The intention of this blog post is to attempt to describe the feelings and emotions that I had when I first assisted in surgery on a breast cancer lumpectomy case. The patient was a 45 y/o female who was recently diagnosed with breast cancer on her left breast, she was there for her lumpectomy and sentinel node biopsy. I scrubbed in, as usual, the patient was already on anesthesia and laying on the operating room table in the middle of the room, prepped and ready for surgery. As the surgeon and I started the surgery my mind went back in time to July 21st 2003, when my mother had her breast cancer surgery on her left breast. Fast forward seventeen years later to September 11th 2020, and here I am about to assist in surgery on my first breast cancer case on a young female patient the same age as my mother when she passed away from breast cancer in January 2004.
I felt like I was having an out of body experience now viewing what my mother went thought in the operating room back in 2003. An overwhelming amount of emotions instantaneously ran through my mind and body as the surgery began. I was sad and hurt because I missed my mother dearly, she was my best friend and the reason that I have fought so hard to be where I am in life. As my mind began to wonder, tears began to form in the corner of my eyes, as the time progressed during the surgery the more the tears slid down my cheeks. My heart was hurting, I tried my best to control my emotions as overwhelming as they were. I was reliving the experience through a completely different set of circumstances. I was now living the experience in the shoes of the promise that I made to my mother before she passed. I promised my mother that I was going to study medicine in order to help people that were going to eventually go through what I was at that time. The promise that I made that day was The Why I went into medicine. As the tears continued to slide down my cheeks, I also felt proud, humbled, and blessed to now be in a position to help patients as they go through these uncertain times in life. I also felt a sense of peace and tranquility because I finally fulfilled a promise to the most important woman in my life, she was there in the operating room in spirit smiling and crying tears of joy. As the surgery was coming to completion, I began to close the incisions on the patient. As I was closing the incisions a nurse looked over at my work and complimented me on my suturing technique “Looks beautiful Alston”. I responded, “Thank you, I want to make sure that she is proud of herself when she sees her incision, I want to close the incision as best as possible for her”.
We had two more breast cancer cases that afternoon, each one of them was an emotional ride for me. Each one of the patients were mothers, wives, sisters, etc. I made sure that every step in the surgery was nothing less than excellent, I wanted to make sure that I gave back LOVE in the form of my work in that operating room. As the long day came to an end, I realized that two promises came to fruition on the same day, just years apart. The promise that I made to mother before she passed away, on the same day that I made a promise to serve our country, September 11th, both were accomplished. The very next morning I went to my bookshelf in my office and opened up the folder that I have been carrying around for the last 17 years. The folder contained my mothers operative report, pathology report, MRI and PET scans from July 2003 through December 2004. I made that promise to my mother and carried around these documents because I knew that one day in the future I would finally understand what breast cancer truly did to my mother, I finally was able to read and understand what I could not many years ago.
Looking back in time and connecting the dots from the past proves that being selfless and giving back to humanity is the ultimate gift in this lifetime, that’s the reason why I studied, and will continue to study medicine.
Head up, Eyes Forward!
