Alane Park

Doctors and the medical professions have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. I was born in Seoul, Korea and spent summers visiting my maternal grandfather, a pediatrician who was the kind of beloved, old-school neighborhood doctor you only read about these days. During cold season, he would sometimes see more than a hundred kids a day. My grandfather lived in a two-story house, and he had converted the first floor into his medical office, small laboratory, and pharmacy. I loved sneaking downstairs to watch all the action and to witness my grandfather effortlessly working at the profession he so clearly loved. My uncle lived with us while he was studying for his entrance exams for medical school. When I would go to his basement room to announce that dinner was ready, I would often find him asleep over a

pile of books. Despite this early exposure to the medical field, I did not realize I wanted to be a doctor until much later in life, after college. Before I took the plunge into medical school, I tried my hand at research in the hopes of becoming a professor or a science teacher. When long hours in the laboratory lacked the human contact I craved, I realized that medicine would allow me to blend both my love of people and science. During medical school, I looked forward to my OB-GYN rotation because it was the perfect combination of everything that excited me: interaction with women, surgeries, and babies. Becoming a mom and trying to be a good partner to my husband have been the best and hardest things I have ever accomplished. Every day, my two boys, Matthew, nine, and Max, five, teach me to become a kinder, more patient human being. My husband, who has been with me since I was a teen, has weathered both sunshine and storms with me over the past twenty-seven years. In addition to a busy OB-GYN practice and driving my boys to sports and school activities, I am involved with a charitable organization called Milk and Bookies that promotes literacy and inspires children to start early ingiving back to their communities the way my partners and I want to give back through the Mommy Docs Foundation. Being a doctor and a mom are vital parts of who I am; they are my

calling.