Episode 2: COVID Hits Home
SYNOPSIS
To some, the pandemic is a distant thing. The deaths of hundreds of thousands can feel unreal and even impossible to comprehend. That is, until COVID hits home.
In December 2020, medical student Neel Vahil lost his dad, a small-town community doctor in Pueblo, Colorado, to COVID-19. Through interviews with his father’s friends, colleagues, and patients, Neel takes us on a journey to better understand a man who was his own personal hero and opens the door to what it has been like to be a family in mourning during a time of social distancing.
LISTEN
Contributors
This episode features the voices of: Neel Vahil; Jackie Castellanos, MS; Sandeep Vijan, MD, FACS, CPE; Kati Foechterle, RN, DNP; Chris Wilson, DO; and other healthcare workers who wish to remain anonymous.
CREDITS
Host: Emily Silverman, MD
Podcast Producer: Adelaide Papazoglou
Associate Producers: Isabel Ostrer, Molly Rose-Williams
Original music composed by Janaé E.
“Om Jai Jagdesh Hare” performed by Danyal Z.
“Pandemic Theme” composed by Yosef Munro
“Star Wars Theme” composed by John Williams, performed by Mike McInnis, MD.
Series illustrations: Nazila Jamalifard
Audio Engineer: Jon Oliver
Production Assistants: Hannah Yemane, Ricky Paez, Siyou Song
Support for The Nocturnists comes from the California Medical Association, the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, the California Health Care Foundation, and people like you who have contributed through our website and Patreon page.
TRANSCRIPT
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The Nocturnists: Stories from a Pandemic Part II
Episode 2: "COVID Hits Home"
Transcript
Note: The Nocturnists is created primarily as a listening experience. The audio contains emotion, emphasis, and soundscapes that are not easily transcribed. We encourage you to listen to the episode if at all possible. Our transcripts are produced using both speech recognition software and human copy editors, and may not be 100% accurate. Thank you for consulting the audio before quoting in print.
Emily Silverman
You're listening to The Nocturnists: Stories from a Pandemic. I'm Emily Silverman. For some of us, the pandemic is a distant thing. At the height of the surge, we wore masks, we waited in line six feet apart. We did our best to shepherd our kids through virtual school. Even now, the idea of 400, 500, 600 deaths seems abstract. For some, even one death may be impossible to comprehend. Many of us have gotten through this past year by keeping our heads down, putting one foot in front of the other and waiting for a brighter tomorrow. We healthcare workers are good at compartmentalizing. That is, until COVID hits home.
Answering Machine
Friday, 1:20pm.
Dr. Atul Vahil
Neel, your mom and I have not been able to reach you since this morning. And you have not responded to any of my texts at all. Can you just text me that you are okay or? I don't know. Just give me a call back.
Answering Machine
Beep.
Dr. Atul Vahil
Neel, your mom and I have not been able to reach you since this morning.
Neel Vahil
We're in my dad's closet now. And I come here pretty much every day. Sometimes I listen to voicemails that he sent me. A couple days ago, I put a picture of him in here. It's sort of become like a shrine to him. Nothing is really touched. But sometimes I walk around, thinking maybe he left me a note telling me what to do or telling me how I should live my life. I've gone through this closet, probably like 20 or 30 times since he passed away. Just trying to figure out like, if there's something here that he wanted me to have or wanted me to know about. He still has like dirty laundry.
Jackie Castellanos
We should wash that.
Neel Vahil
I don't think I'll be able to do that. No, no, no, he's just got random stuff in here. A lot of cologne. Definitely a lot of cologne. I don't know why he has a pocket knife. It's got all his shirts and stuff here and there's some shirts here that I'm pretty sure he wore at one point. They still smell like him.
Emily Silverman
The day after Christmas in 2020 I got an email from a medical student named Jackie. She was writing on behalf of her partner Neel, also a medical student. Neel's father, a gastroenterologist in Colorado had died of COVID-19, just two weeks prior. And Neel and Jackie wanted to tell his story. Okay, I'm recording.
Neel Vahil
I'm recording.
