Personal Statement

Personal Statement

Whoosh!A bed whizzed by, surrounded by about 6 medical personnel. “What’s going on?” I thought immediately with apprehension. I knew whatever was happening it was not ideal. Ensuring I was not in the way, I stood on my toes to see what demanded so much attention. To my astonishment, I saw a coin sized hot-pink little girl. She could not have been bigger than two quarters lying side by side.She was struggling! Even with all the procedures the doctors were executing to save her life, she was performing the most work.

She was a 24-week-old premature infant. I had never seen anything so fragile yet so resilient in my life. Every time she took a breath her lungs would completely collapse. To inhale, she had to pull everything up from on her back, out from her rib cage, and inflate her lungs. She was a powerhouse! Instinctively doing everything she could to stay alive. She died hours later. She was the youngest and smallest infant ever to be born alive at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital.We will never know her full potential, and the loss of the opportunity for someone to become an asset to society is something that I cannot tolerate. Thus, my desire to become a neonatologist was affirmed.

I wrote this story 2009, in my personal statement for entrance into medical school. It still holds true; now 5 years later that little girl may have survived, 23 weeks is currently the youngest children survive in most hospitals, which seems like a miracle to me given what I witnessed in that nursery. Medicine is evolving and I want to take it further.

The next time I walked into a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit was as a fourth year medical student. This time not as a spectator, but as a medical professional expec...

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...graduate high school at 16, college at 19, Masters at 21. I am a detailed oriented person, who believes in a hierarchy and that putting in massive amounts of work when one is first starting out is necessary to build character and appreciation for those that came before you.

Finally and most paramount, is the fact that I understand first hand that this age is where you have the ability to affect the most change. My brother has Autism and I know what it is like to not have early intervention and I want better for my patients. That reality coupled with my excitement for the potential of medicine drives me to be courageous enough to fulfill the fullest expression of myself. Not only do I want better for my patients, I know I can do better. With the addition of complementary medicine, I am eager to be part of a generation thatenriches the field of medicine.