As the death last year of neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi, MD, reminded us all, successful physicians aren't protected from the onslaught of medical maladies that can strike anyone at any time.
Take Kimberly Allison, MD, a breast cancer researcher whose personal experience with the disease is featured in a recent Newsweek article and whose own breast cancer cells are shown above.
In 2008, Allison found a "shelf-like formation" under her arm. Only 33, she calls the experience "completely disorienting." One minute she's a doctor. The next, a patient.
As a pathologist, she was equipped to examine her own cells, as described in the article:
Slow-growing cancers appear almost like normal cells under a microscope’s lens. But then, Allison says, there are “big, bad and ugly” aggressive cancers. Instead of being neatly arranged into structures, these cancer cells swell and lose their tidy alignment. That’s what Allison saw when she peered through the microscope at her own cells.
This story has a happy ending. Allison penned a book on her experience, and she is now advancing the science on the particular type of breast cancer that struck her.
For more on Allison's experience, check out this 1:2:1 podcast with Allison and Paul Costello, chief communications officer at the School of Medicine.
Previously: "You have cancer": On being a doctor and receiving the news, Stanford neurosurgeon/cancer patient Paul Kalanithi: "I can't go on. I will go." and Stanford neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi, who touched countless lives with his writing, dies at 37
Image courtesy of Kimberly Allison