Emily Silverman
Alright. Are you in your childhood home right now?
Neel Vahil
I am. Yeah.
Emily Silverman
And you're in Pueblo.
Neel Vahil
I'm in Pueblo.
Emily Silverman
I listened to quite a few of the recordings today. And I'd like to just rewind a little bit back to that day where you and Jackie emailed me.
Neel Vahil
So about a week after my dad passed away, I think it was sometime in the afternoon on a Saturday, maybe, that we decided to send you that email. I just wanted to feel like I had tried to do something to honor him. Because I felt like we had been so cheated and robbed of some of the traditional grieving rituals. And I, it just, it just ate at me. I felt gutted by that. It's like in the middle of this pandemic. You can't even do anything the way it needs to be done. I wanted to talk about what my family and I had gone through during that period. What I went through during that period, you know, being a medical student and being his son. It sort of hit me in our conversation that this could actually be a pretty cathartic process for me. It was like the first time actually that I didn't feel... am I allowed to... am I allowed to curse in this? It was like, it was like the first time I didn't feel like shit in like weeks.
News Reporter
“Over the weekend, Pueblo county moved into level three, which is high risk. That means we have two weeks to get our numbers down.”
Neel Vahil
So we are now driving in downtown Pueblo. We're passing by the Courtyard Marriott. My dad's friend told me that they stayed here, when they first came out here to see if they might want to move here together. And he told me a story, where he said that him and my dad were smoking cigarettes in the stairwell. And then they left to go meet with an administrator at the hospital. And as they came back, they saw that there were a bunch of fire trucks standing outside the Marriott. And they started freaking out because they thought maybe it was something that they did that was the reason that there are fire trucks out there. They thought maybe one uh one of their cigarettes started a fire. Finally, they walked into the Marriott and they found out that it was something completely unrelated, but that was my dad's first or second day in Pueblo that happened. So Pueblo, is kind of an interesting city because when you think of Colorado, the image that everyone has is snowcapped mountains and sitting inside a chalet or something like that drinking hot cocoa after you're finished skiing. That's not really what Pueblo is. It's got a couple of nicknames. One of them is Steel City, because Pueblo is kind of an old steel town or steel manufacturing used to be sort of the primary source of jobs here. Those days ended a while ago. There's a lot of pride here. And I feel that. And I think that's something that's really special about this, this place.
Jackie Castellanos
This is Jackie. Neel's partner. So this is the downtown we're driving on Union Street, and it's super old. When I think of Colorado, I'm from California, I definitely thought of like hippies from Boulder. But this is like old, like water towers, steel mills everywhere, industrial, brick building. No frills, no nothing. This is like, this is the Heartland. Why did your dad choose Pueblo?
Neel Vahil
We had just come from a really small town in Oklahoma about 12,000 people. And well over 90% of that town was, was white. And you know, my dad had to deal with a few racial incidents as a result, particularly after 9/11 we all felt a lot more comfortable here. I don't think we've felt sort of that sense of being different as much as we did in Oklahoma. So it was a fresh start. That almost never happened because apparently my dad almost burned down the Marriott. So we are now at the hospital in town. There's a medical office building right across the street. I remember my dad extremely busy. We would come do our homework. There are so many patients there it was, it was crazy. You know he would work up until eight, nine o'clock at night go check on any patients that he had that needed to be admitted. We got to know the staff really well. Some of whom are still still around today.
Overhead speaker
"Evelyn, your blood product is on the unit. Evelyn."
Neel Vahil
Alright, can you please state your name, your job and how you knew Dr. Vahil.
Sandeep Vijan
My name is Sandeep Vijan. I'm a general surgeon and I am the Chief Medical Officer for Parkview Medical Center. I knew Dr. Vahil through my surgical practice. Pueblo's citizens are among the most vulnerable in the state, if not the country. It's a very challenging patient mix to deal with. Losing Dr. Vahil is a huge loss for the community and his patients. We are going to struggle to fill that void with someone of such caliber, dignity and influence.
