Inside the Clinic: The Phantom of the Opera Edition

Good Morning, Dear Community!

Yesterday we bade a fond farewell to a wonderful member of our team, Emily Parker NP who joined us last year as an MRC volunteer during the height of the pandemic and stayed with us as we opened onsite again to care for our patients in person. She leaves for Kentucky with her husband, who has been stationed there with the Coast Guard, and her wee boys. In the words of Dr. Sneiderman, our Medical Director:

“We will miss you, but we hope your experience volunteering with us in this role will have prepared you for what we know will be a stellar career and an experience you can share with your future grandchildren when they ask what you did in this historic moment.” Lovely....

We also have much to celebrate and be happy for this last month:

  • We had some new recruits! A new MRC provider joined our ranks – Dr. Jen Baptiste – who will be working on Mondays in Emily’s stead, and Dr. Melisande Smith, who joined us during the pandemic telemed days, and has happily agreed to take on the Wednesday evening session onsite. We also had two new interpreters join us – Carmen Guayao and Andrea Alvarado - and we welcomed our first Nutritionist/Dietician, Jennifer Lyons! We also welcomed a long-time volunteer, Rita Siebenaler who joins us as a counseling program coordinator/advisor!

  • We got a new grant from the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation! Working on more of these…;-)

  • We got the Gold Standard 2021 Award from the National Association of Free Clinics for the second time in a row - Go Team Culmore!!

  • We were one of three free clinic finalists to be chosen by the MAVEN project to participate in a pilot program aimed at supporting providers serving precious patients like ours with, among other things, “unlimited medical consults to physicians in 53+ different specialties”!! This will be a great resource for our providers and, we hope, reduce the number of referrals for specialty visits which can be very hard to secure for our patients.

We also had a very successful Virtual Toast to Community and Caring, surpassing our goal of $60K!! A HUGE thank you to Daphne Papamichael, our Development Committee Chair and the members of the amazing Events Subcommittee – Linda Jouvanis, Claudia Wicks, Kathy Haller, Lorraine Creely, Fran Sienkiewicz, and Jessie Whitten – for their creativity, enthusiasm, and dedication in making this fundraising event a success! We also thank Tom Gillaspy from First Christian Church for helping us with the virtual toast video (yet again)!! And an extra big thank you to our four patients who agreed to share their experience at Culmore Clinic on video! It is always good to hear feedback like that, eh?

You know, just looking at this list of amazing people that make up a wee part of our small, but mighty Culmore Clinic team, I am so thankful for the myriad skillsets they bring to support our mission. Perhaps we can all be likened to the many unique instruments of an orchestra that, working together, produce a melodious symphony! A nice thought indeed. Then again, I am reminded of a wonderful video (watch below) my daughter shared with me recently, of four cellos coming together to produce the most beautiful rendition of Phantom of the Opera and I can’t help but smile at the wonder of how we each – common in our own humanity – still have within us the capacity to be the unexpected, to discover a new calling…and continue to bring joy to others in ways that might surprise even us!

Be safe and well this weekend!

Warmly,

Anne-Lise

Inside the ClinicKendra Rubinfeld