And the Summer was over: Dana Patino

All my life I had lived in complete darkness. I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere, I saw everything in black and white tones. In the depths of my being, I felt an immense hole that expanded, taking of my soul. I was lost, not fitting in and I had no idea what my purpose in life was, much less what I was passionate about. It was until February 24, 2020, at the age of fourteen, when I finally began to see life in color.

In my last school, the Alexander von Humboldt German International School, the ninth-grade students were asked to do a week of professional internships in a place of our choice, with the purpose of going to do a free service and being able to live the experience of “work for the first time”.

Since I was little, my parents have taught me that one of the most important values in life is helping others. My father always tells me that “whatever you give to help the other, later it will come back to you multiplied”. My mother, on the other hand, has always told me that it is very important to help others regardless of the situation and she always moves me with a phrase that she tells me all the time; “If you see someone drowning, try to help, even if you can’t swim.” Both teachings of my parents have remained in my mind and from a very young age, I did anything to help others.

That is how it occurred to me to go to a hospital for my professional internship, to give my help in whatever way to the doctors, nurses, and hospital staff. Therefore, in the last week of February 2020, I had the honor of doing my professional internship at the Salvador Zubirán National Institute of Medical Sciences and Nutrition (INCMNSZ). To cut a long story short, the first days I was able to see clinical consultations, I visited the radiology and hospitalization center and observed several investigations in pathology.

On February 25, 2020, I had to arrive at the hospital at 7:00 A.M. in the morning because the doctor in charge called me at that time and when I arrived, he told me something that left me stunned. It turned out that that very morning I had to go in to see four surgeries with him. Since I obviously couldn’t say “NO”, I plucked up my courage and decided to go into surgery for the first time. I changed, I put on a surgical pyjama that was gigantic for me and I entered a corridor full of doors on the sides and with an immense luminosity. At the end of the corridor, I found the door to the surgical room. Before entering, I said to myself “Why did you choose this!” At that moment I had mixed feelings, because one part of me did want to enter, but the other was afraid of what was on the other side of the door.

Finally, I plucked up my courage and walked into the room. The place was cold, full of temptation of getting closer to see the surgery, and I felt the sensation of a call from across the room that demanded that I come closer to see the patient who was being operated. I did not know what was about to happen, but something in my consciousness echoed; it was as if something in my heart coincided with reality and my desires. That unique feeling kept taking over me and little by little, it took over my soul. At that moment, my life completely changed.

I was getting closer little by little, with fear in my conscience and my heartbeat was stronger than ever. From a different perspective, I observed how they opened a woman’s neck with a scalpel and finished cutting the tissues with an electrocautery to save her life. It was at that precise moment that I understood everything. At the age of fourteen I learned about the wonders of medicine. At last, I felt in my element and felt that I belonged to that place and all the people around me understood the feeling that I had.

The following days I was able to see a laparoscopy, a colectomy, a mastectomy, two laparotomies and a kidney transplant. With each surgery I saw, I fell more and more in love with the idea of helping people through science and through the beauties of medicine.

Months later, I had the privilege of meeting an Otolaryngologist, who has invited me to witness surgeries several times. And just before last Christmas holidays, I was able to appreciate my grandmother’s bladder surgery (cystocele). Now all I think about is studying medicine and becoming a successful surgeon. Now Medicine is everywhere. It is while I reflect, while I study and while I am immersed in my dreams. That day, when I finally knew what medicine was, everything changed; my direction took a new course, and I began to shape my own destiny. That cold and that fear that I had before entering the surgical room soon turned into heat. Those shades of living flesh, of the blood that ran everywhere, and of the wonderful tissues found within the human body, allowed me to see for the first time life in colors, and in a different way and complete of wonders, as is the case of the incredible medical advances of medicine to be able to treat diagnoses. Finally, that black void that lay in me was seized by my passion, medicine. People will say that how is it possible to fall in love with a career, with a science, with medicine, but it happened to me, and its wonders

“Medicine is the art of maintaining health and eventually curing disease that occurs in the human body.”