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[sdrisc]

In high school, when I discovered my love of science and fascination with the human body, I decided to pursue a career in medicine. For me, this always meant applying to medical school. In recent years, two very different personal encounters with medicine have confirmed my desire to work in the medical field. However, in reflecting on what is most important to me in life, I came to the realization that a career as a physician assistant (PA) would be a much better fit for me. I want to be challenged in my career, while still finding a good balance with my personal life. In addition, I would like to settle into a stable, life-long career within the next few years, without accruing a great deal of debt. Therefore, I am confident that a career as a PA will give me all of this with great career satisfaction.

 

In my first major encounter with the medical profession, I found myself being the patient. The summer before my senior year of high school, I found a golf ball-sized lump under my arm. Throughout the next three months, I was referred from one physician to the next, including a trip to the local cancer center. It was a very stressful and traumatic time for me, then seventeen years-old. Fortunately, a biopsy showed that it was a benign tumor. However, that was not the end of the journey. The tumor needed to be removed, and since it was wrapped around a nerve leading to my dominant arm, none of the local neurosurgeons would touch it, for fear of doing permanent damage. This meant yet another referral. At this this point, I had endured much emotionally, and was starting to feel insignificant, but I was sent to one of the top neurosurgeons in the country, so I was very hopeful. After a long journey, and a long wait in the examining room, I was finally seen by the surgeon. He immediately came across as cold and unfriendly. He spent the majority of the short five minutes with me telling me how minor my tumor was, and that he normally operates on life-threatening brain tumors. When I left the appointment, I was in tears. I should have been happy with the news that he gave me, because the surgery that I had thought might disable me, evidently was going to be simple for his colleague to remove. However, happy was not how I felt. Instead, I felt unimportant and guilty, because he made me feel as though I had wasted his precious time. This experience taught me much about how it is to be a patient. It also taught me how a medical professional should not act. There is no way that medical professionals truly can know what their patients have endured, physically and equally as important, emotionally. I believe that all patients should be treated with the same compassion and respect, regardless of how severe or minor their ailments may be.

 

Later, I experienced another very personal encounter with medicine. During the first semester of my junior year of college, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. This terrified me, because in my early teens, I had watched my grandmother fight a very tough battle with ovarian cancer, and lose. I did not want to see my mother go through the same thing, and I could not imagine what our family would do if we had lost her. During that semester, I found my mind was often elsewhere, and it was sometimes difficult to focus on school. During the week of finals, my mother underwent her first round of chemotherapy, was hospitalized due to complications, and quickly began losing her hair. It was a heavy burden to handle all at once, and my grades in that semester reflected this. I immediately recognized the slippage, and made a promise to myself that I would not allow this difficult situation to jeopardize my future. Despite spending every Tuesday with my mother at her chemotherapy treatments, taking her to many of her medical appointments, and accepting her managerial role of five stores in our family business, I was able to improve my grades.

 

Although cancer is always a stressful disease, this was a much more positive experience in respect to the medical care that I witnessed. In going to many of her appointments and treatments, I was fortunate to see excellent examples of how medical professionals should interact with their patients. I found that a diagnosis such as cancer affects not only individuals, but also their families and the people closest to them. My mother’s providers always included me in the conversations, and often asked how I was feeling as well. In turn, this helped me to realize the type of medical professional I want to become. I want to become a physician assistant who provides a positive experience for my patients as well as their families, even during some of their grimmest situations.