Her grandparents showed her the power of medicine. Now this Arizona doctor is ready to heal others
Ask Maya Patel why she decided to become a doctor and she’ll talk about her family.
She’ll talk about her grandfather, a charismatic man who would bring hot lunches to her at middle school. She’ll describe her grandmother, a devoted spiritual matriarch who would pick flowers from the garden and bring them inside for her prayers every day.
She might mention her mom, a pharmacist, and her dad, a physician, though for a while Patel wasn’t sure she wanted to stay with the family tradition. But then she’ll explain how watching her grandparents face medical challenges helped her realize that she wanted to go into medicine herself.
“You really get to know and build relationships with your care team,” said Patel, who juggled the demands of high school, college and medical school while taking care of her grandparents alongside the rest of her family. “It was (those relationships) that I really wanted to be a part of. And that, I think, is such a privilege.”
Now she’s becoming part of the medical community, just as she hoped. On May 9, her grandparents, Bhaichand Dholakia, 99, and Pushpaben Dholakia, 92, waited at home to celebrate, watching a live stream as she graduated from medical school at the University of Arizona.
It’s a bittersweet moment for the family: In a few months, Patel will leave Arizona for the first time to start her residency at Emory University in Atlanta. She’ll join her sister Nirali, who is in dermatology at Emory, but will leave behind her parents and “second parents” who helped her discover her passion.
She says it will be hard to leave her grandparents, especially knowing their ages, but wants to carry the lessons they’ve taught her as she prepares to treat patients of her own.
“I've really become who I am because of growing up with them,” she said.
A family journey, in sickness and in health
Patel’s grandfather Bhaichand started his career as a lawyer in Uganda. After Idi Amin, the military dictator of the country at the time, expelled thousands of Asians, Bhaichand, his wife and three children, including Maya's mother, Monal Patel, were sent to England as refugees.
Since Bhaichand had earned his law degree in England, he was allowed to practice in any British colony, so they left England and he continued his career as a magistrate, or judicial official, in the southeastern African country Malawi. In 1985, he and his family migrated to America. In 1996, Bhaichand and Pushpaben moved in with Maya’s family in Arizona to help with child care while Maya’s parents worked.
Maya and Monal both describe Bhaichand as a dynamic personality. Maya says he loved spending time with her and her cousins. They would all hang out in the pool, and he helped Maya learn to swim.
And he had a penchant for cheese. “He always fed us cheddar cheese. I don't know why. That's a vivid memory, but I love cheddar cheese, still, to this day,” said Maya, laughing.
Maya’s grandmother, too, was an important part of her childhood, a “master chef” and devout Hindu.
“I'd see her sitting cross-legged on the floor and praying to her gods and doing those rituals, always burning incense," Maya said. "And it's just so vivid in my mind.”
So when Bhaichand and Pushpaben started experiencing declines in their health, it wasn’t easy for the family. During the years Maya was in high school and college, her grandmother lost her ability to walk. That was a turning point.
Though Maya had been exposed to health care before, through her parents, it wasn’t until she met her grandmother’s care team that she realized what an impact medical professionals could have.
“(My grandmother) had multiple surgeries. She was in rehab hospitals all the time … I saw my grandma lose a lot of her function and her quality of life went down,” she said. “But even through all of that, and even through us accepting what the new reality was going to look like, it was her physicians and her nurses and her care team that grounded us and helped us through such a vulnerable and difficult time.”
Maya’s grandfather, too, had several health hurdles over the years. At one point, Bhaichand got sick while Monal was out of town. Maya and Monal’s nephew Nikhil took Bhaichand to the hospital. By that point, Monal says, Maya was a natural at helping him get the care he needed.
“(Maya) was such a trooper taking care of him. It took me a day to get back, but (she and Nikhil) were the ones who were running the show, actually,” Monal said.
In recent years, Bhaichand has started to show significant progressions of Alzheimer’s disease, and Maya says he isn’t the same person now that he was when she started medical school. But she cherishes her memories of his bright personality, even when he or Pushpaben were in the hospital.
