Perseverance is Key

People don't lie when they say that perseverance is key when it comes to accomplishing goals. It is all about effort.

Weekly Report 10/23/2017 to 10/29/2017

If I have identified anything about my journey through life, it is that as an adult my goal is to work with children. For this reason, this week was truly exciting as a pediatric neurosurgeon finally responded with the willingness to sit through an interview. Regardless, of whether or not they become my mentor, the goal is to learn as much as possible about being a pediatric neurosurgeon. It has been a long journey of hunting for pediatric neurosurgeons that specialize in epilepsies or pediatric brain tumors. The biggest difficult was to find someone that isn’t only invested in complex spinal surgeries. As intricate as the topic sounds, the goal of my ISM journey was also to get as much exposure to this field of practice as possible and that meant acquiring interviews with people from different specialties including spinal, brain, and pediatric surgeons. In addition, the pediatric neurosurgeon seems to be invested in multiple sub specialties and not just spinal surgeries which provides an outlet to learn about multiple neurosurgery specialties.

The highlight of this past week was getting a response from a pediatric neurosurgeon at Children’s Medical Center in Dallas who specializes in pediatric brain tumors and complex spinal surgeries which was something different to the original track that all the interviews fell into. Thus, this week was spent researching on pediatric brain tumors in the central nervous system (CNS) and the severity of certain tumors in comparison with others. By far, this has most likely been the most interesting yet the most heartbreaking article I have read. Which brought into question how I will cope with knowing that many of these children with these tumor conditions will most likely pass away earlier than the lifespan of normal children. Learning about the multiple brain tumors including primitive neuroectodermal tumor (PNET) and the most common tumors which are gliomas. Learning about the procedures to treat these tumors as well as the lifespan after surgery was both interesting and surprising.

If anything, this week has showed how putting in the effort does yield results. After sending twenty emails and calling over twenty-five professionals, I have finally received four interviews with people that seem to be professionals that I would genuinely like to work with. It has been both difficult and daunting to get people to call back or email back, however, at the end all the work put in does pay off in one form or the other. Pediatric diseases has always been a topic of interest as I initially started out thinking pediatrics was the field that would best fit my personality, however, I was still on the search for a career that was more hands-on and involved in saving lives or making a significant difference. Overall, this week has been an outlet towards the ultimate goal and what is to be achieved through ISM by the end of this year.