Julia Ioffe

Julia Ioffe Instagram – In the Soviet Union, my mother was an otolaryngologist (an ear-nose-throat doctor). She did easy procedures, like taking out children’s tonsils (which was, like many Soviet medical procedures, done without anesthesia). She also could do the intricate surgery that could fix the bones of the middle ear and restore someone’s hearing, a surgery that would’ve helped Beethoven. In 1990, she left the Soviet Union for the United States and had no idea what kind of work she was going to do there. Just in case, she read some books and took some classes on how to do nails and also brought her medical instruments with her. Today, 30 years later, my mother is a pathologist and a professor of medicine and has no need of the old instruments that my father just dug up in the basement but we’re all feeling nostalgic. | Posted on 19/May/2020 07:13:27