A medical student develops an illness she has been studying

By Cherie Fathy December 15 at 11:17 AM

We had just finished our endocrine unit when I noticed a lump in my neck. Perhaps school had made me more vigilant, or perhaps I merely fell into the realm of hypochondriac medical student, but I couldnt ignore this lump.

I set up an appointment with my doctor, fully expecting a diagnosis of whats sometimes called medical student neuroticism. Instead, she agreed that it was a peculiar lump, and though she believed that it would ultimately prove to be nothing, she was ordering some tests just to be conservative and careful. I approached the tests as an educational experience, something that would make for a good story.

And then one day as I was studying in the library, I found I was having a hard time focusing on anything but the lump. I felt an overwhelming need to check the results of the ultrasound that had been done, so I shakily typed in my password to access the test results; I scanned the radiologists note until I landed upon the words biopsy recommended. I guess I hadnt realized just how much I had compartmentalized the experience until I read those words over and over again. With my face red from crying (and embarrassment over my public display of emotion), I quickly gathered my things and ran home. Do I tell my father? Do I tell my friends? It could still be nothing.

I just wanted it to be nothing.

A patients worst nightmare

The first two years of medical school, the preclinical years, teach students about disease in the abstract, as testable material. We detach ourselves from reality as we memorize a constellation of symptoms and treatments presented from a podium or a textbook. I have been guilty of occasionally forgetting that what I am studying may be a patients worst nightmare.

As students on the wards, we see mere snapshots of our patients illnesses. We are there as patients receive a diagnosis in the clinic or a treatment in the hospital. What we dont see is a patient at home deciding whether that lump is even worth checking on or a mother dreading when to tell her children what she has, or how to even begin telling them.

A full two months after my initial doctors visit, time that was filled with scans and biopsies, I received a phone call that confirmed my worst fear. I had thyroid cancer. The news shattered my sense of invincibility that, as a 20-something, I had taken for granted.

Almost 63,000 people will be diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2014, according to the National Cancer Institute. As a student, I had seen its gross pathology, studied its microscopic appearance and even constructed mnemonics to commit the signs of the disease to memory. I quickly learned that the 10-minute lecture we had on thyroid cancer left out quite a bit of detail, and now those details were personal.

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A medical student develops an illness she has been studying

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