Drs. Jessica ’00 and Sunny ’99 Aslam take a holistic approach with the Hippocratic Oath

Story by Marc Glass, photos by Paul Kennedy/MaineGeneral Medical Center
(Winter 2008 issue)

Between the 13-hour days they logged during clinical rotations at MaineGeneral Medical Center and the demands of raising their two-year-old daughter, Drs. Jessica (LeFebvre) ’00 and Sunny ’99 Aslam had neither the time nor stamina to watch much television. But once bed-time stories were read and Ayesha was tucked in, they did rally for the weekly one-hour episode of the Emmy Award-winning Fox network program House to see dire and mysterious maladies cleverly diagnosed by Dr. Gregory House.

“It was one of the few guilty pleasures we had,” Jessica said. “The show is a completely glamorized and sensational portrayal of practicing medicine, with patients suffering from diseases you rarely see on rotations. But that didn’t stop us from trying to accurately diagnose problems before House did.”

Given that they have logged as many as 72 weeks of medical school rotations without a break, it’s no surprise that the married couple took their work home with them. In a typical psychiatric-rotation day, Jessica admitted inpatients in the morning and treated outpatients in the afternoon. And there was no hiatus from learning how to heal: during lunch-break seminars, teaching fellows and physicians served up food for thought on topics ranging from sleep apnea to nephrology.

Sunny represents the 10th generation of physicians in the Aslam family, while Jessica, who will be the first physician in her family, professed the goal of becoming a pediatrician at the age of 10. But long before completing clinical rotations in areas ranging from surgery to child psychiatry and earning their M.D. degrees together, the pair excelled in divergent careers.
As Jessica was completing her pre-med studies in biology and chemistry, Sunny—who managed sports information for varsity athletic programs while majoring in a pre-med mix of biology, chemistry and psychology at UMF—earned a master’s degree in athletic administration at Virginia Commonwealth University. Shortly thereafter, he was hired by USAToday.com to develop multimedia elements for the national newspaper’s website.

UMF diploma in hand, Jessica joined Sunny in the Washington, D.C., area, working as a fledgling DNA forensic analyst with Bode Technology Group—the firm responsible for identifying the majority of 9/11 victims’ remains. In the wake of the 2001 anthrax scare, her expertise caught the eye of the U.S. Department of Energy, which made her a senior microbiologist on a classified project involving DNA testing for biohazard agents.

Despite the launch of successful careers, the Aslams longed to treat patients and promote wellness. Thus, they investigated medical school options and ultimately decided upon the Saba University School of Medicine, a Dutch Antilles-based medical school with clinical rotations in U.S. hospitals.

“We were skeptical about the reputation of a Caribbean medical school at first,” Sunny said. “But the school has well over 1,000 graduates practicing in nearly all 50 U.S. states. The small class size reminded us of the personal attention that helped us excel at UMF.”

Sunny finished clinical rotations in central Maine hospitals in May and immediately began a five-year residency program in adult and child psychiatry at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, N.Y. Treating children with mental illness in Maine-based clinical rotations made him realize, “You have to do what you’re called to do.”

“I’ve seen children in desperate situations with not only their mental health, but also problems like abusive caretakers and homes without electricity and basic amenities. There are only 7,000 child psychiatrists in our entire country and a huge backlog of children in rural areas that need psychiatric treatment,” he said. “I want to help eliminate the stigma of mental illness, and explore different types of therapies so treatment is more than a 15-minute medication check.”

Jessica, who graduated this February, is likewise considering a specialization in psychiatry, as she believes mental health issues better lend themselves to a holistic mix of both clinical and nontraditional remedies.

“Depression can be a life-long battle, but the treatment options are more diverse. The traditional approach is to complement medication with a type of counseling called cognitive-behavioral therapy. We hope other useful adjuncts, including acupuncture and massage therapy will be studied more for complicated syndromes such as pain and psychosomatic illness,” said Jessica, who has found younger physicians and residents more receptive to nontraditional therapies. “Sunny and I are interested in using a number of treatments instead of simply medications. Our dream would be to have integrated health care for our patients—to have a D.C. [doctor of chiropractic], acupuncturist and allopathic M.D.s under one roof.”