Emily Silverman
Neel's father Atul Vahil was born in 1953 in New Delhi, India. He was introduced to Neel's mom Lilly through mutual friends, and they were married on January 15, 1984. Soon after that, they moved to the United States in pursuit of the American dream. They lived in a small apartment in Queens, complete with a mattress on the floor and a small television on a cardboard box. Neel and his brother were born here during their dad's medical training, and that first year, Dr. Vahil, took on various odd jobs to make ends meet.
Jackie Castellanos
He, I think he sold newspapers when he first came.
Neel Vahil
Insurance.
Jackie Castellanos
Insurance. No, I think he first like, went door to door in the valley and sold newspapers.
Neel Vahil
Wait, really?
Jackie Castellanos
Yeah. So when he got here, he couldn't work as a doctor. And he had to try to get a residency spot, but no one would take him. And so he needed to make money. And he said with, quote, punks, like not in a derogatory way, but in like actual they had spiked Mohawks in the valley, in the 80s. He always told me this story, like every time he's like, one of the girls like fainted or something, because it was so hot outside, and they're going door to door trying to sell something. And she passed out. And so your dad was helping her, you know, he was checking her pulse, but he didn't tell anyone that he was a doctor. He had his accent and everything he's like, I'm not gonna tell anyone that I'm actual doctor, because I am selling newspapers right now or whatever he was selling in the valley.
Emily Silverman
Dr. Vahil went to Meerut University in Uttar Pradesh, India, and then did his internal medicine residency in New Delhi. But he wasn't licensed to practice in the United States. And he knew that in order to do so, he would have to redo his residency from scratch. Making matters worse, he first needed to be accepted into a program and finding an open residency slot as an international medical school graduate was not easy.
Neel Vahil
At that time, he was meeting other people from India, who were already physicians and trying to get themselves into a residency. And some of them were like, I'm on my fifth year, and I still haven't gotten it. And my dad started freaking out. And he's like, I cannot stay here five years without practicing medicine. I gotta, I gotta get there sooner. One of his friends did a residency program in New York. And he's telling him, you know, the chair of Internal Medicine gets to his office around 6:30 in the morning, and he's there for like, 30 minutes or so before rounds, give him a call and see what he says. He had a three hour time difference. So my dad gets up at 3:30 in the morning, and he just starts talking to him. And my dad just charmed him. The guy's like, you are exactly the kind of person we want. It turned out that the program director had already promised that slot to someone else at that time. So the director calls my dad, he says "Listen, I'm sorry, I didn't know that they'd already promised that spot to someone else. I can promise you a spot next year with pay, or you can start this year, but I can't pay you." He worked one year of an intern grueling work schedule without pay. And he worked hard, he worked hard to get where he was. He clawed his way into everything he got.
Emily Silverman
Eventually, Dr. Vahil went on to repeat his residency in internal medicine, and did a fellowship in gastroenterology. After practicing in a small town in Oklahoma for several years, Dr. Vahil moved his family to Pueblo, Colorado, where he opened his practice treating digestive diseases, as well as an adjoining endoscopy center. Of all the places he had lived, Dr. Vahil loved the people and community of Pueblo the most. Here's Dr.Vijan again.
Sandeep Vijan
As a gastroenterologist, he had a loyal patient following a loyal referral practice, had been in the community a long time, he was very well known and very well respected.
Lauren Leomiti
You never felt rushed, you never felt like he was in a hurry to get out the door to the next patient.
Emily Silverman
This is Lauren. She and her husband were Dr. Vahil's patients.
Lauren Leomiti
I met Dr. Vahil, oh my gosh, I want to say almost 20 years ago. He found my dad's colon cancer. And he also was the one that identified my husband's cancer. My husband was a football coach at CSU Pueblo, and my husband had not been a good patient. He had appointments scheduled and then he just wouldn't show up or he canceled them because he thought he didn't have time. And God bless your dad after the second time I was like, he's never gonna see you again. The scheduler was like, "No, he's still willing to see him." And he, we had a game in the fall last year and my husband was very sick and had gone into liver failure. And I had a colonoscopy scheduled with your dad on a Friday. And then he asked how my husband was, every time I had gone in. He had asked how Donnell was doing. And it was just the compassion and he just put his hand on my shoulder and said, "I promise you I'm not going to ever let anything happen to you."
