What Led Me To Medicine

Who, rather. I sat at the back of what seemed to be a room of elephantine dimensions, at the time at least. I was in the rear right corner; my right, not my teacher’s. Near the lockers. They were scarlet red, towering over my head. The woman who stood at the front of the room was none other than Ms. Ortega. Ms. Maria Ortega. She adored every cell of my seven-year-old anatomy. The feeling was mutual. Though, she was far older than I. She assigned an essay, or at least some semblance of one; something you’d expect a second grader to churn out. The topic of which was a question she wanted answered, “Where do you see yourself as an adult?” 

Like most of my classmates, I wasn’t sure where I’d find the answer to that question. It wasn’t a math problem, so I couldn’t use an algorithm or anything of the sort. Nor could I cheat by using a calculator; not that cheating was even a part of my lexicon. It also wasn’t something I could look for in a book. She wanted us, me, to produce an answer from within. You don’t ask a seven-year-old to go soul searching and expect it to end well. You just don’t.

If the girl sitting beside me, Karen, told me my answer to the question written across the blackboard would forever alter my future, I would’ve scoffed. But then again, if she’d said anything to me, I would’ve scoffed. Didn’t like her. She wasn’t nice, because I had better grades than her.

Occasionally after school I’d visit my grandparents’ house. This happened to be one of those days. I was walking around my grandfather’s furniture store when I led myself into the back, where there was a kitchen. I saw my grandmother performing what I thought was some form of suicide, so I ran over to her. As it turned out, she was just pricking her index finger for a blood sample. She had to test her blood glucose levels. She assured me she’d be fine, and showed me that her finger had stopped bleeding. And that she wasn’t suicidal.

When I got home an hour later, being the curious child I’d always been, I asked my mother why my grandmother had to test her blood. “Why doesn’t everyone do that, then?” I asked. She informed me that both of her parents are diabetic. Were diabetic. She explained that they needed to keep their sugar levels under control or they would fall into a diabetic coma. I immediately flooded her with every question imaginable, from “Is it contagious?!” to “How’d they get it?” and most notably, “Is there a cure?”

“No, no there isn’t, but they’ll be fine, I promise,” my mother assured me. I wasn’t worried about them being fine or not, because losing someone to death rarely occurs to a seven-year-old. I was more concerned with the fact that they’d have to live with it forever. Then I thought of the hundreds of other people with the disease. My young mind didn’t realize that figure was in the millions. Surely there had to be a cure. A contemporary catholicon, a present-day panacea. Something.

But to my dismay, my mother was right. She usually is. She always is. From that point forward, I decided I’d enter the medical field. That I’d be a research scientist, but a doctor of medicine, first and foremost. That’s what I wrote my paper on. I knew I’d have to endure nearly two more decades of schooling, and I’d have a lot to learn. But I knew it’s what I wanted to do. 

My dedication to medicine has since been the most resolute part of my physiology. It has become engrained into everything that is me, from my (still intact) appendix to my zygomaticus major. It’s what I intend on spending my life doing.

I lost my grandfather earlier this year. He was a wonderful man. One I learned a tremendous amount from. One I admired. My grandmother’s still here, but time is a limited and stringent commodity. She won’t be here forever. And she may not be here to make use of any medical developments of the future. But she will be there to watch me sign my first prescription, in my awful doctor’s handwriting. 

I intend on revolutionizing medicine. On disenfranchising the commercial aspect of it, bit by bit, and making it about what it should be. Helping people. Saving lives. For the sole purpose of doing it, not for the money. I will remember that I remain a member of society with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.

I didn’t know that at seven years of age I’d have made the most important decision of my career. But I did. So thank you Ms. Ortega, and thank you grandma and grandpa. I will not let you down, you have my word. 

Procrastination will be the death of our generation.