Most people who know me now would say I don’t shy away from transitions. Stagnation makes me restless, and new adventures enticingly call out — anywhere but here. However, I lived the first 22 years of my life in a small, safe corner of rural Minnesota. My last month of college was filled with theme parties, camaraderie, and the triumphant freedom of belonging.
I was going to be a chemist. My sisters, both PhDs in their respective fields, had stayed closed to home for graduate school. I felt like I was supposed to do that too, but I didn’t. I had been accepted to a chemical biology Ph.D. program at Johns Hopkins, and despite my family’s reservations, I was leaving home.
I was on the precipice of sacrificing my comfort and confidence for the sake of independence and adventure. But first, I had to spend an unmoored month at my parents' house. I had been struggling with persistent nosebleeds, so I saw an ENT physician who was the father of one of my college classmates. During the exam, he felt a mass on my neck and told me to come back in two weeks if it hadn’t gotten smaller. I laughed nervously. The round lump on the right side of my neck had been growing steadily for at least a year.
Over the next week, the lump that I had been quietly ignoring for months started to assert itself. I was no longer able to hold my head in a natural position without compressing the mass. I was feverish, I was uncomfortable, and I was supposed to be moving to Baltimore in three weeks.
I called the doctor and he agreed to see me the follow day. In the exam room, he was calm, but there was a new sense of urgency in his questions. I was having systemic symptoms, and I had a unilateral, painless neck mass. He stopped typing, made eye contact, and told me, very seriously, that lymphoma and leukemia were at the top of his differential diagnosis. My life turned upside-down in that moment, but I didn’t understand the significance of my symptoms. Now, after just a few months of medical school, I now know how well I fit the clinical picture of Hodgkin lymphoma. He was preparing himself to give me, a girl the same age as his daughter, the worst news of her life.
With an empirical clindamycin prescription and a knot in my stomach, I walked out of his office. The weekend lasted forever. I was unable to face the possibility that instead of becoming a graduate student, I might become a cancer patient.
When the call finally came on Monday afternoon, the doctor started the conversation by asking me how I was. I didn’t know how to answer. Was the question a formality, something you reply to with “good” and move on? I choked out “fine”, which hardly felt like the truth. He then told me the beautiful, wonderful news that it was not cancer, but instead a branchial cleft cyst. I frantically scribbled down notes as he explained in lay terms the embryological flaw that led to its formation. An evolutionary remnant of a structure that forms gills in fish had failed to close properly during my development, leaving a space that formed a cyst. It was benign, but the size and location of the cyst made surgical removal the best course of action. I hung up the phone, trying to process the rollercoaster of emotions. I didn’t have cancer – elation. I had a gill – what? I needed surgery – well, shit. I was moving in less than three weeks, and the next opening in the surgery schedule was several months away.
The next few days passed in a blur. I half-heartedly started to pack my things and sent my Baltimore landlord a security deposit even though I couldn’t imagine moving. Then I got a call from the doctor’s office that there had been a last-minute cancellation. So, with only a week before surgery, packing began in earnest.
On the day of the surgery, I tried to remain stoic. The surgeon’s enthusiastic description of the procedure involved him working around my carotid artery, which was not especially reassuring. The surgery went well, but the disconcerting numbness in my neck, jaw, and ear took weeks to fully resolve. My parents, sister, and I left for Baltimore while I was still immersed in post-surgery pain/painkiller fog. A row of black Frankenstein stitches stood out on my neck as I got gingerly into the car. After two days of driving, we arrived on a steaming Baltimore June day at my apartment building. The brick façade’s intricate decorations were lovely, but the inside was bleak. The creepy lobby, terrifying elevator, and minuscule kitchen could all be overlooked, but the lack of air-conditioning was oppressive.
After a few days helping me settle in, my family left. I met my new advisor and colleagues with an angry red scar prominently displayed on my neck. After a few awkward questions, I reassured them that I had not tried to take my own life. However, I was hesitant to tell the story of what had happened in the weeks before my arrival. I didn’t know how to describe the feeling that my body had betrayed me, and that, despite a good outcome, I would never be the same.
In my first month of graduate school, I spent a lot of time people watching through the window of my apartment. I wondered if moving to Baltimore had been the right choice, or if I would have been better off staying closer to the reliable support network I was so lucky to have. But during the years I spent uncovering enzyme mechanisms in the lab, I also discovered the depth of my own resilience and the richness of experience that came with expanding my comfort zone.