Neel Vahil
Dr. Wilson can you hear me?
Chris Wilson
I can.
Neel Vahil
Do you wanna just state your name, how you know my dad, and what, what you do.
Chris Wilson
My name is Chris Wilson. I'm a family practice doctor, and have been a friend and colleague of Dr. Vahil since 2001.
Neel Vahil
Tell me about what your initial encounters with him were like.
Chris Wilson
Me being a family practice doctor, at the time, seeing patients in the hospital, things could be quite challenging. When you would order a consultation from a specialist the hope was is that they would kind of stay and help you through the whole situation. That was not always true. But Dr. Vahil was quite different. He'd always go as far as he needed to go to get to the bottom of whatever it was. I'd get a phone call as soon as he found out, he'd come out of the scope. I'd get a phone call. Even when it was bad news. Before I got a copy of the path report, I got a phone call.
Neel Vahil
And that's pretty uncommon.
Chris Wilson
That never happens.
Kati Foechterle
Hello?
Neel Vahil
Hey Kati.
Kati Foechterle
Hey.
Neel Vahil
Hey, so I'm recording now. So I was gonna ask you to start by just introducing yourself and how you knew my dad.
Kati Foechterle
Sure. I'm Kati. And I am a pulmonary nurse practitioner. Now, but previous I worked for Dr. Vahil. You know, colonoscopies are really awkward to get and people are scared of anesthesia. And that makes them nervous. And he would just go in and put a smile on everyone's face. Patients enjoy being there. Because of him. I mean, I've never met so many people excited for colonoscopies, he would try to lighten the mood with the fart app, embarrassing staff because he wouldn't tell them that he was starting to do it.
Neel Vahil
What's the fart app?
Kati Foechterle
An application that he downloaded off of his iPhone, he would pretend to have a stomachache because the patient was getting ready for their procedure. Everybody's terrified that they're going to fart and they're embarrassed. But that's our line of work. So he would set off the fart app. And we would ask him if he was okay. And the patients just kind of giggle and, and go at ease. Because if the doctor can do it, it was no big deal.
Neel Vahil
My dad and I were always in like constant competition with each other. Even though I'm like 36 years younger than him. It was infuriating. It's like he always, for some reason, thought that he could do everything. Everything that I can do. We have this thing called the incline--the Pikes Peak incline in Colorado Springs--about 30 minutes, 40 minutes north of us. And I would take a backpack, put some weight in it and I would run up the incline. It's about three miles of steps. And my dad could only get up maybe like half way through the incline. And we would go back down and he was like, "You know, I'm going to show you one day. I'm gonna I'm gonna get up there." I was like, "Alright Pop." I didn't really think he was actually going to do it. He's so busy. I didn't think he was going to be able to actually train to do that. About five months later, I get a text from him and from one of his nurses, and it's him at the top of the incline, smiling. He came to watch me run a marathon one time. And he was like, "Oh, maybe I'll try one of these too." I was like, "Dad, stop." Yeah. He's always there for me, even if he couldn't actually be there because he was working a lot. He was always there. I knew my dad would always pick up my phone call, no matter where he was. Didn't matter what he was doing, didn't matter how busy he was. I knew, I knew if I was worried about a test, and I couldn't sleep, I knew for a fact my dad was also worried about it. I knew he couldn't sleep either. And I'd talk to people who worked with him who said there were days he looked a little off. And it was because, "Oh, Neel, he's supposed to get the results of an exam today. He's really nervous about it. I just want to make sure he's doing okay." He didn't even care about the score. He just wanted to make sure I was doing okay.
News Reporter
“The positivity rate for Pueblo county is almost at 15%. Over the last two weeks, more than 1400 people have tested positive for the virus in Pueblo County. The hospitalization rates in Pueblo are also increasing with the number of people being admitted with the virus doubling over the past couple of weeks. The mayor tells me that…”
Kati Foechterle
So we're talking about a man who never took a sick day.
