Becoming a good doctor
At the beginning of my first year at Harvard Medical School (HMS), my mother, who is a cancer survivor, called me, crying. She had a low white blood cell count and an X-ray with diffuse white marks. One of the medical assistants at her primary care physician’s office mentioned that this might mean that her cancer had returned and was metastatic. A sinking feeling of dread slid down my throat and into my stomach. What if my mother was deathly ill again? At School, we had learned about hematocrit and red blood cells, but I knew nothing yet of white blood cells and cancer. I did not know where to look up the lab results or even how to understand them had I known where to look. I emailed my adviser, Dr. Beverly Woo. She immediately emailed me back with her phone number and stayed with me on the phone, consoling...