Robert Whitfield MD recounts that shortly after starting medical school his sister was diagnosed with breast cancer. He assisted in arranging care, accompanied her through mastectomy, reconstruction, and chemotherapy (which caused cardiac complications), and reflects that her illness and eventual recurrence-related death influenced his career focus on oncologic breast reconstruction. The piece is a personal, reflective account linking family trauma to professional motivation.
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Yeah, when I was in med school. I was in med school, I think, about a month, and my sister called me and told me she had breast cancer. And, you know, of course, I'm now the doctor, even though I'd been in school for, like, four weeks just to sort it out. And fortunately, that day, the. The lecture was being given by an oncologist. And afterwards, I asked him. I'm like, hey, my sister called me and said she has breast cancer, and she was in a different city. And he had a colleague there. He said, hey, that's. That's not a problem. I'll call my, you know, colleague, and I'll set up an appointment with her. And I FL down and went to that appointment with her. And ultimately she went through mastectomies, reconstruction, chemotherapy, suffered some cardiac problems from chemotherapy, and lived, overall, a relatively long period of time. And she recently passed away of a recurrence just in the new year. And, you know, I. It's one of those things where you talk about trauma a lot, and I had always kind of put that in the back. And people ask me why I went into surgery and why I did so much oncology reconstruction, because that was my career, basically, and it was mostly about cancer reconstruction for women with breast cancer. And, you know, I never likened it to that as the sentinel event of why I did all that work and why I was so passionate about that work. But, of course, when you think about it, that's a driving force of why I did all that for so many years. So.