Emily Silverman
Here again is Kati.
Kati Foechterle
I truly don't even know that I saw him sick other than like a slight cold here and there. And we're talking about a healthy guy here. Friday the 13th. He called me twice. And he never does that. And then I got a call from Lilly and she said, "He's sick." And I said, "I'll be right up." And so I went upstairs, and he didn't look himself. He looked scared. He said, "Well, what do we do now?" And I said, "Well, we go to the hospital." And he said he wasn't ready for that. His oxygenation was okay. And told me I can go and look at his chest X-ray, which was very consistent with COVID. I told him, "I think you should go to the hospital." And he said, "No, let me try this first." I said, "Okay, but if your oxygen is anything less than 90%, you need to go in." 11:38 he said he got up to go to the bathroom and his oxygen was 70%. He asked if he should take an ambulance. And I said, "Well, it's whatever you're comfortable with." And he said, "Well, I'll call an ambulance." I said, "Okay."
Jackie Castellanos
I remember it was Friday, the 13th of November, and it rained that day. And you got a call from your mom that your dad, he had been feeling sick. Then you found out that the ambulance was called and he was taken to the ICU. I remember that we tried to get more information and that I took you to the airport on Sunday, the next morning.
Kelly M.
I was there the very first day that your dad got admitted because I do ultrasound guided IVs. And your dad was very afraid of needles.
Emily Silverman
This is Kelly. She's a childhood friend of Neel's, they used to ride the bus together to school every day. And now she's an ICU nurse.
Kelly M.
He was only on two to three liters. But he also had a flat affect. And I think that he knew that he was really sick.
Kati Foechterle
Dr. Gordon had put in the orders to do the antiviral and to start plasma, and the azithromycin and the prednisone, all the usual treatments at this point for protocol. Then he was on oxygen for a couple days, and he was doing decent. So we kind of just thought everything for about a week was stable.
Neel Vahil
So John, can you tell me what you do and how you knew my dad.
John
I am a family practice physician in Pueblo, Colorado. And I knew your dad, not only as a colleague, but first and foremost, a good friend.
Neel Vahil
So I know, I know that you both ended up contracting COVID probably around the same time. And you both had, you both were hospitalized. I was wondering if you could take me through what that was like.
John
I have to say, it really caught me by surprise. Quite honestly, I felt like I downplayed it a little bit until it really hit home as close as it did. I mean, both of us didn't have any other comorbid conditions. And for whatever reason it chose to, you know, demolish us like it did. And I'll be honest with you, I didn't think I was going to see my two sons again. And when the pulmonary fellow was sitting there discussing, you know, what the plan was and what my chances of getting off the vent were if I went on, I actually started crying and he actually took my head and laid it on his shoulder.
Neel Vahil
Like it was a horror movie to know that you guys were such good friends and you guys are just right next to each other in the ICU.
John
I didn't think I was gonna make it. Why did I make it and he didn't?
Neel Vahil
I started texting him every day. Because I know he was down. It started off by me telling him to go on AVAPS and telling him to go on BiPAP and then first few days he was in there, I said, "Please use the incentive spirometer" and he would respond and then I would ask him how many liters of oxygen he was on. And I would ask him if he had a fever and if his vitals are normal. I'd ask about his respiratory rate. Then I would say, "Okay, good. Let's hang in there for a little longer. You're gonna come through this. We will try it again tomorrow." And the last thing I said to him was, "I love you." And he was intubated that night. I have a dream almost every night that I replay the entire month in my head again, in one way or another. And it's on me, it's my responsibility to save him. I imagine myself sometimes as his doctor calling him the month before it happened to try to warn him that he's going to get sick. I replay all this over and over again in my head some rendition of what happened. And I imagine myself as like this enlightened person who can maybe save him. It's like a new endeavor each night I go to bed. And every time I wake up, it always ends the same way. I couldn't save him. The entire time he was in the hospital, I just felt like a piece of me was in there. I felt like the only person in the world who really understands me, who can sort of just intuit how I'm feeling, could anticipate my emotions, who could understand them in this like, this intimate way was slipping away from me. And that, if anything happened to him, I would just be loved a little bit less.
