Following My Family into Medicine Anonymous

One day, they finally let me see an X-ray machine. The week after, they told me about the anatomy of the body as they treated a patient. Every week, I would see my mother work as a doctor at her workplace. All her coworkers knew me. Every time I visited, they would show me different parts of the workplace, where they had all sorts of medical devices. Such experience, over the years, influenced my passion for learning about medical machines and the anatomy of the body.

When I started high school in the U.S, I took biology for the first time in my freshman year. Throughout the year, I realized that biology was the subject that was strongly related to these two topics I adored as a kid. And so, biology became of great interest to me. I would read about the human body outside the classroom and discuss the topics I learned in class that day with my mother, who loved listening to me talking about the human body.

During my sophomore year, biology would become even more important to me as its topics are strongly related to my mother’s re-emerging health issue: cancer. My family has been plagued by cancer for many years. My great-grandfather and my grandfather suffered from cancer. My mother was no exception. After my mother’s cancer...