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Orthopedic resident almost slid into the Olympics
Samara Friedman, MD, has competed in a variety of sports, including the Winter Olympic sport of skeleton.
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COURTESY OF SAMARA FRIEDMAN |
To most, hurtling head first down an icy track at speeds up to 70 miles per hour isn’t an ideal pastime. For Samara Friedman, MD, it was just another challenge in a life of athletic achievement.
“I saw it in 2002 in the Olympics, and thought, ‘that is an amazing sport,’” Friedman told Orthopedics Today. “I also thought it was cool that it was called ‘skeleton.’” She sent an e-mail to the skeleton team coach asking for more information about the sport and how one became involved. After sending along a sprint time and her athletic history, she was invited to Lake Placid to try out for the team.
Skeleton begins with a sprint down the track and then a jump onto the sled. “Then, you try not to freak out when you’re going around hairpin turns at up to 70 miles per hour,” Friedman said. “It was quite an adrenaline rush.” Friedman did not make the team, but she said that the experience of being involved in the Olympic process was well worth it.
A history of athletics
Friedman, who is currently a resident at the Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park, N.Y., has always enjoyed competition in a variety of sports. During all four years of her undergraduate tenure at Cornell University she was on the crew team. “That’s a great sport, you’re working every muscle group in the body, and its just so nice being on the water,” she said. “It’s very relaxing but quite a workout if you want it to be.”
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In a field with few women, Friedman said that her fitness and athleticism will help her succeed. |
She went to medical school at SUNY Stonybrook, where she participated in a number of intramural sports while staying away from heavier competition. She played volleyball, softball and basketball, and won the intramural championships in volleyball and softball. She said that her athletic history shaped her decisions to go into medicine and orthopedics.
“I think the fact that I participated in sports throughout my life pretty competitively sort of sparked my interest when I was younger in the musculoskeletal system, and how muscles and bones function,” she said. “I found it an interesting part of the body, and I think that’s what initiated my interest in orthopedics. And so when I started medical school, I was confident I wanted to go into orthopedics.”
Friedman recently matched for a fellowship in pediatric orthopedics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, which will begin in August 2006. “In pediatric orthopedics you’re still in some respects a general orthopedic surgeon,” she said in a phone interview. “One day you’ll be operating on a spine straightening out a scoliosis [curve], the next day you’ll be scoping a knee, the next day you’ll be straightening out a club foot, so you’re really working on the entire body.”
Intellectual challenges
Pediatric orthopedics also provides an intellectual challenge for Friedman. “You have more diagnostic dilemmas, you have more problems that aren’t really cookie cutter problems,” she said. “You have so many different interesting pathologies that can occur in kids just because of growing bones and developing deformities. And on top of that I enjoy working with kids, and I like the fact that all they want is to go out and play, so it’s nice that you’re working with them to get better.”
Friedman tore her ACL playing basketball while in medical school, but it hardly stopped her from being active. Aside from the skeleton team tryouts, she also ran the New York City marathon with very little time to train. “I’m not a long distance runner, but the New York City marathon is just an amazing event, and it’s something I always wanted to try.”
She applied through the marathon lottery system but did not get in. When a secondary lottery was held only six weeks before the marathon, Friedman received an e-mail telling her she was picked to run. Starting with a one-mile run, she trained up until the event and was able to finish in just over five hours. “The longest run I did prior to the marathon was two weeks beforehand, when I ran 15 miles,” she said. “And then I did the marathon. Just the fact that I was able to finish with six weeks of training… I’ll take it.”
In a field with relatively few women, Friedman said that her fitness and athleticism will help her succeed. “As a woman in orthopedics, the first thing people question is, is she strong enough to put this hip that’s dislocated back into place, can she reduce that fracture? And the fact that I’ve built up a lot of body strength over the years [makes it so] my colleagues have no doubt that I’m capable of doing anything that they’re capable of doing within the field.
“As far as my future is concerned, I think I’ll be more attuned to the fact that – especially with children and teenagers – some of their goals whenever they have an injury are to get back to sports as quickly and safely as possible.”
Currently, Friedman is busy with her residency, and she is also five months from expecting her first child. But she has no doubt that she will want to get back into shape and back into sports in the future.
“If you had asked me a few years ago if I was going to try out for the skeleton sliding team, I probably would have said, ‘what in the world is the skeleton sliding team?’” she said. “I’m definitely open to the idea of maybe working on my sprinting once I’m back in shape, and who knows what might come up on the horizon? I like being competitive, I like the nature of sports, and I definitely see myself seeking out other opportunities or interesting competitions along the way.”