Year In Review

2022-2023

As an accepted MedStart Early Assurance student at the University of Toledo College of Medicine and Life Sciences, I was fortunate enough to spend my final year at The Ohio State University volunteering more in my student organizations as well as exploring specifically which areas of medicine I am most drawn to rather than focusing all of my energy on simply fighting for a seat in medical school. Serving as a Patient Support Assistant at Riverside Methodist Hospital gave me a strong sense of the internal operations of a major hospital system as well as access to and interactions with a variety of Physician specialties. I had previously shadowed in both clinic and surgical settings through Joint Township District Memorial Hospital as well as exploring Emergency Medicine through shadowing and University of Colorado’s Immersive Emergency and Wilderness Medicine Program.  This allowed me to explore the fields of Anesthesiology, Orthopedic Surgery, Otolaryngology, and Emergency Medicine in greater depth. However, I found myself increasingly drawn to the Oncology and Palliative Care patient population through my volunteering experiences as well as the Oncology patients we cared for on our Med-Surg Floor at Riverside Methodist Hospital.  This particular realization led me to spend the month immediately following graduation in Chicago participating in a series of Pain Management, Oncology, and Palliative Care research seminars, conferences, and programming hosted by the Lurie Cancer Center at Northwestern University.  The exposure and knowledge I gained from this experience truly set in motion my desire to specifically pursue a career in the field of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation with particular interest in Pain Management, Oncology Rehabilitation, or Spine Medicine.  This pathway also aligns firmly with my strong belief in the importance of integrating both conventional medicine and complementary and alternative medicine therapies into patient treatment plans. This is a long-standing belief of mine that stems from my own experience with a cerebrospinal fluid leak and prolonged post-dural puncture headache due to an unhealed lumbar puncture site from a test for Meningitis that essentially ended my youth triathlon career and sidelined me in swimming for months on end until I found myself in the proper combination of Neurology and Integrative Pain Management care. Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation is a field in which Integrative Medicine therapies are not only accepted but widely used in patient care plans. With proper fellowship training, the Pain Management career pathway can be achieved through both Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and Anesthesiology, but Oncology Rehabilitation specifically is achieved through PM&R.  


2021-2022

This year has been full of both challenges and blessings. College life has yet to fully return to normal as we are still in the midst of a long line of new variants in the Covid-19 Pandemic, yet we are seeing a slow but steady shift in the direction of normalcy with the widespread use of vaccines and the growth of knowledge our medical professionals have gained in fighting this new virus over the past two years. We saw waves of setbacks as we battled the Delta and Omicron variants this year, just as we have seen forward strides in reduced testing, vaccine progress, and eventually the removal of mask mandates. I, for one, was happy to finally see the return of face-to-face club meetings and events as well as the full return to in-person classroom learning opportunities. Also, research labs began bringing on undergraduate researchers again and I was fortunate enough to join the Prakash Microsystems and Nanosystems Engineering Biology Laboratory, joining an amazing team working together to develop effective electroceutical wound healing bandages. In the summer of 2021, the University of Colorado School of Medicine also resumed their Emergency Medicine and Wilderness First Responder program, allowing me to finally earn my Wilderness First Responder Certification as I had previously planned to do in December of 2020. Most importantly though, I grew immensely as a person and healthcare worker as I found myself on the front lines of the pandemic as a PSA at Riverside Methodist Hospital during both the Delta and Omicron surges.

As shared previously, in March of 2021 I was hired by OhioHealth to serve as a part-time night shift PSA in the Med-Surg Orange Medical Unit 1. I joined the PSA team in search of direct patient care experience and I gained not only that but also an entirely different outlook on this Pandemic. In my end of year summary last year, I shared my frustrations in regards to experiencing college during a pandemic. However, those concerns quickly shifted during the Summer of 2021. When I first started working at Riverside, we had a separate Covid-19 isolation unit. However, when we saw a drop in positive case numbers and did not have nearly enough active Covid-19 cases in that unit, they decided to dismantle the isolation unit. As a result, when the Delta variant surge hit us, patients were admitted to isolation rooms on current patient floors. My unit literally became a Covid-19 Unit overnight and we became frontline healthcare workers as we battled the Delta surge in Central Ohio. I have grown to have an incredible level of respect for our ICU frontline healthcare workers.  In the Medical-Surgical unit we often find ourselves with rapidly declining Covid-19 patients who need to be moved to the ICU. The fear in the eyes of those patients who are coherent enough to understand where they are headed and why is absolutely heartbreaking. As I look back, my original concerns about changing the way we experience college, not getting to eat together in the cafeterias, and not attending football games and concerts all seem so trivial and selfish after becoming a frontline healthcare worker myself.  It is something that will remain with me forever and causes me to thank God everyday that I am still here and healthy as many others cannot say the same.

