Page 49 - South Mississippi Living - August, 2020

covers a vast array of topics and is able to help every other specialty.”
Dr. Srivastav and her husband, who’s a pulmonary/critical care physician
at Singing River Health System, have been married for seven years and are expecting a baby boy this fall.
Samir Tomajian, M.D., who’s an anesthesiologist and pain management specialist with Memorial Hospital, grew up in the suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon. He points out the rich Middle Eastern background of his family that includes Armenian, Syrian and Iraqi in addition to Lebanese. His mother is the daughter of a deacon in the
Aramaic Catholic Church, and Tomajian learned to read and write the Aramaic language, which Biblical scholars consider to be the language of Jesus. Dr. Tomajian
also speaks Arabic, French, Spanish and English. At age 20, he moved to Houston, Texas, with his mother in 1999.
After graduation from the University
of Texas Medical School, he chose anesthesiology as a specialty because
he saw the amount of medical knowledge involved. “With that and pain management I feel I have the best of both worlds,” he said.
Moving to the Coast from New Orleans, where he did his residency
at Tulane University, Tomajian says
he feels more at home here than he
did in Lebanon. “The people are very welcoming and the patients are the best
part because they’re so thankful
that you care,” he said. “People put their faith in us. I feel I got this profession bestowed on me.”
Dr. Tomajian entered the medical
eld because he really loved his family’s general practitioner in Lebanon.
“He was our friend, and I wanted to be like him.”
His Mississippi family includes his wife, Aline, and four-year-old daughter Emma.
An internal medicine specialist with Merit Health, Magdy Mikhail, M.D., was born and raised in Cairo, Egypt, where he graduated from Ain-Shams University School of Medicine.
He moved to Gulfport in 2002 to join his father and other family members. “Practicing medicine here and in Egypt is very di erent in some aspects but also similar in others,” he says. “It’s really di cult to compare due to the vast cultural di erences, which are mainly among the people more than among institutions.”
Dr. Mikhail enjoys living here with his wife, Melissa, who’s originally from Erie, Penn., son Julian, 18, who’s headed to Ole Miss if everything goes right, and daughter Gabbie, 16, a senior at Our Lady Academy in Bay St. Louis.
“ The people are very welcoming and the patients are the best part because they’re so thankful that you care.”
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PRIYANKA Srivastav from Kathmandu, Nepal.
MAGDY Mikhail from Cairo, Egypt.