New (and Improved) Normal: Updates 1+ Year After Diagnosis & Surgery

Hey y’all! If you thought your days of being bothered by me were over just because we’re more than a year out from my surgery, unfortunately for you, you are mistaken ;)

So many of you have been so kindly checking in on me, so I wanted to keep an active page on my blog! 

I’ll put my symptom trackers at the bottom of the page, with my latest updates up top so y’all don’t have to scroll so far every time you want to check in!

I’ll also be uploading my one-year progress images and a little post on how my 1-year post-op appointment went around December 22, 2025. 

As always, feel free to reach out with any questions or comments y’all have. Checking in on the blog and responding to your messages gives me such a sense of purpose when I get a little frazzled on rotations. Thank you so much again for reading and following along with what I’m doing!

Surgery Anniversary (November 13, 2025)

I. Took out. Someone’s. Cancer. 

Little ole ME, y’all!!

My preceptor at this hospital is absolutely incredible, the most amazing surgeon I’ve ever worked with. He has given me so many unique opportunities to learn and try new things. He trusted me to find the patient’s tumor intraoperatively and resect a safe distance on either side of it using the Ligasure and transverse stapler so we could reattach the two healthy ends of the patient’s colon with the cancer removed. Getting to help a patient in such a permanent way, exactly a year after my own surgery, was the most once-in-a-lifetime, full-circle experience possible. Who gets a chance like that? This time last year, I couldn’t move my arms or legs. 

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?!


Other cool surgical things I’ve gotten to do:

I included links to some of these things so y’all could see what they look like if you’re interested!

  • Trained using the da Vinci Surgical System!
    • These things are so crazy cool (and crazy expensive) I still can't believe I got to use one.
    • I don’t usually talk like this, but I wanted to tell you guys because I’m crazy proud of it. In my group, I scored the highest on the Skills Simulator, a program used to train surgeons using interactive games on how to use the da Vinci machine. The score is out of 100, and the second-highest scorer in our group got a 16. I scored a 69 (and cried when I got home)!! Not too bad for a gal who's missing a chunk of her brain, huh?

    • I have no idea how I successfully got the circle out but it was so much fun.
  • Coagulated the surface of a patient’s liver where their gallbladder had been removed!
    • There’s this super cool L-hook that you can use to safely decrease bleeding by pressing a pedal on the floor to deliver electricity through the hook to the precise blood vessel you are near. I couldn’t believe I got to do this either.
    • I got to elevate the liver and drive the camera simultaneously, which was such a cool experience because usually, as a medical student, you have to work REALLY hard even to earn holding the camera. Getting to use both of your hands in the OR as a med student hardly ever happens, so getting to do this was a huge honor. 
  • Had my first surgical overnight call shift since coming back to school.
    • I worked a couple of these on OB/GYN, but I have worked 1/3 of my surgery call shifts so far. The resident I was on call with is amazing and let me sleep a majority of the night. I came in at 5 AM and got released around 8 AM the next morning, had a happy cry in the car because this call shift went MUCH better than my first surgical call shift (see last September in my Road to Diagnosis), and then ran some errands, ate Cook Out, and accidentally crashed for 5 hours. I didn’t make the conscious decision to try to sleep, but I sat down on the couch to watch a lil movie and eat lunch, and then suddenly I shot awake in bed (don't remember how I got there), and it was dark outside.
  • Helped with skin closures of incision sites after procedures.
    • You’ll never meet a girl who loves Dermabond more than me. I’ve been practicing my closures over Thanksgiving break because of all the things I’ve done on surgery, for some reason, this is the hardest skill for me to nail. 
  • Placed trocars and Foley catheters.
    • After the amount of discomfort I had from my Foley, I am CRAZY careful with all the patients I work with. 

The physical cost of working in surgery is really no joke. Standing in uncomfortable positions to hold tools properly for so many hours in a row without eating, drinking water, or using the restroom, waking up at 3 AM every day (as a student, it's much worse as a resident), and giving up a lot of connection with people outside the hospital due to the difficult hours, for me personally, is not worth the benefits of being a surgeon. I've noticed that the days that I feel bad when I've been on surgery, I feel REALLY bad. There have been some days where no amount of pain meds could touch my headache, which is a little scary, but makes sense considering the stress and physical demand with not giving my body what it needs to recharge. A few of the residents I have been working with have very kindly been telling me to seriously consider surgery, and it is an incredible career. But especially after having so many once-in-a-lifetime experiences working in surgery, I know how exciting the highs can be, and they aren't worth the lows. 

