Next steps

I start medical school next week and my stethoscope arrived two Tuesdays ago. I bought it online.

I never thought that one day I would end up browsing online stethoscope stores. It didn't cross my mind, for example, while I was lying motionless under beams of radiation. And I certainly wasn't thinking about it while watching nurses change my bags of chemotherapy solution.

Was it before a particular surgery? Or after? Nah, I was definitely focused on other things then, like trying to eat without throwing up.

It’s a shame I can’t remember, it would be nice to have an ‘Ah-Ha’ point in time – the exact moment my motivation and values shifted and I decided I wanted a career in medicine.

Plenty of cancer survivors have gone into medicine or medical research. And plenty of doctors and health professionals have developed cancer. What I’m doing isn't anything new.

But I thought I would mention it here because this blog is about one person’s cancer journey, and that journey means I am now crossing the line between patient and doctor...and I am doing that because of cancer.

Next week I begin a new journey and dive head first into the system that saved me.