Despite the challenges faced throughout this year, I was also blessed beyond measure by being selected to join the University of Toledo College of Medicine and Life Sciences MedStart 2023 Early Assurance Cohort. As a result, I will spend a few weeks on Toledo’s Medical School campus this summer with my other MedStart classmates meeting the faculty, exploring the campus, experiencing an introduction to medical school classes, volunteering in the community, and exploring the greater Toledo area. Upon completion of our summer program, we will return to our respective undergraduate institutions to complete our last two semesters before graduation. We will all come together again next summer as 2023 matriculating medical school students as we join this upcoming cycle’s new admits and begin our journey through medical school at the University of Toledo College of Medicine and Life Sciences. I feel so very blessed and honored to be given an early acceptance into such a wonderful M.D. program!  I am beyond thankful for the support and guidance received from every professor, advisor, co-worker, club member, and friend here at The Ohio State University. I can never thank them enough for the amazing experiences I have had here as an undergraduate student!


2020-2021

The year that challenged us all. Challenged us to accept change, challenged us to find new hobbies, challenged us to make lifestyle adjustments, challenged us to overcome depression or loneliness due to isolation, challenged us to look beyond ourselves and make choices to protect others, challenged us to hold each other up as we watched everyone around us lose loved ones, and challenged us to be patient while the world looked to researchers and health officials for answers in the ever-changing development of knowledge.

Experiencing college during a pandemic is something that challenged me beyond my greatest expectations. We did not get to meet hundreds of new friends at welcome week events, we did not have face-to-face support from our college professors or classmates, we did not get to go to concerts or Buckeye football games in the Shoe. When we joined clubs or organizations, we never met anyone in person and made those decisions solely based on written descriptions, social media posts, and zoom calls. We did not eat in dining halls with tables full of newfound friends but instead ordered meals on an app and arrived at the exact scheduled time to pick up our bagged meals to eat in socially distanced isolation. The largest gatherings we ever experienced were the lines into the weekly Covid-19 testing stations but even then, we were all masked and socially distanced with little to no interaction. Those of us in healthcare volunteering lost our critical roles in the much-needed efforts to protect vulnerable patients and frontline workers.

These sacrifices were necessary to protect the human race. However, it was emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausting at times. The one thing we all found ourselves with was time. For some that time led them into dark places of loneliness and depression while others found it refreshing after living a life packed full of activities, work and classes all day every day. I, personally, saw it as an opportunity to step back and reflect on where I have been, how far I have come, and where I want my life to go from here and even faced my own health challenges that helped guide my future direction.

As far back as I can remember I have always wanted to be in medicine. That desire developed out of my brother’s medical experiences as I shared in my career section of my e-portfolio as well as my own health challenges with a prolonged spinal fluid leak in my teen years. Entering college, I struggled with my endless undergraduate major options regarding my pathway to medicine. My love of neuroscience, psychology, and anesthesiology drove my decisions in my application process but then I discovered interests in orthopedics as a student athletic trainer at the end of my high school career. During the pandemic, I was deeply focused on the inflammatory conditions of the heart, lungs, and other organs developing in Covid-19 patients leading me to consider cardiopulmonary medicine. Then there was my long-standing passionate draw to raising awareness and funding for pediatric cancer research which drove me to become involved with BuckeyeThon and A Moment of Magic.  Upon a recommendation by a physician, I began my undergraduate career as a pre-respiratory therapy major as it was brought to my attention that respiratory therapists make amazing anesthesiologists due to the advanced airway management training. As I continued to shadow health professionals, I also saw the need to have a broader healthcare based undergraduate education. Therefore, I was constantly torn between all of my interests in the field of medicine and which undergraduate major would best prepare me for the road ahead.

