Always Medicine

Pursuing my girlhood dream has not been easy, but man, I have never been more convinced that this field is for me.

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For the past two years, my day-to-day life has largely been dedicated towards achieving my medical degree. This will be the case for the foreseeable future, as there are still many years of education ahead of me. My ultimate hope is that this blog will allow me to look back on my past to evaluate growth and to gain an appreciation for how far I’ve come, and thus, I wanted to write about why I originally made the decision to pursue the profession of medicine. I will look back on this post when I become frustrated by a class, overwhelmed by my schedule, or discouraged by a patient encounter, and I will be reassured that I am doing exactly what I was called to do.

My father is a family practitioner and, more importantly, the greatest man I have ever known. He is humorous, hardworking, and considerate in all areas of his life. I have been in awe of him for as long as I can remember, so naturally, I took great interest in his work. I used his navy stethoscope to listen to my American Girl dolls. I told my friends the general function of the kidneys on the playground and felt like the smartest second-grader to ever exist. Whenever anyone asked me what I was going to be when I grew up, I always answered “doctor,” without question or hesitation. This remained my answer throughout middle and high school. I never felt the need to have a Plan B.

Early on in high school, I decided that it was time to see if medicine was more than just my childhood dream. My dad undoubtedly piqued my interest in medicine, but I wanted to ensure that the path of this profession was something I wanted to walk with my own two feet. As a sophomore, I became a Certified Nurse’s Assistant. Achieving this certification required that I complete bookwork and pass exams. Additionally, I was assigned shifts at a nursing home to prove that I had clinical competence.

As I cared for the residents, I found that they offered comfort and reassurance to me as I worked. Whether I was taking their blood pressures or walking alongside them in the hallway, they offered jokes, stories, advice, and compliments as I helped them with their daily activities of living. I developed relationships with individual residents as we worked together as a team to accomplish a goal - whether that be eating a meal or settling in for the night. I was fulfilled by the idea that my presence was making their day easier or brighter.

For Job Shadow Day (every school has one, right?) during my junior year of high school, I was fortunate enough to follow the physicians of the University of Kansas Medical Center Emergency Department. For what seems like the majority of the day, one of the residents and I were working to communicate with a single mother with a toothache. She had a squirming toddler in her lap and was clearly in pain. The treatment required was not extensive; the resident simply needed to inject lidocaine into the throbbing area and send her onto a dentist. However, the mother was uninsured and spoke no English; in fact, she spoke a rare Tibetan language that even Internet interpreters were having difficulty understanding.

The resident, though, was so determined to provide compassion to that woman. We sat on a hospital gurney in the hallway for hours to find an interpreter that could explain to the patient why we were coming towards her mouth with a large needle. We searched the Internet for dentists that would provide care to the woman so she could, hopefully, avoid another long and painful emergency department visit. It would have been very easy to overlook such a logistically-challenging patient, but I was amazed by the resident's willingness to go the extra mile for the woman. This is the selfless love I hope to show my own patients someday.

It was experiences like these that inspired me to pursue work as a Certified Nurse's Assistant at my local hospital. The nurses there knew I had aspirations to pursue medical school, and they graciously allowed me occasionally step away from the floor to witness procedures and interviews. One evening, I was told to go to the emergency department to watch a young boy get stitches in his chin; the provider that arrived to suture was my dad. I had visions of a flailing child on a gurney in my head. Instead, the scene in front of me was a physician meticulously suturing the chin of a laughing child, amused by the doctor's jokes. This was the first time I had seen my father as an actively-practicing physician, and it completely reaffirmed my desire to create a similar but unique legacy.

Finally, I was lucky enough to attend a two-week Global Health course at the University of Southern California prior to my senior year of high school. By this point, I was confident in my decision to pursue medicine, and I wanted to ensure I went into medical school with a well-rounded variety of health care experiences. The class focused largely on health care inequalities, in developing countries throughout the world and in impoverished areas of the United States. We discussed how advertising, past and present government oppression, and societal practices - such as child marriage - result in inadequate health resources for these citizens. Studying such cases made me realize that many of my patients may have a far-more complicated story than they initially present in an exam room. As a physician treating a holistic patient, it is my job to consider, find, and discuss any obstacle that may interfere with successful treatment.

Since these experiences have occurred, I have been fortunate enough to have dozens of patient interactions. Much like the patient encounters I had prior to medical school, each experience motivates me to learn more, ask better questions, and display an even higher level of compassion. I find myself eager to be better for the next patient I meet. Each time I recognize this sensation, my confidence in my career path decision is renewed. I am exactly where I need to be to prepare for a lifetime of such encounters, and I could not be more excited for them all.