Miriam Mutebi, Breast Surgical Oncologist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Surgery at the Aga Khan University Hospital, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“One of the things nobody tells you about medicine is that certain patient comments stay with you for years.
Not because they’re medically significant or they change the treatment plan. But they’re just deeply human.
Recently, a patient shared news of a major milestone in her journey. As I read her message, I found myself smiling at the excitement in her words as she spoke about future plans, celebrations, renewed confidence, and the life she is looking forward to living.
It struck me that, as clinicians, we spend so much of our time focused on diagnosis, treatment plans, pathology reports, scans, operations, and follow-up appointments. These things matter enormously.
But sometimes the moments that stay with us are different.
Sometimes it’s the first genuine laugh after months of fear or hearing a patient speak about a future they weren’t sure they would have.
Other times it’s watching the conversation shift from survival to living.
Survivorship is about far more than the absence of disease. It is about reclaiming identity, confidence, hope, joy, and possibility. It is about making plans again. Dreaming again. Believing in the future again.
Moments like these are a reminder of why so many of us chose this profession in the first place. Not simply to help people survive, but to help create the conditions in which they can return to living fully.
Those are the victories that stay with me.”
Other articles featuring Miriam Mutebi on OncoDaily.
