My Passion for Medicine as a Physician Assistant

I was ten years old and about to show my parents everything I had learned the last few days at ski camp when everything went black. I remember coming to and thinking to myself, “Did I just faint?” As my eyes slowly opened, the frantic movement and crowd of onlookers confirmed my previous assumption. Once the paramedics arrived and brought me into the ambulance, everyone had their own idea as to the cause. But with no definitive answer, it would have to wait until the hospital to reach a conclusion. No one that came into the room could give us an explanation until an on call PA saw me. She quickly diagnosed me with febrile seizures. She explained how my ear infection caused a spike in my body temperature leading to the seizure. IDK how to say I am amazed that she was able to diagnose me so quickly and my family and the paramedics accounts to come to the conclusion of seizure and not fainting even when other experienced medical doctors made the mistake. As traumatic as the experience was, I am still grateful for it because it introduced me to the physician assistant field as well as igniting my passion for medicine.

Year after year, that passion continued to grow. I was invited to join my middle schools future city program, a national STEM and engineering competition challenging students to design the city of the future; after placing third we were invited to meet the president and talk to astronauts on the international space station. In high school I continued the STEM trend, taking numerous dual enrollments and advanced placement classes in math, biology, environmental science, and chemistry.in addition to academics, I also played football and was the team captain in lacrosse. Through these sports, I was able to lean a different set of skills than those taught in the classroom, including discipline, leadership, resilience, and teamwork. As a result of my achievements in sports and academics, I was invited to join my high schools Mas Scholar program, and accelerated program gifted and highly motivated students. Part of the graduation requirement was 80 hours of internship, for which I shadowed a cardiologist. On one of the days, I was given the opportunity to sit in on an open heart surgery. Shockingly, neither the blood nor the open chest of the man in front of me discouraged me and instead added to my curiosity of the human body. From that moment on, my heart became set on pursuing medicine.

My interest in becoming a physician assistant was once again reinforced my senior year of college. As my normally wakeless nights began to be accompanied by frequent trips to the bathroom, sleep apnea, and heavy snoring, I knew a trip to my schools wellness center was in order. The physician assistant who saw me ran a battery of tests and informed me I had strep throat. An amoxicillin prescription and a few rest days later I was feeling back to normal, but then about a month later the fevers started again. After another sickly visit to the wellness center, lab test confirmed that the strep had returned. Repeating another round of antibiotics, test confirmed I had finally cleared my body from the bacteria. Then, three weeks later, to the surprise of the PA, a recommended ENT I saw, and I, the vexing Streptococcus returned. My options were a tonsillectomy or a last attempt using different antibiotics. Over the multitude of wellness center visits, I learned a lot from my PA. He took his time to explain every lab result and question I had. Thanks in part to his humility, compassion, and poise, I was fixed on following my passion for medicine as a physician assistant.