a day-by-day
susu alkhalili
8/31/2018 0 Comments day 9: lots of insight I get increasingly excited to go into the office after every day. At the end of each day, I leave the office feeling like I gained some sort of knowledge to help me grow as an individual. Today, I knew that there was going to be another conference, and I looked forward to it. I hoped to learn more about the interesting cases presented at the conference.
At the conference, I got to see the cases of more patients recently diagnosed with cancer. One case in particular stood out to me. It was for a woman in her 70’s who came into the hospital with a 28 cm large tumor in her abdomen. That’s about a foot big! The woman was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and had the giant tumor surgically removed. The most interesting part of this experience for me was seeing the CT scan. It showed the tumor putting pressure on all of the other organs in her abdomen, readjusting their positions. The fact that our bodies are able to have such large, toxic masses growing inside of them and still be able to function will always be fascinating to me. The patient that we saw directly after the conference also gave me another perspective on a topic that has always interested me. I always wondered why patients, especially younger patients, would not go to receive their treatment when they were ill and had the means to do so. This woman was the mother of three boys. She was an extremely pleasant woman. She had a job, but also had kidney problems. The morning of her appointment, her sons had missed the bus to school, and they then missed the cab that they had called. She was in a very overwhelmed state and seemed to be extremely stressed about balancing all of her responsibilities. When the doctor asked her to explain why her kidney function had begun to deteriorate, she explained that she had to miss her past two dialysis appointments. She told the doctor that she was so overwhelmed that she didn’t feel that she could come in. When the doctor explained to her how serious the situation was, and how she needed to take care of herself for her own sake and for the sake of her children, she said, in a frustrated tone, “This could kill me?!” The doctor explained that it could, and that she needed to keep up with her treatment as well as she could. Then, she said something that stuck with me: “They always think that when I don’t come in that I’m refusing treatment and that I don’t care about my health, but that’s never the case for me.” This put me in a different perspective and made me realize that there truly were more than one side to every story. Today was an extremely insightful day. I was given physical proof of how amazing the human body truly is, interesting me in medicine further. I was also given a glimpse into the life of a woman who was struggling balancing her health and all of her other responsibilities. While I did not expect to come to all of these realizations today, I am so glad I was given the opportunity to do so, as these situations will likely stick with me for years to come.
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AuthorSusu Alkhalili, senior at Maumee Valley Country Day School. ArchivesCategories |