News Reporter 2
“Yesterday was the deadliest day yet for the US during the pandemic. There were more than 3000 deaths related to coronavirus reported. The total US death count now stands at about 292,000 the state of Colorado has seen more than 3000 deaths total since the start of the pandemic. And one of those people who lost their lives to COVID-19 is a local doctor. Dr. Atul Vahil died last night. Our heart goes out to his family, friends and patients.”
Priest
[Chanting]
Jackie Castellanos
My family on my mom's side is Buddhist, they're Korean Buddhists. And they do a Buddhist ceremony. It's like seven weeks we pray we share like you offer food, you eat the food you cleanse, you know, it's to get their spirit to the other side. It's a journey. And when you said that we were going to be doing a puja it sounded a little similar. I'm not very religious myself, but I respect those traditions and those rituals. And your dad, he's, he's a man of faith. My memories of him were, he'd come home from work. And he would enter the house and he wouldn't say anything at first. And he goes straight to the altars at your house where there's the different gods. So there's Ganesh, and then Krishna, I think, and he would just like silently, like pray and like have his hands together. And yeah, and he would just like say his prayers every time he came home. And he would greet me and I just really loved seeing that. Just like that faith. He just never broke from that. It was just a part of him.
Neel Vahil
In Hindu culture it's custom that the firstborn son performs a lot of these rituals. And so it fell on me to actually press the button to cremate him. And it was like the air just got sucked out of the room. I felt my knees get weak. And my brother just hugged me for like a minute after I did it. I felt like I couldn't breathe.
Right now we're at Lake Pueblo, right near here is the Arkansas River. And the Arkansas River kind of cuts through Pueblo. My brother and I thought this might be a good place to take all the items from the puja. There's like some rice and like a little tin pan, and some of the ashes and candle. I think he would have liked it. Traditionally, you're supposed to put it in the Ganges. But obviously, like you're supposed to put it in some kind of meaningful place with water. So we chose the Arkansas River. In 9 or 10 months, we're gonna take his ashes to India. And hopefully we're able to travel by then and take them to the Ganges where my dad's final resting place will be. We're in my dad's closet, I still smell, I can still smell him on these shirts. So I just come here sometimes, and I and I smell him. His shoes are still here. And sometimes I just put my feet into these shoes that are a little too big for me.
I don't know if it's because I'm a medical student. I've been going through every single thing that could have possibly happened to him. As if learning about it and asking everyone about it is gonna bring him back.
Jackie Castellanos
You've made it your mission to search for everything that happened from day one. You're like, what's a PEEP? What's this and not that you wanted to medically manage your dad while he was there. It's just like you wanted to understand. You know, it's so hard. You're, you come from a very medical family like your dad's a doctor, you're in med school. And then all of a sudden, all these things that you study, like that vignette becomes your dad. I remember you questioning, "Oh, should we have transferred him to like a bigger hospital because he's at this community hospital. They don't have ECMO, he needs ECMO." And I'm like, "If your dad needs ECMO, like now, like there's just, he's not, that's not, is it like what did he want?" Like he didn't have a POLST. Like he didn't have a DNR DNI. Like, I don't think that was something that your dad planned on and I you could talk to this, but more about like what it is to become your dad's medical decision maker while he's coding? Like that's what happened and you know... like you saw him code. And they're like, "We don't want to shock him anymore."
Neel Vahil
After he passed away, I became sort of obsessed with, with what killed him. I started calling a lot of different doctors I knew and asking them about details. You know, I asked them about just everything from acute kidney injury to electrolyte disturbances, things that affect pretty much any ICU patient but a lot of these topics they took on sort of a new meaning. It just became so much more personal. And I had Dr. Wilson who was one of my dad's really good friends, I texted him. I texted him one day and asked him, "Do you do you have a copy of Harrison's by any chance?" And his wife, his wife, drove, drove for like 20 miles to drop off a copy of Harrison's, which is, you know, it's this massive 2,700 page book. And she just hauled this entire thing out to Dr. Wilson in Pueblo. And then Dr. Wilson called me that afternoon and was like, "Hey, buddy, I'm gonna, I'm gonna bring this, this Harrison's over to you. I'll bring it over to you right now."
