ABSTRACT
There is always a patient that is going to have the most devastating disease. It is always a patient like that, you know, that brings you back. Gets you to say “Look at this. This is what I’m here for.” I’m really here to make suffering less. You understand what I’m trying to say? You don’t give up you don’t say “Oh, my God this is terrible. I don’t want to be around in that room.” More than anything this makes the job gratifying for me. I’ve been a medical oncologist for ten, eleven years. I’m from Panama, in Central America and I studied medicine in Spain. I have been in the United States for twenty-three years. No, I didn’t always want to be a doctor. I decided to become a doctor overnight. I was seventeen, in premed school, studying biology and parasitology. Both were new specialties at the University of Panama. They had us do three years of premed and then you went into one or two years of whatever interested you. So it was a new thing and a lot of people were going in it. And I always liked lab work. That I always liked. Everybody that was in premed school was going into medical school. Even the people who had gone to high school and never spoke of what they wanted to be. After I finished my second year of premed I went back home and all my friends were gone. I found out that everyone was going to medical school in Spain. The University of Panama had a contract with Spain because we didn’t have enough doctors. Everyone was involved with this new medical program they had in Spain. After I found out about this I came home and said to my father, “I want to go to medical school in Spain.” My father said, “You’re crazy. You’re a woman and women don’t go to medical school. Men study something because they have to have a career and they get married and have kids.” I didn’t buy what my father said. I spoke with my mother and she said “If you really want to go think about it, and tomorrow we will talk.” Tomorrow came and she asks me if I still want to go to Spain to study medicine. I said yes. So she spoke with my 56father and they looked into it. The medical program was well organized. Everyone was very young. One of my father’s best friend’s son was studying medicine in Spain. So my father knew everything. He said, “Look, I don’t like it, you have a home, just write, and let me know if you ever want to come home. And I went, and I liked it and that was it.