“I didn't see (my grandparents) always express love all the time. But any time one of them was at a hospital, it was like the other one was the most doting,” she said. “My grandpa would sing poems to (Pushpaben) at her bedside, these loving poems.”
Navigating medical school and family life, in a pandemic
Though medical school is notoriously difficult, Maya says the most difficult part for her was balancing her family life with her studies.
“The hardest part was knowing that (my grandparents were declining) and not always being able to maximize my time (at home while) … studying and being in the hospital and having other outlets like friends and hobbies,” she said.
Whenever she was at home, Maya helped her grandparents continue doing what they loved.
“The ritual remains, but it was just different in a way,” she said. “Now when (my grandmother) cooks, she still sits in her chair and she still cooks at the stove. But she'll ask, ‘Can you see if it's boiled?' Because she can't herself. So it’s amazing how a lot of their hobbies and interests have remained the same. It’s just as they've aged, they’ve had to rely on us.”
Then came the pandemic. Maya was quarantined with her medical school roommates for a while before she cautiously returned to caretaking at home.
“It was just a really scary experience, going through a pandemic with 90-something-year-old grandparents,” she said. “We were very, very protective of them. And I think it was difficult for them because they love seeing our family. They love when our family comes into town. And for a period of months, we really didn't have anyone coming to the house.”
Unfortunately, Maya says, she, her sister and her grandparents ended up contracting COVID-19. No one was hospitalized, but she says the experience reminded her not to take human connection for granted.
“It teaches you to appreciate the people around you more,” she said. “I made sure to call families all the time when I was in the hospital (who couldn’t) be there for their patients.”
It’s something she says was unifying for her class of future physicians more broadly.
“For my class, knowing that we've gone through kind of a really difficult experience, it's brought us together,” Maya said. “It's almost like bonding through a difficult situation. I think we're even closer and more supportive of each other than we would have been.”
Preparing to serve
On graduation day, as the bagpipe players warmed up in the hallway of the Virginia G. Piper auditorium, Maya joined her classmates to prepare for their procession through downtown Phoenix.
As her friends took selfies in their regalia and stuffed cold packs into their gowns, Maya fastened a belt to her waist, a support to help her carry the Class of 2022 flag. Her freshman year, Maya was elected as one of two class representatives and had been designated as a flagbearer for graduation.
The flag dwarfed her tiny frame, but she was ready to carry it. Earlier that day, she shared masala chai with her family, and got ready with her mom and sister.
At a dinner the night before, her family members had called her “Dr. Maya Patel” for the first time — a “surreal” moment, she said.
“I've never not been a student, really. (But) graduating isn't kind of a one-person accomplishment. So many people play a role in helping graduates get to this point. I think for all of us, it's a testament to the amount of time and discipline and dedication that we had from everyone in our life,” she said.
It’s a dedication that was palpable as Maya translated for her grandparents in a video chat with the Republic. Maya, Monal and Pushpaben all teared up as Maya talked about leaving. Pushpaben was emotional. “She said when she thinks about me going to Atlanta, she always cries,” Maya said.
Though Maya says she will miss the mountains and Mexican food of her native Arizona, she’s looking forward to the journey ahead in Georgia. She isn’t totally set on her speciality yet, but she knows she wants to do something focused on adult and elderly populations. Internal medicine will be the focus of her residency.
Just as she saw physicians serving as the primary point of contact for her family, she wants to do the same for others in the future. That, she says, is a goal rooted in her upbringing.
“I feel so lucky because I feel like family has always been such an important part of my life and in Indian culture in general,” Maya said. “We’ve always been raised as a really tight-knit family.”
Independent coverage of bioscience in Arizona is supported by a grant from the Flinn Foundation.
Melina Walling is a bioscience reporter who covers COVID-19, health, technology, agriculture and the environment. You can contact her via email at mwalling@gannett.com, or on Twitter @MelinaWalling.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: She chose medicine because of her grandparents. Now she'll heal others
