Graduation 2014 Profiles: Michael Ayers and Emily Case Ayers

By Joseph Neighbor

At some point during the 2010 P&S orientation boat cruise, Emily Case and Michael Ayers first met. It was the first week of medical school. They married in March, but not before navigating the confusing, downright scary process of applying for residency as a couple.

Their applications were tied together, essentially. As the mysterious matching algorithms crunched their grades and preferences, the two went on a series of interviews throughout the country, hoping to be accepted either to the same program or to different programs in the same city. “We looked geographically, where lots of hospitals were concentrated, and there was an option to mix and match programs,” says Mr. Ayers. “Fortunately, as a couple, we’re more willing to venture out of our comfort zone and move to another city.”

The two also share a specialty: internal medicine. “It’s a catchall; the one field where you learn everything,” the new Mrs. Ayers says. Mr. Ayers concurs: “I found myself really liking all the subject matter in medical school, which is a quality of a lot of medical doctors. And internal medicine is the nexus of all medical fields.”

Mrs. Ayers, who is from Naples, Fla., is particularly interested in hematology and oncology. “I didn’t realize it at the beginning of medical school,” she says, “but it had always been in the back of my mind.” With her mentor Azra Raza, MD, assistant professor of medicine, she researched a special type of myelodysplastic syndrome, a disease that impairs the functioning of bone marrow.

A Colorado native who was raised in North Carolina, Mr. Ayers attended Duke University. He moved to New York and worked in musical theater—he did shows with Jeff Daniels and Tommy Tune—before starting medical school, attracted to the intellectual aspect of internal medicine. “Surgery is about fixing,” he says, “but medicine is more cerebral. Also, all the doctors I liked best were medicine doctors.” He cites the Fundamentals of Medicine course taught by Beth Barron, MD, assistant professor of medicine, as being especially influential in his career choice.

On Match Day, the two were accepted to the internal medicine residency program at the University of Pennsylvania, their first choice. With the stress behind them, Mr. and Mrs. Ayers have now been able to celebrate the beginning of a new chapter in their lives.