Mrs. C was used to my quiet knock every morning at 6 a.m. She smiled as I turned on the overhead lights, but began to grimace when she realized that today was dressing-change day. The rustling packages of bandages in my overstuffed coat pockets had given it away. Mrs. C had stage four metastatic endometrial cancer; a malignancy of her uterus that was not responding well to chemotherapy and had …
My path to medicine is tied to my family’s experience with poverty, and with the profound economic fallout a major illness can bring in such circumstances. I grew up on the Couer d’Alene reservation in Northern Idaho. My mother was a single parent who had to rely on government assistance to raise three children in subsidized housing. As the eldest, I was expected to help care for my younger siblings …
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