On Monday August 6th, 2012 a former colleague of mine died. She was a mate from my internal medicine residency program who shared with me a passion for infectious diseases, being warm, food, and particularly sweets. Her laughter was contagious and her wry sense of humour always appreciated. While I spent the unpleasant days counting down to the end of that day, or that rotation, or the end of the year, or the end of residency, she never failed to remind me of what else we could be doing that would “suck more’.
She had taken an extra year to be chief resident of the internal medicine residency program when I moved on to fellowship. Then she took an extra year of infectious disease fellowship when I had decided that 9 years of medical training was enough for me. Eleven years of medical training she had and in that last year was diagnosed with a rare cervical mixed squamous-adenocarcinoma. I learnt about her struggle with cancer just a few months ago via a Facebook message from another colleague.
Shock doesn’t begin to describe that first moment when I read the message. Impossible. They must be talking about someone else. Wait, but didn’t she just have a child? Didn’t I just write on her Facebook wall? Then it was Guilt, as I realized that could have been any of us. I put myself in her shoes and all I could feel was Anger. Anger for working so hard for a promised future, for not having a chance to be “a real doctor” though of course we’ve been real doctors since graduating medical school, for not having a chance to pay back those gargantuan loans taken out for medical education. Then I read her blog, her diary chronicling her experience as a patient, and I was Humbled. Each entry brought tears to my eyes and a smile to my lips. Ever so optimistic, still oh so funny. “Cancer vixen” she called herself as she mused over the possibility of taking chemotherapy on the beach “IV in one hand, mango margarita in the other with only the most fabulous of sun hats protecting [her] bald head from the sun”.
The end came sooner than I thought. And even though I knew as a physician myself that things “were not good” I held out hope that just this once at least a miracle would occur, that the metastatic lesions would just melt away with the various therapies, that she would join an infectious disease practice, and that she and her husband would have more children and live happily ever after. She fought valiantly and in the end died in hospice care surrounded by family and loved ones.
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