This YouTube podcast episode features Dra. Patricia Restrepo recounting growing up surrounded by family members with chronic illnesses, her own diabetes diagnosis at age 14 which sparked curiosity and skepticism toward standard medical practice, and her subsequent academic path: a degree in organic chemistry (thesis on sulfur-based drugs) and plans for further study. At the time discussed, she had not yet begun insulin injections.
Chapters
In both of my grandmother's houses there were needles everywhere. It was a little cart. Emergency rooms, intensive care units, hospitals. One of my grandfathers was a doctor. I have several uncles who are doctors. And my grandmothers had the best medical care and they did not live healthy lives. And after that I remember that they were sick people, not just because of diabetes, but they had lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, hypertension and horrible migraines. I grew up with sick grandmothers. When you are diagnosed with the same thing at age 14, I think that was the greatest gift that life could have given me because that's when I started to observe and start. There has to be another way. That hunch that I tell you there has to be another way. Because following everything my grandfather and my uncles said, the best medical system we had at hand, they are like this, right? That can't be. So that's where that discomfort with the system and with what they tell you comes from. And ah, well, yes, but no, I think there has to be another way. So I experienced a bit of fear, but also an awakening of that curiosity of how I could live. Well, that's where it starts. And you took some kind of action because then you enter university and study medicine. But well, at least six years must have passed between your diagnosis or your diagnosis and this moment of making a decision to do something. Of course. Look, I went to the United States when I was very young because of the violence in Colombia. And my first degree was organic chemistry. And the truth is that I studied it because it was a very difficult university in terms of literature. And I wasn't good at writing, but I was good at observing. So puzzle for me, that was organic chemistry. And I fell in love with organic chemistry. I said, ah, this is going to help me. And I did my thesis on the structure of sulfur drugs based on sulfur antibiotics and some drugs that were used for chemotherapy. I liked it because it meant understanding. So I said, that's how I'm going to understand my stuff. I'm going to finish and I'm going to go get a PhD at Caltech. Quote. At that time you were still dependent on insulin? No, I still haven't injected insulin.
