compulsive nature, Kay would like to leave her fellow classmates with the following quotes from Married to Their Careers by Lane A. Gerber: "The special demands of the profession requires that trainees continually work hard, improve their skills, and increase their learning ... (However) I don't want to have to 'prove myself' ... I just want to be a good doctor ... and not feel like I always have to outdo everybody around me ... The biggest thing I have learned in my medical training so far is how hard it is to have accepted the role of doctor as someone who cares for people ... Despite all the crap at the hospital, I enjoy seeing the patients ... I feel myself really wanting to be a doctor ... to be working there and feeling a part of things ... The assumption has been that 'medicine is our way of life; everything else is and has to be secondary' ... This assumption has proved to be very expensive in terms of its human cost ... Medicine is like a big neighborhood, but there are other neighborhoods I like too ... and I just have to make sure that I make time in life to visit them." |
