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Tarak Patel M.D.

When Tarak Patel’s parents decided to leave Texas and move to India, the recent high school graduate had a tough decision to make. He knew that he wanted to go to medical school. “I could have stayed alone in the U.S.,” he says. But his brother was in medical school in the Dominican Republic, so Patel followed him there. “I was 17, and I still had a lot of growing up to do,” the 29-year-old Houston native says of the challenges he had adjusting to the pollution, the poverty and the language barrier. “It was difficult trying to help patients and adapting to the entire health care system,” he says. Patel left the island with his diploma and landed at Johns Hopkins, originally to do research. He then began his residency in radiology, where he’s in a five-year program that will take him through all aspects of the discipline including his favorite, interventional radiology; the practice of using imagery during surgery. In 2007, when one of Patel’s friends in the Department of Radiology told him there was a medical student he had to meet, his first reaction was that he didn’t want to be bothered; life as a resident offers little time for dating. When he finally met Sneha Desai, he says, “We hit it off.” Indeed. The two were engaged in November and plan an August 2009 wedding with 400 of their closest friends and family—including his parents, who are thrilled to be making the trip from India.

Referral Links

• The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
• Vascular and Interventional Radiology at Johns Hopkins
• Johns Hopkins Radiology Residents

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