Critical Care Medicine and Respiratory and Critical Care. Then the chapter on ARDS once again. I thought maybe if I understood some more detail about the immunology, maybe I could know more about this. I mean, obviously, I know this is not gonna, like, this stuff is not gonna give me like an answer. I mean, this is, it just makes me feel better, I guess, makes me feel like, um, makes me feel like I have some purpose now. I don't know if that's the best answer to this. I just feel kind of at peace when I'm doing that. I feel like he's here with me. When I was a kid, actually my dad was in residency. And he had to study for an exam and he would come home after being at the hospital like all day, he'd be so tired. My mom would be so tired, cause she'd been up with me all day. And so my dad would tell my mom to go to sleep. And he would take me to his tiny little study and sit me on his lap and read textbooks to me. He would read like he would read like medical textbooks like kind of like Harrison's to me. Most people get to have their dads read them these like children's books, and my dad is reading me medical textbooks. In a weird way, this sort of feels right to dive into this. My dad loved being a doctor, he loved treating patients, he loved people, he was obsessed with being around people. He just he got energy from it. He loved being around his patients. And if I get to spend a life doing something like that, then I want to make sure I'm good at it. Like he was. My dad really was the quintessential community doctor. You know me and my peers sometimes we get so caught up and you know, we want to go to you know, we want to go do our residencies at Mass Gen or Beth Israel or NYU or UCSF. And, and I'm guilty of this. Sometimes we forget about why we got into medicine in the first place. That it wasn't for the prestige. It wasn't for any of those things. It was it was because we wanted to serve people. And my dad really embodied that. This maybe is an opportunity to tell a story about a community doctor. Every time I close these books, I still miss him.
Answering Machine
Friday, 1:24pm
Dr. Atul Vahil
Hi Neel, I hope that the STEPs is going to be starting soon. Just relax, everything should be fine. Best of luck for you. I think you'll do well. And there's nothing to worry about. Currently, once the test is done, you will have our best wishes. God will help you.
Answering Machine
End of messages.
Emily Silverman
In the weeks following his father's death, Neil recorded dozens of interviews with friends, family, patients, colleagues and other members of the Pueblo community. Thank you to Neel Vahil and Jackie Castellanos for bringing us this story and to Lily and Nalin Vahil. Special thanks to Sandeep V., Katie F., Kelly M., Chris W., Lauren L., John B., Rachel V., Heather S., and everyone else who contributed their memories of Dr. Vahil to create this story. The Nocturnists is produced by Director of Story Development Adelaide Papazoglou, Associate Producers Molly Rose-Williams and Isabel Ostrer and me. Our student Production Assistants are Hannah Yemane, Ricky Paez and Siyou Song. Original music for this episode was composed by Janae E., and the song "Om Jai Jagdish Hare" was performed on voice and guitar by Daniel Z. Our original theme was composed by Yosef Munro, our Audio Engineer is Jon Oliver, and our illustrations are by Nazila Jamalifard. Our Executive Producer is Ali Block, our Chief Operating Officer is Rebecca Groves, our Admin Assistant is Suparna Jasuja, and our Social Media Intern is Yuki Schwab. The Nocturnists is made possible by the California Medical Association, a physician-led organization that works tirelessly to make sure that the doctor-patient relationship remains at the center of medicine. To learn more about the CMA, visit CMAdocs.org. Support for The Nocturnists also comes from the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, the California Health Care Foundation, and people like you, who have contributed through our website and Patreon page. Thank you for supporting our work in storytelling. We'll be back next week with an all-new episode exploring three different stories of healthcare workers and the people who stand by them during COVID. I'm your host, Emily Silverman. See you next time.