I've also learned I still get way too attached to patients, even in this specialty. Taking care of patients for multiple days, from pre-surgery, during their surgery, and in the days after, proves to be very emotional for me. I think about my patients days after they're discharged home, and when they're still in the hospital I worry about them when I'm at home, which is not sustainable. For a long and healthy career, I need a specialty where I can only form a relationship with the patient for a few hours, ensure they are safe the entire time they are under my care, and then discharge them into the hands of other people that I know will care for them (I keep getting more and more excited for anesthesiology). 


Looking forward, my first day back from Thanksgiving break will be a call shift at our Level I Trauma hospital, formatted the same and at the same hospital as the day I worked when I got my diagnosis, which will be a little freaky. But I already have a surgical call shift under my belt, and I’m ready to gas it these next three weeks before winter break.

After completing my surgery rotation, the hardest part of my M3 year is over! I get two weeks off for the holidays, then work six weeks on Emergency Medicine, six weeks on Psychiatry, and then study for my Step 2 exam! 


September-November 2025 Updates

The time between my diagnosis anniversary and my surgery anniversary felt pretty bizarre. A lot of moments where I've had survivor's guilt, felt like I was running out of time, or worrying that I was going to get sick again/that my symptom flares were permanent or a sign that I needed a repeat surgery. But also moments where I felt so immensely grateful to be so healthy and alive right now that I didn't know what to do with myself. Tons of highs and lows. But I kept pushing, and did a lot of really fun things. Here were some of the highlights: 

  • Going to the beach a whole lot. There’s nothing I love more than a beach picnic and an audiobook. Rock Paper Scissors is my most recent read and that one was so fun.
  • Went to the most interactive haunted house of all time.
    • They had crazy lights, tight spaces, I was in a cage, in a tunnel, screamed dozens of times, got fully picked up and swung around, and I didn’t have even the teeniest headache, which is UNREAL!
  • Did the autumnal thang and went to a corn maze and carved pumpkins.
  • Getting outside as often as I can for dinners, runs, hikes, even just a walk after work because being in the hospital for such long hours all day makes me stir-crazy.
  • Saw Chris Brown live. That guy is a PERFORMER.
  • Took my sister as my date to one of my good friend’s weddings. 
    • It was so much fun to introduce her to a whole bunch of my med school friends from my former anticipated graduating class she may have never met otherwise! I feel so lucky to be surrounded by so much love.




    Diagnosis Anniversary (September 23, 2025)

    I had a very unsettling, breath-holding feeling all day. I went into work on my Internal Med rotation just like any other day, but it felt like I was keeping this huge secret from everyone I talked to. 

    Even though I am super vocal about my experience on here with you all, I really haven't told many people at all about why I left and came back to school. Not because I'm ashamed or anything, I just think it's kind of a big bomb to drop on people, especially with how competitive the environment can be in medicine, on top of not wanting to make anything about me and not liking attention. 

    That's one of the many reasons this blog has been so amazing for me, I have this unique space where I get to connect with you all in such a real way which opens up a side of me I don't show at work.

    I publicly combine my identities as a patient and a doctor every once in a while, with my research or accessibility-related advocacy at school, but I don't really feel the desire to tell most people about my brain surgery because it's woven into everything I do every day, whether anyone knows about it or not. 

    Every time I communicate with patients I am especially mindful of my words, I double-check every note that a patient may read to make sure I articulated their concerns fully, every time I get a little burnt out and start to second guess if I'm making a difference doing what I'm doing, I remember being exactly where all my patients are not too long ago, and how lucky I am to be healthy enough now to take care of someone.

    I'll definitely talk about my journey when I'm applying to residency programs and when I do more mentorship in the future, but unless I feel really connected to the person I keep it pretty lowkey, especially because my body doesn't slow me down enough any more to where I feel like I need to explain myself to anyone (I wouldn't have to anyway, but y'all know what I mean).


    Symptom Logs

    Y'all know how I get down: Darker green are my medicine-free days, yellow days I needed the most help. We only got to red once so far, and that was when we were in meningitis territory last year. So as long as we don't get there again, I think we're winning. I'll put the most recent logs above the older ones ;)


    Key

    apap=acetaminophen/Tylenol

    ibu=ibuprofen/Advil

    naprox=naproxen/Aleve

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