Liz's Medical School Journey

Summer has begun, and I just returned from one of the best vacations of my life- an 18-day trip with my husband to Europe to visit my Italian family and sight-see.  I’m not sure if the trip felt so amazing simply because I have greater appreciation after working so hard, or whether it was truly just a fantastic trip.  Nevertheless I feel extremely grateful for the wonderful memories and time to travel.  Yet as I was having a great time, something striking happened back home- a deeply loved member from my Quaker Meeting died.

Thanks to modern technology, I learned of his death within three hours.  Although he was younger than my own father with two children in their early 20′s and a devoted wife, his death was not a surprise to me.  The shock began in January when he suddenly began to feel forgetful.  Worried about early-onset alzeimer’s disease, he went to his doctor immediately.  After an MRI and biopsy he was diagnosed with glioblastoma, a cancer of the glial cells that was located between the two hemispheres in his brain.

I knew glioblastoma because it was responsible for the death of two of my grandfather’s sisters- including my Aunt Dot’s death last year.  She was diagnosed in May, and she died the first week of December.  She was in her 80′s, but it was nevertheless a great shock to her children and husband, who were still depending on her for a lot of care and help with grandchildren.  The family sent updates often, and therefore I felt included as Aunt Dot quickly became consumed by the cancer.

Like my Aunt Dot, Bill was deeply loved.  He was such a talented person who had a true gift with relationships and words.  I can still hear his gentle, but powerful voice, and his laugh.  Logically, I knew what glioblastoma meant when I heard of the diagnosis- it is a death sentence.  Yet, I also knew intuitively that nobody should give up hope completely.  Being a medical student means I have access to a library of medical journals and books worth thousands of dollars, so I decided to use some of my resources to learn more about this cancer.  To my horror, the statistics were more grim than I thought.  To date not a single person with the advanced stage of glioblastoma has lived over 2 years.  The only therapy- chemo treatments and radiation- could prolong life an average of a few months.  As I read those words, I sat mortified as my hope for Bill diminished.

The shock hit me then, and over the past six months it has come and gone.  During a lecture on “Death and Dying” I thought of Bill and his family.  At Meeting, the children asked, “Is Bill dying?”  And in our community we realized that everybody is dying.  Bill and his family ever-so-gracefully were showing us the tragic truth that life will end, and nobody can control their death.  Medicine acts like it can save people, but it usually cannot.  We often tell ourselves that death will come tomorrow, but it could come today.   And as I mourn for Bill and rejoice in his life, I feel humbled.

I am preparing to leave for my volunteer service in the Dominican Republic, and one question that has been on my mind is whether we can truly help those people with severe or chronic medical problems in our rustic general-medicine clinic.  I realize, however, that my rural village has probably lost many people like Bill.  Since they are a small close-knit community, no doubt they have already accepted the truth about death.  In a community that rarely gets any medical attention, people have probably learned to cope with unexpected and inexplicable death and suffering much better than the average American.  This is something that I’m still learning- something that Bill, my cadaver, and others have helped me see- that sometime we must suffer, and sometime we will die, and there is nothing anybody can do to prevent it.