Thread by @AaronLBerkowitz

The world has lost an extraordinary physician, educator, leader, advocate, & truly Enlightened Being. Dr Carola Eisenberg–the first woman Dean of @harvardmed and of @MIT, @NobelPrize for her work with @P4HR–has left us at 103 🧵

phr.org/our-work/resou…
vimeo.com/82132146

https://twitter.com/P4HR/status/1370502743228551168

I had the incredible good fortune to meet Carola about 15 years ago. She was auditing a music class that I was a TA for. She said she'd heard I had dropped out of med school to be a musician and as a retired psychiatrist she would like to get to know me.

The professor I was TAing for said "Do you know who she is?"
I didn't.
He smiled. "Google her."
She welcomed me into her home and life as if I was her own grandchild and we began having regular dinners together where she advised me on life, love, relationships, medicine...

She told me extraordinary stories of her early years in Argentina, her psychiatry fellowship at Hopkins in the 1940s, her relationships with and grief for her beloved first and second husbands...and out of the blue one evening her participation in the Kinsey study!

I eventually realized I was one of countless people Carola cared for, loved, mentored, (and psychoanalyzed!), and welcomed as members of her family. Even when I last saw her at 102 after a long hiatus and having woken her from a nap, she asked about every detail of my life...

...including each of my siblings by name, profession, and geographic location.

She radiated infinite love, compassion, wisdom of a truly Enlightened being.

She gently steered me to return to medicine and supported me during the darkest days of my intern year

Seeing the outpouring of love from her extended family of generations of former students and innumerable friends at her 90th and then 100th birthday parties was a testament to her legacy and how many she has inspired to aspire to her boundless humanity, brilliance, and compassion

And I can't believe I almost forgot her favorite late-life hobby: officiating marriages! Look at the bliss she is radiating here marrying me and my wife in a carefully orchestrated surprise wedding (in which she loved being complicit) for our immediate families.

For the last 10 years, when I asked how she was she said "Well, Chiquito at my age, you don't buy green bananas, but I am Wonderful, Dear, Simply Wonderful!"

Simply Wonderful, she was. Rest In Peace, Dear Abuelita.

Inspired to learn more about this extraordinary person?
phr.org/our-work/resou…
vimeo.com/82132146
Inspired to support her work and legacy?
phr.org
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