It was a beautiful sunny day in the spring of 1980, the kind of day which promises you that it is really the beginning of summer.
Janet, Jane and I were in Janet’s Fiat Spider. This classic sports car convertible was the beloved toy of her husband, but we were driving it that day. Janet and Jane sat in the soft leather seats in the front. I was squeezed into the tiny space that pretended to be the backseat.
We were doing our best Audrey Hepburn imitations, wearing dark glasses and silk scarves around our heads to keep our hair from tangling in the wind. Our destination was a park along the Lachine Canal, a park with picnic tables and flowers and warm breezes off the river. We unpacked the car and carried our gear to a table in the sunshine, where the flowers perfumed the air and birds were singing. The stones were warm under our feet, and the grass tickled them as we kicked off our shoes.
I don’t remember if there was a picnic basket. What I do remember was the armfuls of books and papers. We had Harrison’s and Harvey’s, print outs of our class note-taking club, and we had a book of study questions for the LMCC part one. This little expedition had a very serious purpose. It was our turn to help Jane study for her final medical school exams and the LMCC. We spent the whole afternoon quizzing each other, reading articles to Jane. Her memory was remarkable, and she was able to pull information that we were struggling to find in our notes.
We were there to help her study because Jane was blind.
Jane Poulson was an amazing woman. A juvenile diabetic diagnosed at age eight, she came to medical school with a full knowledge of what it was like to be a patient. She had undergone the rigours of clerkship with no accommodations, and now at the very end of her final year tragedy struck. Her many years of diabetes had badly affected her eyes, and in one eye her vision was almost completely gone. In an attempt to save her vision in her good eye, her ophthalmologist tried what was then an experimental treatment. Unfortunately, Jane had an idiopathic reaction to the treatment, and her retina was completely destroyed.
Jane was determined to become a practicing physician, to do her residency in Internal Medicine despite her blindness. With the help of many people, notably Dr. Phil Gold, she succeeded. She became an internist and later when she moved to Toronto to be closer to her family, she became a palliative care doc. She wrote scientific articles and a moving and funny memoir The Doctor Will Not See You Now when she knew that she was dying of cancer. I was not one of her close friends in medical school, Janet knew her much better than I did. Yet that day in that sun-warmed park made a huge impression on me. One of the gifts of being a physician is that we sometimes witness the heroism of people as they face illness with courage and determination. Jane was that heroine many times over.
Our 45th class reunion is coming up. As much as I have been feeling like a historical relic these days, it is still inconceivable to me that I started medical school so long ago. Our class was remarkable in many ways. It reflected a new philosophy in the admissions department of the day, and the students had much more diverse backgrounds than the classes before us. We had former music majors, psych majors and previous high school teachers rather than the straight up physiology and biology majors of the past. We also had 60 women in the class of 160. This was the first time there had been more than a sprinkling of women in any medical school class at McGill. We were a fun group with lots of camaraderie. Our class has always been close, and we have more than usual participation at our reunions.
When the reunion committee met, we considered what should be the fundraising goal of our reunion. Many years ago, we established a scholarship in Jane’s honour. The Martha Jane Poulson Scholarship, fittingly, supports medical students with disabilities so that they can access the tools they need to complete their studies. We thought about improving Jane’s scholarship. We realized that what was a generous amount 15 years ago was getting a bit small. We also decided we needed to fund more students. Our committee, thinking about the state of the world and the problems of our university, decided that the best way to direct our class gift was to honour our fallen heroine, someone who, with determination and courage, made the world a better place.
Jane was a deeply religious Anglican and would often use a biblical quote to frame her writing. Because I am me, I will end with a quote from Pirke Avot (The Ethics of the Fathers). “You are not required to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.” In each generation we need to increase our compassion, our inclusiveness, to give our students their chance to be the best doctors they can be.