However, in late 2020 and early 2021, I had my own health battle with a cancer scare as a rapidly growing spindle cell lesion developed in the soft tissues in front of my left shin. I noticed it at the end of September as it appeared as a tiny bump the size of a pea but thought nothing of it as I figured I hit my shin on something without realizing it and it would go away. It did not. Instead, it more than tripled in size by Christmas break. I was also experiencing a great deal of fatigue, weight loss, and nausea as well which raised a lot of red flags. I was sent for x-rays which were inconclusive, so I was referred to have an MRI. The MRI findings were concerning enough to seek a biopsy and pathology reports. The pathology reports took weeks as the samples were sent off to the University of Michigan and then sent out again from there to determine what exactly we were dealing with. The only definitive answer we had was it was made of spindle cells, so I was referred out to orthopedic oncology.

Although I continued with shadowing and helping out on the weekends at the hospital, I dropped my winter semester course load down from 17 to 12 hours to prepare for possible surgery or treatment and to give myself time to focus on improving my health. My parents and I braced ourselves for everything from the best to the worst news. We did our own research on spindle cell growths in the body to get an idea of all the possibilities were we up against.  I eventually found myself in the hands of Dr. Thomas Scharschmidt in the Orthopedic Oncology and Sarcoma unit at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. Fortunately, Dr. Scharschmidt was the first person to really put our minds at ease. As a physician who has seen many soft tissue sarcomas and lesions, he felt that despite the red flags there was enough evidence to support that it was benign. However, in March they chose to complete a full excision of the lump and a second pathology reading to be absolutely sure. Three weeks later, Nationwide Children’s Hospital was able to finally confidently declare that the growth was indeed benign, and my treatment was complete with the surgical removal.

Throughout this journey I found myself thinking on multiple occasions ‘why?’ Why me, why now, why someone who just wants to give my life to helping others through the field of medicine? Why would God allow this to be my course?  I had already experienced a long health battle throughout high school due to a cerebrospinal fluid leak after a spinal tap used to test for Meningitis and had just begun to enjoy a symptom free life again. However, it eventually dawned on me that maybe this is my why. Spending months reflecting on my life, my pathway, my own health, and my own mortality gave me the temporary experience of being in the shoes of the countless patients and families I will face in the future while we await testing, surgery, and pathology reports together. The fear, the questions, the tears, the prayers, the anger… it is all a very real part of the human experience in healthcare, and I will never forget it when helping others in their own healthcare journeys. I look back at how my family physician, Dr. Michelle Winner, handled my case and I am beyond thankful that she was the doctor put in my path. She would send us messages even on the weekends with any updates she had or even to just check in to say she hadn’t heard anything. She listened, and I mean really listened, to everything we would share with her to look at the whole body and what all could possibly be contributing to what was happening to me. She exemplified what it means to be a compassionate and present healthcare provider and I aspire to provide the same level of compassion and care to others someday.

I love so many fields of medicine, from pediatrics to oncology and women’s health and obstetrics to anesthesiology.  At the end of the day, though, my greatest wish is to help people through their own healthcare journeys and to be a compassionate, caring, and present caregiver in the process.  I eventually declared a major in Health Sciences Pre-Med to give me a solid foundation in both the physical and biological sciences as well as public health, sports medicine, pathophysiology, immunology, pharmacology, epidemiology, and ethics to help me develop a broad base of knowledge that can be applied to working in everything from a private or rural medical practice to a large urban hospital setting in the future as well as a critical introduction to the administrative side of healthcare. I then declared my minor in Integrative Approaches to Health and Wellness which is a special undergraduate level minor offered directly through The Ohio State University College of Medicine and it beautifully aligns with my desire to practice medicine with a whole body and mind approach as well as examining the psychological aspects of patient experiences and pain conditions.  In March, I was given the wonderful opportunity to join OhioHealth’s Riverside Methodist Hospital Patient Support Assistant team, where I now serve as a part-time night shift PSA on the Medical Surgical patient floors, which continues to give me an amazing experience and insight into direct patient care with a vast array of patient populations including but not limited to Covid-19, diabetic, nephrology, oncology, dementia, wound healing, and general pre-operative patients as well as the general operations of a large hospital environment. I have also gained an incredible level of respect for our ICU frontline healthcare workers through my own experiences caring for Covid-19 isolation patients on our floor.

Despite our incredibly difficult and isolating year as college students, I somehow managed to still find my why in the most challenging of times as God guided me through my own medical experience yet again that reminded me why. Why I want to be in medicine, why I believe in being a fully present healthcare provider, and why I have been given the amazing opportunity to be a University Honors Pre-Med student at The Ohio State University.